IJ study archive

Het vuur van David Foster Wallace herontdekt

source

TL;DR

A 2017 Dutch-language review by Toon Theuwis in Filter (the Netherlands' translation-studies quarterly, jaargang 24 nr. 1, pp. 41-45) of the first Dutch translation of Wallace's story collection Brief Interviews With Hideous Men — Korte gesprekken met afgrijselijke mannen, translated by Leen Van Den Broucke and Iannis Goerlandt (Meulenhoff, 2016). It is translation criticism built on paired passages: Theuwis lays seven English source excerpts beside their Dutch renderings and judges the choices. The title's arc is personal — Theuwis first read Infinite Jest as an English-literature student twenty years earlier (“soms tot waterens toe” — sometimes till his eyes watered, gloss ours), then over the years came to feel something was missing in Wallace's verbal fireworks; reading Wallace in Dutch for the first time, he says, he rediscovered the fire in the texts through this translation. Its critical spine is a reading of Brief Interviews that is a near-textbook case of Wallace's articulate evasion: he gives voice to men who conceal reality in a technical discourse or a convincing lie, and the reader's task is to see through the language-game — the point of each story hiding in the one word or sentence that betrays the speaker. Theuwis mostly praises the duo (the clinical-bureaucratic register of “De depressieve persoon”; the daring archaic diction in the KG/48 monologue), logs one real miss (the inconsistent rendering of “little lady”), surveys the Dutch/Flemish reception (a hostile Jamal Ouariachi review in De Morgen; favourable notices from Jan Donkers in NRC Handelsblad and Christophe van Gerrewey in De Standaard), and closes by arguing there is no longer any excuse for the absence of a Dutch Infinite Jest — a pre-Eindeloos vertier plea (the Henkes translation would not appear until 2026). No IJ plot/ending crux is touched; the novel itself is never quoted.

Key claims

The frame: a reader who had cooled on Wallace, warmed again by the translation

  • Theuwis's IJ history is the setup. He read the “pas verschenen, complexe en vaak hilarische roman Infinite Jest” (just-published, complex and often hilarious novel Infinite Jest — gloss ours) as a student of English language and literature twenty years before, “soms tot waterens toe” (sometimes till his eyes watered — gloss ours), and it left an indelible impression. But as his literary horizon widened, “hoe meer ik vond dat er aan het talige vuurwerk van Wallace iets ontbrak” (the more I felt something was missing from Wallace's verbal fireworks — gloss ours).
  • The fire, rediscovered. Reading the translators' Dutch, Theuwis says, was the first time he had read Wallace in Dutch, “en ik heb het vuur in zijn teksten door deze vertaling herontdekt” (and I rediscovered the fire in his texts through this translation — gloss ours) — the title's payoff, and the review's verdict in one line.

The critical reading of Brief Interviews: language as instrument over a void

  • A theory of thinness. Theuwis's reservation about Wallace is an aesthetic claim: the narrative “lijkt nogal dun, omdat het talige zo op de voorgrond wordt geplaatst dat er een soort verlamming optreedt en het verhaal via de achterdeur uit de tekst stapt” (seems rather thin, because the verbal is so foregrounded that a kind of paralysis sets in and the story steps out through the back door — gloss ours). His stronger formulation: maybe Wallace's secret is that “in het absolute hart van de tekst slechts de leegte is, het niets” (at the absolute heart of the text there is only emptiness, nothingness — gloss ours), the stories readable only as peripheral play with language as an instrument to fight that void.
  • The stories as a critique of male self-glorification — but no parable. One can read a critique of male self-glorification (“een kritiek zien op de mannelijke zelfverheerlijking” — gloss ours) in the collection, but “Wallace vertelt geen parabels, zijn personages komen niet tot inzicht” (Wallace tells no parables, his characters reach no insight — gloss ours).
  • Style folds around the speaker. Wallace's style, Theuwis writes, wraps itself around the characters and their speech-habits: “Wallace schrijft tegelijkertijd in de stijl van zijn personages en over hen” (Wallace writes at once in the style of his characters and about them — gloss ours).
  • The reader's task is decoding. The men “de realiteit verhullen in een technisch discours of een overtuigende leugen” (conceal reality in a technical discourse or a convincing lie — gloss ours); they seem decent at first “maar ze vallen algauw door de mand in hun taalgebruik” (but they soon give themselves away in their language — gloss ours). So “De opdracht van de lezer bestaat er dus voornamelijk in om dit spel met de taal van de personages te doorzien” (the reader's task therefore consists mainly in seeing through this game with the characters' language — gloss ours); often it is a single word or sentence that makes the story “meer … dan een taalbombardement” (more than a bombardment of language — gloss ours).

