Janwillem van de Wetering facts for kids
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Jan Willem Lincoln "Janwillem" van de Wetering (February 12, 1931 – July 4, 2008) was the author of a number of works in English and Dutch.
Contents
Biography
Van de Wetering was born and raised in Rotterdam, but in later years he lived in South Africa, Japan, London, Colombia, Peru, Australia, Amsterdam and most recently in Surry, Maine, the setting of two of his Grijpstra and de Gier novels and his children's series about the porcupine Hugh Pine.
Van de Wetering studied Zen under the guidance of Oda Sessō, together with Walter Nowick, at Daitoku-ji in Kyoto. Van de Wetering lived a year in Daitoku-ji and half a year with Nowick outside the temple, and described his experiences in his book The Empty Mirror. The book includes an account of a visit to the monastery by Hugo Enomiya-Lassalle, describing his own mixed thoughts about this representative of what he deemed an old-fashioned religion. Sōkō Morinaga, Walter Nowick's Dharma brother, wrote in Novice to Master about traditional practices at that time.
Van de Wettering also encountered American poet and author Gary Snyder (referred to in The Empty Mirror as "Gerald") during his time at Daitoku-ji. Snyder was also studying under abbot Oda Sesso Roshi at that time.
His many travels, and his experiences in a Zen Buddhist monastery and as a member of the Amsterdam Reserve Constabulary ("being a policeman in one's spare time" as he phrased it in his introduction to Outsider in Amsterdam) lend some authenticity to his works of fiction and non-fiction.
Van de Wetering was awarded the French Grand Prix de Littérature Policière in 1984 for his novel Maine Massacre. He died in Blue Hill, Maine.
Filmography
- Grijpstra & De Gier (Netherlands, 1979), based on the novel Outsider in Amsterdam, script by Wim Verstappen
- Rattlerat (Netherlands, 1987), script by Wim Verstappen
- Der blonde Affe (Germany, 1999), based on the novel The Blond Baboon
Television
- A TV series based on the Grijpstra and de Gier characters started airing on Dutch TV in 2004, 30 episodes are made, another 15 are ordered. Roef Ragas and Jack Wouterse play youthful versions of de Gier and Grijpstra.
- CBS aired a TV special featuring the original Hugh Pine novel (Storybreak #12).
Radio
- Van de Wetering wrote 4 radio plays for German TV, again based on the Grijpstra and de Gier series. The plays were aired during the early nineties. Among these is Das Koan (1994), based on Van de Wetering's biography of Robert van Gulik, creator of the Judge Dee series. The English version, Judge Dee Plays His Lute, was included in the anthology with the same name.
