Hans Koning, born Hans
Koningsberger in Amsterdam in 1921, was a sergeant in the British Army during World
War II. In 1951 he came to the United States from the chaos of ex-Dutch Indonesia
and became an outstanding novelist and reporter. I reviewed one of his best novels, Zeeland, in 2002. Koning was always quirky, humorous, and observant, and he spent his
life on that margin of respectability where a writer must dwell. He wrote me a courteous
letter thanking me for my review, and hoped, he said, to write more; but he didn't. He
died in 2007 at 85.
During
his life as a writer, he enjoyed success–four of his novels, A Walk with Love and Death, The Revolutionary, Death of a Schoolboy, and The Petersburg-Cannes Express, were made into films–but he also endured innumerable rejections, slights, and critical
attacks. Many of his novels, once published, were allowed to languish and go out of
print again and again. In the end the little-known Alabama-based publisher NewSouth,
devoted mainly to Southern literature, saved his books from oblivion. Throughout
it all Koning stayed true to his calling, and never caved in to fads, or editors'
unreasonable demands.
"You don't inquire
what is selling those days," he said. "You don't worry about what
editors or reviewers may like or not like….You don't read chapters to friends
or to a long-suffering husband or wife in order to get an independent judgment.
Your own judgment is independent. You don't accept any suggested change except
where you made a factual or grammatical mistake. My motto has been through all
those years: Not a comma."
Hang that up on your
wall and get to work.