The paired-passage judgements (the review's evidence)

  • “De depressieve persoon” — praised. The story in the form of a clinical report is, for Theuwis, “misschien wel het briljantste stuk proza dat Wallace ooit heeft geschreven” (perhaps the most brilliant piece of prose Wallace ever wrote — gloss ours). He admires that the translators reached past the source's means into Dutch bureaucratic-clinical diction (“alsook”, “dientengevolge”) absent from the English, and the deliberate register-clash inside a single sentence — vulgar spoken register beside high officialese (“ter vervulling van een narcistische fantasie”, in fulfilment of a narcissistic fantasy — gloss ours). He also notes the reading-difficulty the apparatus imposes: a half-page sentence twice interrupted by footnotes that each run two pages in the same style, so that “is het veel eenvoudiger om het lezen te staken” (it is far simpler to stop reading — gloss ours); perseverance is required of translator and reader alike.
  • The KG/48 (Appleton) monologue — praised. The controlled, businesslike voice of a man who ties his lovers up (with permission) masks a despair that breaks through when he speaks of his mother; Theuwis admires translators who dare archaic words like “versmaadde” (spurned) and “mijnerzijds” (on my part) in a modern text, and finds the tone “treffend weergegeven” (strikingly rendered — gloss ours).
  • The KG/31 (Roswell) “little lady” miss — the one real fault. The self-styled Great Lover betrays himself when “lady” shades into the contemptuous “little lady”. In the Dutch, Theuwis notes, “little lady” is rendered inconsistently — sometimes the disdainful “juffertje”, sometimes, “om onverklaarbare redenen” (for inexplicable reasons — gloss ours), just “jongedame” — so “gaat de clou van het verhaal verloren” (the point of the story is lost — gloss ours). “Het is een van de weinige missers in het boek” (it is one of the few misses in the book — gloss ours). He would have preferred “dame”, or the frankly denigrating “het vrouwtje” / “de vrouwtjes”.
  • The Adult World (II) authorial note — a translation problem. The English keeps Wallace's own visible editing-annotation, a footnote hung off the story's sentence (“cleaved ** ([/‘cloven’? (avoid ez gag)]” as the review prints it, fusing sentence and footnote into one line); “cleave” means both to split and to cling, an eloquent antonym for a dead marriage. Theuwis judges the Dutch “kleefden ze elkaar aan” too weak and proposes “Ze kliefden aan elkaar” — which, he notes, hides “liefde” (love) inside “klieven” just as “clove” hides “love.”
  • Read aloud, the spoken registers resolve. The CAPITOLA monologue reads as a stumbling run of hedges on the page but changes “zodra je hem hardop leest” (as soon as you read it aloud — gloss ours).

Reception survey (Dutch and Flemish)

  • The hostile review. “Schrijver en recensent Jamal Ouariachi is in De Morgen (2 november 2016) niet te spreken over de vertaling” (writer and critic Jamal Ouariachi, in De Morgen (2 November 2016), is not pleased with the translation — gloss ours) — chiefly the title, “Brief Interviews” become “korte gesprekken”. Theuwis rebuts him: translators rarely decide titles, and English “interview” carries the broad sense of ‘gesprek’ of ‘conversatie’ (the review's own two quoted words) that Dutch “interview” does not (a “job interview” is a “sollicitatiegesprek”); the title is well translated.
  • The favourable notices. “Jan Donkers is veel positiever” (Jan Donkers is far more positive — gloss ours), calling the task in NRC Handelsblad (27 januari 2017) a “bijna onmogelijke opgave” (an almost impossible task — gloss ours) and the result “voortreffelijk” (excellent — gloss ours); Christophe van Gerrewey gave the book five stars in De Standaard (21 oktober 2016).

