Richard de Nooy

As a hyperactive citizen of Cyberia, I’ve always wanted a home of my own. A comfortable and beautiful place that proudly says: Richard de Nooy lives here. After spending two years tossing plans back and forth with designer and architect Bert Dautzenberg, we finally sent the blueprint to Louis Greenberg, who completed site construction in under a week! I’d also like to thank Martin Broekhuis and Mike Sole for their help in finding a suitable location and breaking the soil.

Please drop in and take a look. Feel free to let your cursor roam in search of buried treasure. I’d love to hear your thoughts. And if you run into any glitches, please let me know. Enjoy!

www.richarddenooy.com

Check out the “News” tile for updates on upcoming events. You’ll also find a tile for the Dutch edition of my latest novel “Zacht als Staal”.

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(The First Commandment – Thou Shalt Chill in Cyberia)

I like the ebb and flow of online communities. Out in the real world, we almost invariably meet new people via our familiars, affiliations and preferences, which usually means there is a certain amount of pressure to conform to the unwritten rules of those groups, if only because we know we’ll be confronted with these people again and again, unless we sever the bond, or terminate our affiliation, or seek to sate our preferences elsewhere. Online communities, on the other hand, manifest themselves in almost endless varieties and allow us to come and go as we please. We are free to choose the intensity of our own participation, and we are free to reveal as much of ourselves as we like. We can choose to stay at a five-star hotel, giving private parties, or we can opt for a nudist colony, where private parts are on display. (more…)

“In the swimming pool. Between those two trees. There was a green puddle in the deep end. She loved it. Her tail was like a tiny propeller. It spun like crazy when her bowels moved. There were splatter patterns all over the walls – light green, muddy yellow, deep brown – as if she was painting her own jungle. A calm, cool and friendly creature, but quite useless. A couple of laps around the ring with Mr. Mombassa on her back – but that was it.”

“Mister Mombassa?”

The girl with the ginger beard stared out over the dunes. The long grass bent in gentle rows under the wind. Her head was tilted to one side, as if she was studying a painting. Bright shards of emerald shone between her copper lashes. She smiled and stroked the air, her fingers playing with the grass.

“Was this his room?”

“His view. He was a fire eater. At least, that was his dream. He’d never performed. He practiced indoors because he didn’t like the cold and wind. A shivering giant. Black as coal. Burnt to a cinder when the curtains caught fire. At least, that’s what we suspect. He always locked the door. Didn’t want anyone stealing his tricks. They came running with the skeleton key and fire hose, but you can’t beat forty bottles of spirits exploding simultaneously. You could smell the fumes in the corridor. He always looked a little too happy. Droopy lids, glazed eyes, liquorice pupils. My father met him at the market in Mombassa. He had Coquette in a bathtub that stood in a wooden cage on a wagon. He had dragged the whole contraption into town from the hinterland. My father was hooked on the hippo straight away, but Mr. Mombassa couldn’t bear to part with his pet, so they came on board together.”

The girl with the ginger beard stroked her nose and drew it out to mime a snout, then spread her fingers wide to form a gaping maw.

“And he rode the hippo?”

“She followed him round the ring at first. Later, he would hop on her back. His feet dragged on the ground. That made people happy. They came from far and wide. We put on extra morning shows in summer. But they didn’t only come to see ‘The Hutu and his Hippo’. Our posters screamed of other wonders to behold.”

“A bearded girl, for instance?”

(This is an excerpt from a short story, available in English and Dutch, which is up for grabs. Editors are welcome to contact me if they’d like the full story. Don’t all rush…)

(Warning: This is a skatebike review in that it combines elements of two classic forms – the anecdotal vignette and comprehensive literary analysis – to create an utterly useless monstrosity that is neither one nor the other. In short, you will be made to pedal really hard without getting anywhere.)

