column | Columnist without a column

In Hofvijver I saw the start of a new political academic year. Larger carts full of recording equipment lined the sidewalk. And the correspondents, Holiday Brown, said in their interpretation of the microphones: We are approaching a mysterious world, with all these departures and new arrivals.

I too will leave politics. Or rather, this column. Or more precisely: this column leaves me. Personally, I would have continued and will continue writing articles for this paper, but they think that was enough here.

other sounds. New sounds. New late summer, new voice. Todleduki, so. Farewell to banality, conflict, theater and turmoil.

I’ve been approaching an obscure realm after writing a column every week this millennium: University Journal mare, Amsterdam green, NrcnextIt is the opinion of this beautiful page.

Thank the readers and just look at the benefits. When Milan Kundera died this summer, the quotes came from an article saying that novelists should not have a say. “Are you left or right?” “No. I am a novelist.” Likewise, Pessoa wrote, “Whatever a man may think as a citizen, he ought not to be an artist.”

Columns and art don’t get along well. Is this why readers who recognize me from this photo are often surprised to learn that I also write fiction? And this is an incentive to radically reverse that image.

Although I always considered the column a full-fledged genre, and not a quick side dish. “A great cabaret is always better than little great art,” said pianist Vladimir Horowitz of Scarlatti’s sonatas, the usual soundtrack to my writing.

It was an exhilarating sixteen years as a cabaret entertainer. I enjoyed writing columns the most New journalismForm, mini-reports, vignettes, and rambling into the margins of larger news, in Jimmy Breslin style (every budding reporter should read “Kennedy’s Gravedigger”). A model with fewer comments, fewer clicks, and a smaller footprint on the big board, but one that can spice up your newspaper with richer variety.

I regularly hear the lament that all the major newspapers are beginning to look the same. It’s a hard irony for editors-in-chief how diversity is actually declining, despite all the different and new voices.

Personally, I believe that diversity of points of view, styles, backgrounds, creative forms, and personalities can arouse the desire to read. But a lot for my views as a citizen. Hush.

Moreover, the sun is shining. I walk through a city without a college, in a country without a government, like a columnist without a column. And I’ve never felt so light and free on deadline day as I do now. For now, the unknown isn’t a bad place.

This is the last column of Christian Weitz in this place. Carolina Trujillo will be here next week. Weijts stays ahead of the articles Norwegian Refugee Council to write.