The closing plea: no more excuse for a Dutch Infinite Jest

  • The book deserves a Dutch IJ. Theuwis “kijk[t] daarom hoopvol uit naar een toekomst waarin Infinite Jest, een hoogtepunt uit de Amerikaanse literatuur, eindelijk ook in het Nederlands wordt vertaald” (looks hopefully to a future in which Infinite Jest, a high point of American literature, is finally translated into Dutch too — gloss ours). German, French, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish translations “bestaan allang” (have long existed — gloss ours); “Er is nu echt geen excuus meer” (there is really no excuse any more — gloss ours) — and this duo would be safe hands. (A dated reception snapshot: the Dutch IJ, Eindeloos vertier, would not appear until 2026.)

Theories & evidence

(This is a translation REVIEW of Brief Interviews With Hideous Men, not a study of Infinite Jest. Its Wallace-general and craft observations touch a few archive cruxes; grades are honest to what the review argues, and every contact is BIWHM-primary reception/craft material — the novel is only framed, never quoted. Translation and reception scope has no home slug: see the last block and do-not-coin.)

CONNECTION: Wallace's hideous men speak a fluent, controlled, self-justifying language that conceals reality — and the reader's job is to see through it to the one word or sentence that betrays the speaker

  • Crux: articulate-evasion
  • Stance: endorses
  • Evidence:
    • [T] The thesis stated: Wallace's men “de realiteit verhullen in een technisch discours of een overtuigende leugen” (conceal reality in a technical discourse or a convincing lie — gloss ours); they pass as decent “maar ze vallen algauw door de mand in hun taalgebruik” (but soon give themselves away in their language — gloss ours). [the reader's-task passage]
    • [T] The reader's role framed as decoding evasion: “De opdracht van de lezer bestaat er dus voornamelijk in om dit spel met de taal van de personages te doorzien” (the reader's task consists mainly in seeing through this game with the characters' language — gloss ours). [same passage]
    • [E]/[D] Worked example — KG/48: the controlled/businesslike surface hides despair that breaks through on the mother; and KG/31, where the shift from “lady” to “little lady” is the self-betrayal the whole story turns on. [the KG/48 and KG/31 pairs]
  • Notes: A strong, ARGUED contact — Theuwis's central reading of Brief Interviews is a near-definition of the crux (fluent/precise language deployed to evade truth or accountability). This is BIWHM reception/craft, but the crux's own evidence lane is already built on the sibling collections — GWCH (Here and There / My Appearance / Say Never) and The Broom of the System — so Brief Interviews falls squarely in the same lane; this is new NON-ENGLISH reception evidence extending it to the B.I. cycle. Graded endorses for the argued reading — recorded for a later weighing against the lane's English-fiction anchors, not folded on its own.

CONNECTION: Brief Interviews as a critique of male self-glorification — the “afgrijselijke mannen” read as an indictment, though one that yields no parable and no insight

  • Crux: wallace-misogyny
  • Stance: mentions
  • Evidence:
    • [T] One can read in the collection “een kritiek … op de mannelijke zelfverheerlijking” (a critique of male self-glorification — gloss ours), the monologues spoken by “psychopathische, misogyne, enge mannen” (psychopathic, misogynist, creepy men — gloss ours). [opening characterization]
    • [T] The qualifier: “Wallace vertelt geen parabels, zijn personages komen niet tot inzicht” (Wallace tells no parables, his characters reach no insight — gloss ours) — the indictment is enacted, not moralized. [same passage]
  • Notes: A mentions: reception evidence bearing on the crux from its named primary-fiction anchor — the B.I. title cycle is the fiction the wallace-misogyny lane keys to. Theuwis reads the book as critique-of-male-self-aggrandizement but neither argues Wallace's own stance nor adjudicates the irony's direction; he explicitly denies the stories offer moral resolution. A sighting only.

