"De literatuur kan me de bout hachelen" : consensusvorming over het werk van Simon Vinkenoog in de journalistieke kritiek

This article discusses the reception of Simon Vinkenoog's works in the insititution of journalistic criticism. An analysis of obituaries, published after the author's death in 2009, shows that there is a consensus on the literary legacy of Vinkenoog. Critics value Vinkenoog as one of the founders of the literary movement of the Vijftigers and as a pioneer of performance poetry. Vinkenoog's literary work is however not considered to be of great importance. This view echoes earlier articles dedicated to his works, and is moreover canonised in the most recent history of Dutch literature, Altijd weer vogels die nesten beginnen (2006). The second part of this article examines from which period onwards this consensus view was established in Dutch literary criticism. By means of LiteRom, a digitale archive of reviews originally published in Dutch and Flemish dailies and weeklies, a corpus of 98 reviews was compiled, covering Vinkenoog's work in a period of almost sixty years (1950 until 2009). A short comparison with five other "Vijftigers" shows that Vinkenoog has the lowest average number of reviews dedicated to each collection of poems. The distribution of reviews demonstrates that he received the most critical attention in the second half of the sixties. The mid-seventies can be considered as a turning point in the appreciation of his work, as an increasing consensus in the value judgement of critics can be observed. I argue that external factors have influenced this development. In doing so, I draw on the works of several sociologists of literature (C.J. van Rees, H. Verdaasdonk, W. de Nooy and S. Janssen).