Volume 22 Volledige Werken van Willem Frederik Hermans published
Volume 22 of the Volledige Werken of Willem Frederik Hermans was published on 3 February 2022. It is the third of four volumes of his Uncollected Works. The book is published by De Bezige Bij in cooperation with the Willem Frederik Hermans Institute and the Huygens Institute for History of the Netherlands.
The contributions collected in this volume originally appeared between April 1979 (‘Uit mijn dagboek’ in NRC Handelsblad) and February 1988 (‘Degas’ in NRC Handelsblad). In this period Hermans published among others the novels Uit talloos veel miljoenen (1981) and Een heilige van de horlogerie (1987) and the novellas Filip’s sonatine (1980), Homme’s hoest (1980), Geyerstein’s dynamiek (1982) and De zegelring (1984). From August 1983 he also worked intermittently on the novel Au pair, which was to appear in September 1989. (Read more below the image).
From his residence in Paris, Hermans also continued to contribute to newspapers and periodicals. In mid-April 1979, his collaboration with Het Parool, the Amsterdam newspaper for which he had written columns for over five years under the pseudonym Age Bijkaart, was terminated. The new weekly Nieuwsnet offered Hermans the space to continue his ‘Bijkaart’ pieces. However, that magazine would only exist for a year and a half, and so the writing of a weekly column came to an end for Hermans as well. More lasting was his collaboration with NRC Handelsblad. For the culture pages of this evening paper, Hermans had been writing a full-page book review, exhibition review or essay on average once a month since early 1977. From 1986, he started writing similar pieces for Elsevier’s magazine.
In 1983 and 1988, respectively, the anthologies Klaas kwam niet and Door gevaarlijke gekken omringd (Surrounded by Dangerous Fools) appeared. Hermans made a wider selection in the compilation of this last title than in previous volumes, so that most of the scattered publications from the years covered in this volume were eventually reprinted in book form. In addition to articles and columns that remained uncompiled, this volume also contains letters sent in, visual work in the form of photographs and drawings, and one story that remained uncompiled, ‘Een toerist’ (A tourist), an autobiographical fragment that appeared in the 1979 edition of the Snoecks-almanac.
Later this year, Volume 23 and Volume 24 of the Volledige Werken will also appear. Volume 23, the last volume of uncompiled work, contains mainly longer pieces from NRC Handelsblad and Elsevier. It concludes with some texts from 1995, the year in which Hermans died. Volume 24 includes the pulp novels that Hermans published shortly after the war under the pseudonym Fjodor Klondyke. This volume is the final part of the edition.
Volume 22 of Hermans’ Volledige Werken, published by De Bezige Bij in cooperation with the Willem Frederik Hermans Institute, appeared at the end of January 2022. The Complete Works are produced by the Huygens Institute for History of the Netherlands. Editors of this volume are Peter Kegel, Bram Oostveen and Marc van Zoggel.
