Not my cup of tea

Even though this was a short book, it was a struggle to get to the end. The book is told from the perspective of what is going on inside of the mind of an old man apparently with dementia, who doesn't speak (we don't know if that is a choice or if he is unable to speak), but in his thoughts to himself thinks with very long flowery sentences, with lots of made up words ('strasenbaanknotenpoenkthienoendwiedersjieber' being one of the more unpronouncable ones). Not only did that make for difficult reading, but I really struggled to understand what that was supposed to be about. It is certainly not how dementia patients experience life. Is he supposed to have another condition?
He has delusions of grandeur and each time we hear that his previous work was something different, from professor in cybernetics, to champion swimmer, to cryptozoologist to artist and friend of Piet Mondrian. That was quite fun as each time the author comes up with another more ridiculous grand job title.
A rather irritating feature of the book is that Jeroen Brouwers uses smoking as a symbol of his rebellion against the system. That might have been acceptable in the 50s but by now we know better than to see nicotine addicts as rebels, in fact it is quite the opposite. The perpetuation of this myth is not helpful.
The book is completely without a plot. That might appeal to some, but personally I enjoy a story.
I suspect that some people will get a lot of out of this book, but it was not my cup of tea.