When visiting a new place, I usually try to read a book or two set there. I aim for fiction, which, I think, gives me a better glimpse, not of what it is to see a place as an outsider, but as an insider: the culture and values and logic of the space. I have been to Holland many times before, and I thus thought I had exhausted the American Library’s stock of Dutch books. Fortunately for me, I was wrong.
Letters from Holland breaks my guidelines in that it is neither fiction nor written by a native. It is, instead, a small tome of snapshots – each no more than 200 words or so – written by the Czech writer Karel Capek, who apparently wrote a similar book about England. In the book, written during his visit to a literary conference in The Hague, in 1931, Capek offers glimpses at Holland from an interested outsider’s perspective. Indeed, he speaks to only one Dutchman (a fisherman who scolds him for attempting to photograph him). The only other “character” with any “lines” is a Lithuanian upset at being mistaken for an Estonian, who serves to help Capek illustrate what it is to be from a small country.
It’s intriguing to me that this book, written pre-World War II, still carries quite a bit of truth within its pages. Its descriptions are at once visceral and fanciful: he observes sheep grazing on the polders and muses about how they don’t need fences when they have canals; he describes the sandy dunes of the beaches, noting how their very presence is what’s keeping Holland “above” water, so to speak.
My favorite bit, however, was his description of the Dutch on bikes, which I considered at length as I “step-stepped” my way across Texel (quads burning):
“…to my mind it is somewhat unnatural for a man to be sitting and stepping forward at the same time. The practice of stepping forward while seated can ultimately affect the pace of a nation’s development. It becomes possible to tread slowly and nevertheless to get along quickly. You realize this when you see how far the Dutch have gone, although they tread at about the same rate as a slow-motion film. But I, arm-swinging pedestrian that I am, will not interfere with their bicycles; let every nation follow its star by the methods which it understands.”