Beauty

BEAUTY, the plan of which was already written one year after HERMAN SLOBBE/BLIND CHILD 2, but which I did not finish until 1970, represents the remotest corner of my attempts to put the naturalist inheritance under stress. Detective Beauty investigates the truth, the truth eludes him and to Beauty's eyes that makes her guilty down to the smallest details. Behind this artificial and unconvincing fairy-tale many memories lie hidden: of Marshall McLuhan's fairy-like media theories and the convincing codes of Hollywood, of the American machine of destruction in Vietnam and of the cleaning binge of fascism (see again today: "ethnic cleansing"); of an initial ecological awakening. Perhaps more than a spectator would make out, but knowing it doesn't hurt. Johan van der Keuken