Nomads Hotel [Paperback]

In reading anything about the Dutch writer Cees Nooteboom, one usually comes across A.S. Byatt’s remark that he is “one of the greatest modern novelists.” It has been possible to evaluate this statement against the fictions of his that have been translated into English: In the Dutch Mountains, The Following Story and All Souls (all of them available in paperback from Raincoast Books). The latest to be translated (by Susan Massotty) is Lost Paradise, to be published in October. From time to time, in various anthologies, one catches glimpses of Nooteboom’s poetry as well. But in Europe, where he is an important figure, he is also renowned for his travel books, only one of which, Roads to Santiago, has been available over here-until now. Nomad’s Hotel: Travels in Time and Space, translated by Ann Kelland, is a significant prize for people interested in travel writing.
Seen even more frequently than the citation from Byatt are statements comparing Nooteboom to Borges and Nabokov, or, less frequently, Italo Calvino or Paul Auster. That is to say, style is everything. Specifically, a style that is consciously artful, highly personalised and slightly detached, giving off the suggestion that it’s always on the verge of fantasy, as in this long passage from a lengthy essay on Venice:

“It is bound to happen. You have been wandering in the Academia all day, you have seen a solid mile of painted canvas, it is the fourth, the sixth or the eighth day and you feel as though you are swimming against a powerful current of gods, kings, prophets, martyrs, monks, virgins and monsters; that Ovid, Hesiod, the Old and New Testaments have accompanied you the whole way, that you are being pursued by the Lives of the Saints and Christian and heathen iconography, that Catherine’s wheel, Sebastian’s arrows, Hermes’ winged sandals, Mars’s helmet and all the lions of stone, gold, porphyry and marble are out to get you. Frescos, tapestries, gravestones, everything is charged with meaning, refers to real or imaginary events, armies of sea-gods, putti, popes, sultans, condottieri, admirals all clamour for your attention . . . ”

Admittedly, that’s a not altogether typical example of his prose. Certainly it’s an extreme instance of his hesitancy about the Catholicism in which he was reared. The allusion to monks is only one of a great many in his work, fiction, and non-fiction alike. In an essay about hotels, he likens hotel guests to “members of an order.”
He is not without skill at reporting and analysing events, as in an early piece about Iran in the days of the last Shah. His hallmark, however, is not writing about actually travelling, but rather about existing in a place, making stories from hundreds of small details instead of officially licensed facts. The kinds of hotels he likes, for example, are those with an “old-fashioned type of tap which doesn’t always work, a hall porter you would like to have had as your father, colours that are no longer in vogue, the paint peeling here and there, a surfeit of mirrors, hairline cracks in the porcelain, the wear and tear of hundreds of thousands of disappeared feet in the weave of the carpet, a lift which momentarily, but decidedly, hesitates before ascending” (and here he might be thinking of the notorious open-cage elevator at Brown’s Hotel in London, a place he mentions). Then, a few sentences later, he confesses that for a person “who may well spend months of any one year in hotels, I have a character flaw: I am afraid of hotel fires [ . . . ] Plummeting bodies, waving people not meaning to greet anyone . . . ”
In any case, his style has changed over the years-been perfected-as one can see by these pieces, which appeared in Dutch magazines and papers during a 30-year period beginning in 1971. He’s not the sort of travel writer you would likely find in the North American backwater. He doesn’t do reporting, he doesn’t guide, offer tips or merely give his impressions. He makes an art of it. He is a feuilletonist, a term that has passed from fashion because there are so few people besides Walter Benjamin or Joseph Roth whom one can point to as examples-and they’re both long dead.
George Fetherling (Books in Canada)

"Nomad's Hotel is the fruit of [Nooteboom's] wanderings. The collection of essays ranges from travels to the familiar -- Venice or Australia -- to the more exotic, such as Gambia or Mail...In fact, although he is an indefatigable traveler and can offer detailed descriptions of the places he visits, the author is perhaps more entranced by the inner drives that motivate his travels." (Montreal Gazette 20070901)

"[Nooteboom] is not without skill at reporting and analyzing events, as in a nearly piece about Iran in the days of the last Shah. His hallmark, however, is not writing about actually traveling, but rather about existing in a place, making stories from hundreds of small details instead of officially licensed facts...He doesn't do reporting, he doesn't guide, offer tips or merely give his impressions. He makes an art of it." (Books in Canada 20071015)

"Nooteboom is a talented writer and a conscientious, intelligent traveler, so his meditations are insightful and engaging, and they show his knowledge of history and his interest in places and their people. In the introduction...Manguel points out that Nooteboom is not in fact a nomad, as he calls himself: his is omnipresent, and it is this experience of having been in a place rather than traveling through it that adds perceptiveness and sensitivity to the writing." (Geist Magazine 20070320)

"Nooteboom writes with an intensity of observation, a disregard for convention, and a keen concern with the great philosophical questions of space, time and existence...Nomad's Hotel is as a travel book should be: An opening into other worlds, both real and imaginary." (Women's Post )