CONNECTION: the footnote apparatus of “De depressieve persoon” as a difficulty the reader must survive — a half-page sentence twice broken by two-page footnotes in the same style

  • Crux: endnotes-function (adjacency; endnotes-structure)
  • Stance: mentions
  • Evidence:
    • [T] The apparatus as an obstacle: when “een zin van een halve bladzijde tweemaal wordt onderbroken met voetnoten die elk nog eens twee bladzijden lang doorgaan in dezelfde stijl”, it becomes far simpler to stop reading; “Er is volharding vereist van vertaler en lezer” (perseverance is required of translator and reader — gloss ours). [on “De depressieve persoon”]
  • Notes: A weak mentions, flagged: these are Brief Interviews' FOOTNOTES (in “The Depressed Person”), NOT *Infinite Jest'*s endnotes, and Theuwis names the apparatus as a difficulty without arguing what the notes are for (the crux's question). Adjacency to the endnote-difficulty testimony the translator cluster already holds (Nesi's no-gloss decision; the 388-note mass) — but from a different book, so it stays an aside.

CONNECTION: the narrative-void reading and the character-folding style — an aesthetic account of Wallace's whole method

  • Crux: (no home slug — reception/critical-aesthetics)
  • Stance: n/a (reception texture)
  • Evidence:
    • [T] The thinness/paralysis theory (“het talige zo op de voorgrond … dat er een soort verlamming optreedt en het verhaal via de achterdeur uit de tekst stapt”) and the void (“in het absolute hart van de tekst slechts de leegte is, het niets”). [the theory passage]
    • [T] The character-folding style (“Wallace schrijft tegelijkertijd in de stijl van zijn personages en over hen”). [the translator's-challenge passage]
  • Notes: Theuwis's own critical framework — an aesthetic reading of Wallace's method (language foregrounded over a narrative emptiness). It is a reviewer's interpretive claim about the oeuvre, not an argument about any IJ plot/ending crux, and the archive holds no reception/aesthetics slug that fits. Same do-not-coin finding the landed nonenglish notes reached. NOT a fold; NOT a coinage.

Themes

The Dutch (and Flemish) translation and reception of David Foster Wallace before a Dutch Infinite Jest existed; translation as visible, register-managing craft (the clinical-bureaucratic diction rebuilt for “De depressieve persoon”; the daring archaic words in the KG/48 monologue; the deliberate register-clashes; the untranslatable pun in Adult World's “cleave”); translation criticism by paired passages (source beside rendering, with page numbers, judged word by word); the one real miss (“little lady” rendered inconsistently, the story's point lost); the hideous-men book as a critique of male self-glorification that offers no parable and no insight; Wallace's language as an instrument played over a narrative void; the reader's task of decoding fluent evasion; the Dutch/Flemish critical fight over the translation (Ouariachi hostile in De Morgen; Donkers and Van Gerrewey favourable in NRC Handelsblad and De Standaard); and the call for a Dutch Infinite Jest — a translation-history datum on the Netherlands as a latecomer to Wallace.

Cross-references

  • mokita-blumenbach-passage-2017 — the closest kin: the other passage-comparison source in the archive, where a translator walks specific renderings against the original. This review is its Dutch counterpart in method (source-beside-rendering, judged), though Theuwis is a critic reviewing the translators' work rather than a translator explaining his own, and his book is Brief Interviews, not Infinite Jest.
  • gobetti-acqua-in-bocca-2013 — the register sibling: the other piece from a national translation-studies journal (tradurre, Italy) built on close attention to how Wallace behaves in another language. Gobetti writes a publishing-history; Theuwis writes a book review — but both are the scholarly-journal tier of the non-English archive.
  • The translator-testimony cluster — blumenbach-trashpool-2011, blumenbach-spiegel-2009, nesi-minimaetmoralia-intervista, kerline-books-2015, galindo-graca-infinita-historia-pessoal-2018 — the German/French/Italian/Portuguese desk-craft parallels on rendering Wallace's registers and syntax. The Dutch duo's register-clash and archaic-diction choices here rhyme with that testimony, from the reviewer's side of the desk.
  • lapresse-infinie-comedie-2015 / letraslibres-no-necrologica-2008 / news247-kaltsas-2026 — the French, Spanish and Greek non-English reception primaries; this Dutch review is their Low-Countries counterpart, and — like the Greek and (eventual) Dutch editions — a document of a language that came late to Infinite Jest.
  • esposito-ij-around-the-world — the cross-language reception round-up; Theuwis's closing survey of which languages already had an IJ (German, French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish) is the same who-has-it-yet map, seen from the Dutch side and dated 2017.

