Rituals

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.

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.

"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 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.

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.