I first read Things Fall Apart (TFA) as a teenager at school in Johannesburg. This was back in the early 1980s when Apartheid was girding its loins for the “Total Onslaught” from “Commies” gathering on our country’s northern borders. The following passage gives you some idea of the anxious atmosphere that had been contrived at the time: (more…)

Musings on the Life and Times of Michael K.

When I was thirteen, we moved out to a smallholding on the outskirts of Johannesburg. We still refer to it as “The Farm”, but only about a third of the land was arable, the rest was slate, covered with a thin crust of dust and scrub. There was a borehole and an orchard, a vegetable patch, chickens, three horses, two donkeys, a cow, and two pigs. There was also a family of nine – Wilson and Rebecca M. and their seven children – living in two small rooms behind the three garages that sheltered our Japanese sedans from the harsh African sun. (more…)

This bloody intro, Mom, is the only reason I’ve taken so long to post your poems here. Of course I could tell you again how much I love and admire you, how proud I am that my writing has inspired you to tell your own stories in prose and verse. When I read your work, I still find it hard to believe that you’re 86 (don’t worry, no one else is reading this). (more…)

I haven’t cried since my father died back in 2006. And now I have to fight back tears as I mourn the loss of a man I never met. The title above was his last message to me. He was a phantom limb. We shared a preference for short and sweet and deep, and a love of writing and music and freedom, and a rage against injustice. He was an annoying bastard at times, but that’s the way I like my friends – uncut, loyal, brutal, warm. There is so much more I want to say about him, and will say about him. But for now I will restrict myself to wishing Kim and everyone else who loved Mau the strength to celebrate his life and passing as a message from the gods, whatever or wherever they may be.

A Stalker’s Prayer

(Ode to Maurice Doubleday)

Because I have no god to worship
I have decided to appoint one –
An ailing poet dwelling
On a hillside in Vermont (I think)
Sometimes my prayers are heard
And he replies with obscure
Allegorical subterfuge and
Witticisms replete with
Pent-up rage against creation.
I do not need to check whether
I have used those terms correctly,
I have only to believe
With all my heart
That they are right
And my ailing god will
Understand and bless them
If he is listening.
You too may know my ailing god
Whom I have carefully selected
For his power to embrace
The sheer absurdity
Of deification.
Amen.

PS: If he does not suffice,
I shall forsake him
and select another.
Perhaps I’ll build
A pantheon.
(Please submit
Applications
In triplicate
By telepathy.)

“Personally, I’m looking forward to thrashing Ryk Neethling in the 50 Metre Swim & Verse.”

Because my recent literary exploits have caused me to become flabby and withdrawn, I went for a run in the park this morning. As always, my mind raced on ahead, turning occasionally to egg me on, bouncing ideas back at me like little tennis balls. The only one I managed to catch might be of interest to Read SA as a fundraising and promotional campaign: an Annual Book Olympiad. (more…)

Something to suck on if you’re feeling glum.

“The Reformnation happened when German nobles resented the idea that tithes were going to Papal France or the Pope thus enriching Catholic coiffures. Traditions had become oppressive so they too were crushed in the wake of man’s quest for ressurection above the ­not-­just-­social beast he had become. An angry Martin Luther nailed 95 theocrats to a church door. Theologically, Luthar was into reorientation mutation. Calvinism was the most convenient religion since the days of the ancients. Anabaptist services tended to be migratory. The Popes, of course, were usually Catholic. Monks went right on seeing themselves as worms. The last Jesuit priest died in the 19th century.”

Facts are funnier than fiction.

“History, a record of things left behind by past generations, started in 1815.”

(Forged in the furnace of Mount Doom for SA Partridge.)

Dear Sally,

Let me start by confessing that I began reviewing the books of fellow authors to sate my own hunger for reviews and success. Nothing startling or unusual about that, except that I have chosen to admit it openly. In fact, I’m even prepared to take this one step further by admitting that, as a keen observer of human nature, I not only know exactly what people want to hear, but also how to present it in such a way that it has a semblance of veracity – the irony-clad truth, as it were. (more…)