Last week Jeroen Brouwers (67), author of the book Sunken Red, refused Dutch/Flemish literary award Prijs der Nederlandse Letteren. Apparently he thought that the prize money, 16,000 euro, was a mere tip, a pittance. The Verbal Jam blog sarcastically acknowledges (Dutch) that perhaps the prize is indeed a little meagre compared to the AKO Literatuurprijs (50,000 euro), the Librisprijs (50,000 euro) and the Gouden Uil (25.000 euro), two of which the author won previously. I guess we won’t see Brouwers experiment with tip jars anytime soon.

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3 COMMENTS

  1. Some gluttonous writers are unhappy even when the “tip-jar” is overflowing. Stephen King wrote part of a novel called “The Plant” and sold chapter length installments. He collected more than one-half million dollars according to the New York Times.

    Mr. King said he made more than $500,000 from sales of the first five chapters of the ”The Plant.” He spent about $124,000 to advertise, and most of the rest is profit. ”The publisher didn’t share in it or anything,” he said.

    However, King stopped writing “The Plant” because some readers were not genuflecting properly and some were not osculating his big toe respectfully.

  3. Joseph – how about I split it with you? If someone awarded me 16 Euros I would say thank you very much, let alone 16K. After all, it is a prize, not a commercial payment.
    Perhaps he should have accepted the money and given it to a school in a 3rd world country to buy some text books for their students. But somehow I can’t imagine Mr Brouwers doing this.

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