Customer Reviews

Rituals

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This book is also in my top five books of all time. I did a search under the keyword "rituals" and it did not pop up (I had to find it a backwards way), and I had a moment of profound sadness thinking that this most wonderful book could be out of print. "Rituals" truly does inspire me. I haven't read it in four years, but it still is one of the best books I've ever read. I loved the intoxication of love and the meaning of life search of the main character. What can induce you to get off of the floor and live? I've wondered that many times in my life, and Inni (the main character) explores what REALLY matters - if anything. It's not to say that this book is a dour questing life meaning book - rather it is a rich, bravado, humorous, cleansing book that has many many rewards. The part of this book that I often think about (and I hope this wouldn't be a spoiler) is the correlation of Inni's mad, chaotic city (Amsterdam if I remember correctly) with monks in Japan. Very funny and important book. I almost feel akin to all the other reviewers who have read this as if we're in a special club.

"Read Cees Nooteboom," a German acquaintance recommended. "You'll remember his RITUALS." Nooteboom is a Dutch poet and novelist. Set in Amsterdam during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, his sparse, 145-page novel opens with "the appalling news" of President Kennedy's assasination (p. 17), and his protagonist, Inni Wintrop's attempted suicide after his wife, Zita, leaves him for an Italian. The novel then follows Inni as he wanders the streets of Amsterdam alone, looking for meaning in a "wonderful, empty universe" (p. 113). Along the way, he encounters Arnold Taads and his estranged son, Philip, by chance. All three characters have lost their faith in God, and attempt to create their own meaning in life through rituals. Arnold Taads is rigidly tied to time. "Time," Inni learns, "was the father of all things in Arnold Taad's life" (p. 46). Philip Taads, on the other hand, attempts to escape time through Zen-like rituals. And as for Inni, "women had become his religion, the center, the essence of everything, the great cartwheel on which the world turned" (p. 60). Intelligent and poetic, RITUALS is ultimately a parable about the importance of learning to ride the inconsistent waves of life in a universe devoid of God.

G. Merritt

This small splendid book is full of ideas. Which is the main one? What is this novel about? A Bildungsroman. An import of human sexuality. An up-to-date evolution of Nietzsche's concept of "the death of God". A fate of art in modern society. A trip through time - the fifties, sixties, seventies... Confronted with soullessness of official religion Inni Wintrop, a protagonist of the book, Arnold and Philip Taads, two other main characters of the novel, lost their belief in God, but in cold emptiness and animosity of godless world they created their own rituals. Arnold Taads designed a ritual of strict time regulations of loneliness where even his former lover was not permitted to come in when she had appeared ten minutes before appointed time. Philip Taads turned to Japanese cults "stemmed from a culture and a tradition that were not his and could never become his". He devised his own East considering the real Japan a spoiled one. They both started with dislike to the milieu which inevitably turned into hatred pointed towards the whole world including themselves. This self-made rituals helped them only in one occasion - to commit suicides in conspicuous but rather stagy style. For Inni Wintrop women became his religion. In incessant love-making he lost something very important that makes Love. His sexual promiscuous rituals destroyed his marriage and put him on the verge of death in unsuccessful suicide. The tragic fate of Arnold and Philip Taads, his own meaningless life showed Inni fallaciousness of universal hatred but he still had no answers to the crucial questions of human existence in godless world. I recommend this book to everyone - the beautiful and sad novel of wise Dutch author Cees Nooteboom.

This book gives you something to chew on on every level. The prose is good, (the English translation can not capture some of the idiosyncrasies of Dutch, but is very good overall) right from its opening sentence "The day Inni Wintrop committed suicide, Philips shares stood ..." All of the characters in the book are memorable and wonderfully sketched. (As an introverted person, I'm always amused by the walk through the woods scene. Taats asks Inni a question which spurs a two-page train of thought, but he answers only in a mono-syllable.) And it goes up to the structure of the book: the first of the 3 parts is called "Intermezzo". Plenty of ideas here.

The novel reads like a cross between Perec's Things & A Man Asleep and Camus' Outsider. Beautifully written and quite comical for those of similar headspace, the novel also has some outstanding passages destined to bring a smile to the faces of the (non-devotedly) 'discontent'. It is a wonderful picture of late 20th Century man and shines as true literature in a literary world populated by Houellebecq drivel.

