Black Pudding and Cheese? ‘Read it: it doesn’t say what it says.’

There are many clichés doing the rounds about the different characteristics of Dutch language and literature in the North and the South. Apparently minimalism is prized in the North. Writing there is sober and accurate. In the South, on the other hand, extravagance - linguistic diversity and impurity, mannerism - is said to be rife. The critic Kees Fens once used the metaphor of black pudding and cheese to characterise the literature of Flanders and the Netherlands. But the truth is more nuanced.