Notable passages

Theuwis's words unless marked. Dutch is the verbatim anchor, the English in parentheses is our gloss (paraphrase). The source's quotation wrapper is the curly single quote (U+2018 'left' / U+2019 'right'); reproduced as printed. English (E) spans are Wallace's own Brief Interviews prose transcribed here and page-cited to the English edition; Dutch (D) spans are Van Den Broucke & Goerlandt's renderings, page-cited to the Meulenhoff 2016 edition — quotable as this review's reproduction, never as Wallace verbatim.

  • Theuwis (the verdict / title payoff): “Het is voor het eerst dat ik Wallace in het Nederlands heb gelezen en ik heb het vuur in zijn teksten door deze vertaling herontdekt” (it is the first time I read Wallace in Dutch, and I rediscovered the fire in his texts through this translation — gloss ours).
  • Theuwis (the void theory): “in het absolute hart van de tekst slechts de leegte is, het niets” (at the absolute heart of the text there is only emptiness, nothingness — gloss ours), the narrative else “via de achterdeur uit de tekst stapt” (steps out through the back door — gloss ours).
  • Theuwis (the reader's task): “De opdracht van de lezer bestaat er dus voornamelijk in om dit spel met de taal van de personages te doorzien” (the reader's task consists mainly in seeing through this game with the characters' language — gloss ours); the men “de realiteit verhullen in een technisch discours of een overtuigende leugen” (conceal reality in a technical discourse or a convincing lie — gloss ours).
  • Theuwis (style folds around the speaker): “Wallace schrijft tegelijkertijd in de stijl van zijn personages en over hen” (Wallace writes at once in the style of his characters and about them — gloss ours).
  • The KG/48 mother passage — source and rendering. [E — BIWHM, p. 96] “She became cold and rejecting, rebuffing any attempts as a small child on my part to receive reassurance and affection…” (Wallace's English as transcribed by Theuwis; the wording matches the English edition word for word). [D — Meulenhoff 2016, p. 111] “Ze werd kil en afwerend en versmaadde pogingen mijnerzijds als klein kind om geruststelling en genegenheid te vragen…” (the Van Den Broucke/Goerlandt rendering; the daring archaic “versmaadde”/“mijnerzijds” Theuwis praises).
  • The KG/31 “little lady” miss. [E — p. 36] “The secret is you got to both give the little lady pleasure and be able to also take it…” against [D — p. 32] “Het geheim is dat je de jongedame moet laten genieten en tegelijk zelf ook moet genieten…” — where “little lady” is flattened to neutral “jongedame,” and, Theuwis argues, “gaat de clou van het verhaal verloren” (the point of the story is lost — gloss ours).
  • The Adult World (II) authorial note. [E — p. 138] Wallace's visible in-text annotation “They were now truly married, cleaved ** ([/‘cloven’? (avoid ez gag)]” and [D — p. 190] “Nu waren ze in de echt verbonden, nu kleefden ze elkaar aan **…” — Theuwis prefers “Ze kliefden aan elkaar”, hiding “liefde” in “klieven” as “clove” hides “love”.
  • Ouariachi, hostile [C — De Morgen, 2 Nov 2016]: “Alleen de titel al: Brief Interviews is korte gesprekken geworden. Waarom? Het woord ‘interview’ staat gewoon in Van Dale en betekent toch echt iets anders dan ‘gesprek’.” (Just the title: Brief Interviews has become korte gesprekken. Why? The word 'interview' is right there in Van Dale and really does mean something other than 'gesprek' — gloss ours). Carried by Theuwis; quotable as this review's rendering of the De Morgen piece, not the independently-verified De Morgen verbatim.
  • Donkers, favourable [C — NRC Handelsblad, 27 Jan 2017]: the task a †“bijna onmogelijke opgave” (almost impossible task) and the result †“voortreffelijk” (excellent) — glosses ours; both sub-4-word, quoted as this review carries them.
  • Theuwis (the closing plea): “Infinite Jest, een hoogtepunt uit de Amerikaanse literatuur, eindelijk ook in het Nederlands wordt vertaald” (Infinite Jest, a high point of American literature, finally translated into Dutch too — gloss ours); translations “in het Duits, Frans, Italiaans, Portugees en Spaans bestaan allang” (in German, French, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish have long existed — gloss ours).

