Memoires 1991-A

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Inleiding

Readers of previous volumes of Willem Oltmans's Memoires will already be aware of their cosmopolitan nature, full of pointed observations on wide array of subjects including politics, journalism, psychology, anthropology, film, literature, friendship, and sex. This particular volume, which includes his journal entries from the first half of 1991, covers an exciting time in history, both in terms of world politics and his personal life. One will find four main topics during these weeks and months. To begin with, the dissolution of the Soviet Union was in full swing. Oltmans, who had traveled the Soviet Union during the 1980s and co-authored a book with Soviet political scientist and spokesman Georgy Arbatov, The Soviet Viewpoint (1984), viewed the country's approaching disintegration with mixed emotions. On the one hand he concedes the ussr was a corrupt regime, on the other he points out the unceasing hostility of the West to a regime whose deepest aspiration was to build a worker's Utopia.

During these same months the First Gulf War, begun the previous August with Iraq's occupation of Kuwait, also erupted, becoming the world's first live-broadcast conflict. Operation Desert Storm began on January 17 with extensive aerial bombing of Iraq's forces and continued for the next 42 days. The ground war would commence on February 24 and end 100 hours later with a crushing victory over Iraq by us-led coalition forces. The statements of American politicians, particularly President George H.W. Bush, and the jingoistic paroxysms of the American media, come under withering criticism by Oltmans in these pages of the Memoires. The themes of evil, corruption and the American empire the reader finds here remain of great concern to Oltmans until the end of his life, for example his collection of essays published at the time of the American-led invasion of Iraq, Cry for War (2003).

In South Africa, where Oltmans was living at the time, Nelson Mandela was a free man after nearly three decades in prison. The beginning of the end of the Apartheid system was in motion in the winter and spring of 1991, amidst much uncertainly. The stage was being set for the first multi-racial elections three years later. Oltmans was too outspoken in this volatile environment and would wind up being deported on charges of espionage in August 1992.

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He would publish a book Notes from Apartheid Country a year later. At the same time the video of the arrest and beating of Rodney King by the lapd in March 1991 had exploded into the news and would, a year later, lead to riots after the acquittal of four police officers. Oltmans viewed the racism of the American system as having parallels with South Africa, a case he made in his Apartheid usa, 1988 (1989) and other works.

The early months of 1991 also saw the beginnings of Oltmans's participation in his friend Oliver Stone's movie-in-the-making on the assassination of President Kennedy, JFK. In March of 1979 Oltmans had shown Stone an unpublished English translation of his ‘report’ on a decade of investigating the Kennedy assassination, Een reportage over de Kennedy-moordenaars. He hoped for a movie to be made from the book, but Stone declined. Now in the early months of 1991 Stone was moving forward with filming JFK. As we read here Oltmans felt that by prior agreement he would be a lead technical advisor if not the lead technical advisor for the film but Stone had chosen another individual, one with whom Oltmans was acquainted, retired Colonel Fletcher Prouty. Oltmans asked to read Stone's script, clearly with the hope of offering his opinion on it, but was refused. He next offered to write a book on the making of the movie and was again refused. In what Oltmans would term a ‘consolation prize’ (troostprijs) Stone would in early March offer him the part of his friend, the larger-than-life George de Mohrenschildt. Most of the footage shot would wind up on the cutting room floor (and the few moments that did not only appear in the films extended edition). Disappointed, Oltmans would describe the finished film as a flop. An English translation of Een reportage over de Kennedy-moordenaars would not be published for another twenty six years. I had the privilege of working with the Willem Oltmans Foundation and the Dutch Foundation for Literature to produce this work directly from the published Dutch text with the title Reporting on the Kennedy Assassination.

Michael A. Rinella

May 25, 2018