Page 36 T cjnews.com T HE CANADIAN JEWISH NEWS November 27, 2008 And now for something completely different:

Dutch novelist and essayist was a high school dropout

By SHELDON KIRSHNER table Dutch movies. But soon enough, Staff Reporter he learned that he had no future as an actor. “It would not bring me any- For a guy who dropped out of high school at the thing,” he said. age of 17, Arnon Grunberg has fared remarkably He next worked as a clerk for a well. Twenty years on, Grunberg, Hol land’s literary telephone-book publishing company. wunderkind, is a successful author, with 20 books, The boss, a kind man who took a including 10 novels, to his credit. liking to him, fi red Grunberg, telling Nonetheless, Grunberg, 37, is not exactly a him that he was destined for great er household name outside Holland, even though fi ve things. In 1990, when he was all but of his novels have been translated into English and 19, he founded a publishing com pany. published in the United States, where he has lived “Work ing with books came naturally to for the past 13 years. me,” he said. His latest work in English, The Jewish Messiah Grunberg published five books, (Penguin Press), is vintage Grunberg. A biting Ger man works in Dutch, but no one satire with a grim twist about a quirky Swiss teen- bought them, and he went bankrupt. “I ager whose grandfather was a Nazi storm trooper guess I wasn’t a good businessman,” and who converts to Judaism and settles in Israel, he said. Grunberg’s novel is much like his previous works, At the suggestion of a man who brimming with over-the-top characters, absurd situ- considered buying his company, Grun- ations, unusual dialogue, bi zarre relationships and berg wrote Blue Mondays, which won self-deprecating humour. a prestigious Dutch prize for the best “You see humour even in tragic circumstances,” debut novel. He was only 23. (In 2000, said Grunberg, who was in Toronto recently as a under a pseudonym, he garnered that guest of the International Festival of Authors. award yet again for The Story of My “Humour is a tool of the powerless.” Baldness, which is about a clumsy 14- As improbable as The Jewish Messiah’s theme year-old boy who seeks love.) may be, it is rooted in re ality. When Grunberg was Blue Mondays’ success thrilled him. a young man growing up in Amsterdam, his birth- “If I had failed, I might have become place, he met the son of an Austrian Nazi who immi- a shoemaker,” he said. “In writing, grated to Israel, re turn ed to Holland in despair and I fi nally found something I enjoyed committed sui cide. The incident begs a question: doing.” Are Grunberg’s novels – from The Story of My Bald- Grunberg’s latest novel, Our Uncle, ness to The Asylum Seeker – autobiographical? which is set in South America and Grunberg, a personable fellow, said that only draws inspiration from the “dirty war” two of his novels, Blue Mon day, his fi rst, and Silent in Argentina during the 1970s and Extras, his se cond, are actually 1980s, has just based on his own life. been published in Blue Mondays – a bestseller Holland. occupation of Holland by masquerading as a German that sold nearly 200,000 copies Apart from his novels, which army deserter, while his mother, a passenger on the and made him virtually fi nancially have been well received by St. Louis, a ship full of European Jewish ref ugees secure – is a tra gicomedy about critics and readers alike, Grun- turned away by a succession of countries in the late the dark underbelly of escort ser- berg, an incessant traveller, has 1930s, was incarcerated in a series of concentra- vices in which a young man who’s also written 10 books contain- tion camps ranging from Westerbork to Auschwitz expelled from school roams Am- ing his journalistic pieces and (where her parents were murdered). sterdam in search of kicks and essays. In addition to articles Grunberg’s mother and father never felt com- discovers that sex is cheap and on the Israeli army and the pletely at home in Holland, and neither does he. “I love is elusive. current wars in Afghanistan and feel disconnected from Holland,” said Grunberg, a In Silent Extras, a farce turning Iraq, he has produced essays on secular Jew who followed a girlfriend to New York on fantasy, failure and the absurdi- culture, particularly on authors City in 1995 and stayed after their relationship ty of ambition, Grunberg’s protag- he admires such as Isaac Babel broke up. Nevertheless, Grunberg visits Holland onist, a wan nabe actor, responds and Pri mo Levi. three or four times a year, teaching literature at to the siren call of Hollywood, only His travels are of great value the University of Leiden. to find that he has embarked on to him as a novelist. “My trips His older sister, Maniou, a mother of seven, made a hilarious, humiliating and futile put me into situations I might aliyah in 1982 and lives in a religious settlement in quest. otherwise never experience,” the West Bank. Although he believes that Israel is a In fact, Grunberg left school to Arnon Grunberg he noted. necessity, he does not think that Israel is “the only be come an actor. His parents were [Sheldon Kirshner photo] Grunberg, a bachelor with a place for Jews.” naturally disappointed, having girlfriend in Holland, is a self-pro- As far as he can tell, Israel’s image in Holland has hop ed that he would enter the professions. Grun- fessed workaholic. “I like to work. It’s important to improved since the rise of Islamic radicalism in the berg would not listen to them. “There was some- continue working. If I had a wife and kids, I wouldn’t Nether lands. thing appealing about the stage,” he explained. be prolifi c.” “Jews are very integrated into Dutch society, “My shyness faded away in acting and empowered Raised in a Jewish neighbourhood in Amsterdam, except for ultra-Orthodox Jews,” observed Grun- me.” he is the son of German Jews who settled in Holland berg, who has never personally felt anti-Semitism Grunberg, having been rejected by act ing schools after the Nazis rose to power in 1933. in Holland. “Jews are assimilated and totally ac- in Amsterdam, found mi nor roles in several forget- His father, a stamp dealer, survived the German cepted.”

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