Accuracy notes

Cite-as-written throughout (orthography and typography preserved as printed).

  • The book under review is Brief Interviews, not Infinite Jest. The reviewed and quoted text is Wallace's story collection (Korte gesprekken met afgrijselijke mannen, Meulenhoff 2016). Infinite Jest is never quoted; it appears only in the opening anecdote (line 62) and the closing plea (lines 311-315). All seven paired passages are from Brief Interviews stories.
  • Two page-number systems run in parallel. English passages carry the English edition's page numbers (e.g. “(96)”, “(236)”, “(32)”, “(36)”, “(138)”, “(67)”); the Dutch renderings carry the Meulenhoff 2016 page numbers (e.g. “(111)”, “(277)”, “(28)”, “(32)”, “(190)”, “(93)”). Reproduced as printed; the two figures are not the same edition.
  • “(32)” appears as BOTH an English and a Dutch page cite. The KG/31 opening English block cites “(32)” (line 203) and the “little lady” Dutch rendering also cites “(32)” (line 223) — different editions, coincidentally the same number. Not an error; noted so the pair is not misread.
  • “yingyang [sic]”. At line 236 Theuwis reproduces Wallace's English spelling of yin-yang as “yingyang” and marks it “[sic],” attributing the spelling to the English text; the Dutch renders it “poezemuis”. The “[sic]” is Theuwis's editorial mark, reproduced as printed; he does not argue the spelling is deliberate.
  • The Adult World annotation's stray brackets. The English annotation prints “cleaved ** ([/‘cloven’? (avoid ez gag)]” (line 243) — an unmatched “([/” run and a trailing “]” with curly ‘cloven’; reproduced byte-true as the review prints it. The odd punctuation is the review's own presentation, not Wallace's: in the English edition the sentence reads “truly married, cleaved, ” (with a comma) and the annotation is a separate, fully balanced footnote — “ [/‘cloven’? (avoid ez gag)]”. The review fuses sentence and footnote into one line, drops the comma and the nine words after “cleaved, ” without marking the cut, and supplies the extra opening “(” — the same “ (” device it uses on the Dutch line below, where there is no bracket run to copy.
  • A mismatched apostrophe in the Adult World Dutch rendering. At line 246 the Dutch block opens the parenthetical with a STRAIGHT ASCII apostrophe (“('aan elkaar’”) and closes it with a curly U+2019 — the file's only straight apostrophe (U+0027 x1, all other apostrophes are curly U+2019). Reproduced byte-true; a source typographic inconsistency, not ours.
  • The em dash is Wallace's, in the English. The single em dash in the file (U+2014 x1, line 269) is the trailing dash of the CAPITOLA speaker's broken-off sentence (“what’s the right word—”); it is in the transcribed English source passage and matches the English edition exactly. Dutch prose here uses the en dash (U+2013 x8) for its dashes.
  • Issue/pagination. The issue prints as “24:1” (line 30) and the running head gives the article as pp. 41-45 (line 46); the site URL confirms “jaargangen/2017/241/…-41-45” (jaargang 24, nummer 1, 2017). Reproduced as stated.
  • Dutch/Flemish register. Theuwis writes Belgian-inflected standard Dutch (“Oké,” line 94; the reviewed reception is dominated by Flemish outlets — De Morgen, De Standaard), a fact of the source, not an inconsistency.