I have only recently become a fan of Nooteboom after buying an old copy of his "The Following Story" in an used bookshop. What he does best is to say so much in so few words, and nothing is wasted. This book is full of philosophical musings and observations and merits rereading. Just like his other books. Plus there are some absolutely delectable phrases about modern life.

This book amazes me. It definitly was a solvent on my life. It is a book whose world will accompany me forever. I don't know why I liked except to say that it connected me to something and was beautiful and funny.

Cees Noteboom is one of the two best Dutch writers, ranking among the most important writers of fiction of our era. "Rituals" is perhaps his finest work, the translator the best of all those who have translated Dutch. As in "Notes from the Unground" (better title: "Cries from Under the Floor") by Dostoyesky, it is comprised of two very different halves which form a complete unity at completion. A character study, an obsession, a revelation of a culture combine to raise issues of identity, familial, cultural, and ancestoral The pivotal ritual is of a Japanese Tea ceremony rare in practice and revaltory in this book which can be appreciated at many levels while leading to philosophical and moral contemplation. The story moves smoothly, naturally increasing in tension into a dramatic and surpising end which in retrospect is inevitable No one will leave this book without new insights, perspectives, and resonnating images, ideas, and questions which will linger and illuminate the novel on reflaction.

I first heard of this book on the happyrobot.net site. This wonderful book starts with a selfish but valid love and ends with understanding of the world. I absolutely count this book in my favorites. I love the imagery, the setting, everything. My very favorite image that I retained is that of the buddhist monk juxtaposed with modern Amsterdam. Sheer beauty.

I don't really know what to think about this short novel.

The three main characters seem to have such different lives.

Inni Wintrop, a poor boy from a rich Catholic family, inherits from his aunt a substantial sum that should have rightfully gone to his father. This allows him to drift through life, investing in stocks and seducing women. The book is divided into sections so we are allowed to see Inni in his 30's almost commit suicide when his wife leaves him for an Italian magazine photographer. But we are also allowed to see Inni in his 20's seducing and seduced by a serving girl and then in his 40's seducing and seduced by a girl he meets in a city park over a dead dove. These casual sexual encounters, along with dialogue with learned friends and art dealers, and checking in with this stock brokers seem to make up the ritual of Inni's life. His one strength is that he is captive of only a few compulsions and he whereas he is no great humanitarian or egoist, he at least does not hate mankind as does Arnold Taads or hate himself as does Philip Taads.

Arnold Taads is an outdoorsman, world traveler, skier, mountain climber, philosopher, and hater of his fellow human beings. Though he twice refers to Spinoza, Taads' can not be said to follow Spinoza's philosophy. Taads has made nature his God and thus humanity becomes Evil. His dislike for humanity thus infects his own self perception and he eventually dies of exposure to snow, which appears to really be a suicide. Arnold seems obsessed with time and schedule, organizing his life around his physical and intellectual activities and his dog rather than human interactions.

Then, 20 years later, we are introduced to an Indonesian man who is Arnold Taat's son with an Indonesian woman. Phillip Taats also has removed himself from humanity, exploring the contemplative life of a Zen monk in his barren apartment. Phillip has studied the great raku artists who developed vessels for the tea ceremony. He eventually buys a rare and beautiful vessel and performs a tea ceremony for his friend who owns an Asian antiquity gallery and for Immi. We then learn that Philip has committed suicide by drowning himself. When Bernard Roozenboom and Immi Wintrop enter his apartment, they find the vessel has been shattered.

What in the world does all this mean, you may ask? For me this small parable has to do with connectedness to the human condition and the search for meaning. Both Arnold and Philip have divorced themselves from human interaction and particularly human commitment. They seek meaning in solitude, God exists in nature and esthetics but not in the human condition (where I personally think God resides).

Well then, who is Immi? He is a driftless soul with no external reason for existance other than to make love to women and spend his inheritance, yet he has one charm, one grace, one protection against the void - Immi is open to possibility and relationship. He hangs by a thread but he still survives.