Urban Culture
Bas Kast's summer philosophy
Having written non-fiction bestseller The Diet Compass, German-Dutch author Bas Kast, 48, has now penned his first novel, which deals with the search for meaning in life.
You could say that Bas Kast is a superstar among non-fiction authors. His 2018 book, The Diet Compass, a summary of academic nutritional studies, has sold more than one million copies in its German-language version alone. A psychology graduate, Kast deals with an equally weighty topic in his debut novel, Das Buch eines Sommers: Werde, der du bist (“A Summer’s Tale: Become Who You Are”), which is a story of self-discovery. We asked the author how the search for oneself can succeed.
ORGANICS. THE LIFETIME MAGAZINE: Hi Bas. Of all the seasons, why did you choose summer as the narrative backdrop for your novel?
BAS KAST: I wanted to write the literary equivalent of a feel-good film. Summer is when we mostly feel at our best and it often provides the highlights of the year. There are very few people who gush about the winter of their lives. It’s always “the summer of my life”.
Why is that?
As a psychologist I know that there are seasonal affective disorders. I recognise that myself in the form of a subtle cloud — the blues — that descends come the autumn. Melatonin, the sleep hormone, is released in much greater quantities in the winter and on dark days our serotonin levels sink. In summer it is the other way around. No animals lie dormant during the summer because it’s a time to set off and look for adventure.
But in your feel-good book you also pose a huge philosophical question.
It’s about looking for your core, your true self, your id. It’s about positive change. It is summer so the family spends time together. Also there’s the place where the plot unfolds: a house in the country set among vineyards where people are drinking rosé.
But on their own, a change of scene and some wine aren’t usually enough to bring about life changes, not even for your first-person narrator, Nicolas.
The most dynamic season is spring, when everything comes back to life. The heat of the summer then encourages us to slow things down. You take siestas, let yourself relax and do nothing. The slowdown helps us to realise what life is really all about.
In the book, the summer is personified in the form of the narrator’s uncle. You describe Valentin as someone with “sprezzatura”. Please tell us what that is.
Someone has sprezzatura if they dress well, perhaps a little formally, say, but in such a way to make you think that it’s just something they threw on without thinking too much. In my book, Valentin personifies this “studied carelessness”, which only begins once he has learned to live in the here and now. For my narrator the result is that he rethinks and changes his life. Previously a permanently stressed company boss, Nicolas rediscovers his love of writing.
Your own life has changed course on a few occasions too. You studied psychology and biology and planned to do brain research but ended up becoming a science writer. When you discovered at the age of 40 that you were suffering from the narrowing of the coronary vessels, you researched what a healthy diet really meant and wrote the instantly successful The Diet Compass. And now you’ve written a novel. To what extent is the book autobiographical and do you see yourself as primarily a fiction writer?
I wouldn’t really define myself as a born storyteller but nor am I a purely facts guy. My non-fiction books have always had a personal element and I do feel the need to write in an aesthetically pleasing way. As for my original professional plans, at some point I noticed that I probably wouldn’t have made an outstanding brain researcher.
Why not?
I’m not intellectual enough and I don’t have the staying power. But I did feel the need to write a novel, yet didn’t see how I could make a living from it. That’s how I ended up in journalism. I really enjoyed that, as well as writing the non-fiction books, but after The Diet CompassI wanted a new challenge. Due to that book’s huge success I was able for the first time to risk the next one not being a money spinner. So I had the idea of writing a guide to life in the form of a novel.
Self-discovery is the main theme of your novel. So how do we go about finding out who we really are?
By trying out new things and putting yourself in different environments. That’s the only way to discover what really resonates within you. And this brings us back to the summer. The introverted brooding that’s typical of winter tends to go around in circles. Summer breaks, where attention focuses inwards, are important. It’s the only way for good ideas — which were always there but never managed to fight their way through — to get a hearing.
How does that work?
These ideas might come to you while you meditate, during a dream or in a five-minute shower. But it’s only when you try to put the ideas that come to you in those moments into practice that you find out whether something is good for you or not.
To return to where we started, am I right in thinking that you prefer the summer but have an autumnal disposition?
I love the summer but my default setting is probably a slightly brooding melancholy, which I consciously try to counteract. My next non-fiction book is going to deal with precisely this by focusing on some of the strategies that do the soul good. Quite a lot of what is good for us is physical, such as movement, good nutrition, meditation and sunlight, all of which exert positive influences on hormones.
So what are you particularly looking forward to this summer?
My wife recently took up a professorship in Berlin. We’ve bought a house with a garden and are moving back with our three children to where we first met and started going out together. I’m really looking forward to that. And I’m looking forward to a summer of freedom — the summer of 2021.