If Jack Kerouac fucked Henry Miller in the back of a stolen tank while Bukowski filmed it on Super 8, you’d still only get the ghost of Jan Cremer.
I, Jan Cremer is a literary Molotov cocktail thrown at polite society. A Dutch punk with a hard-on for trouble and a passport full of broken hearts, Cremer tore through the 60s like a sex-drenched storm in a leather jacket, and this so-called “novel” is his sweaty, egomaniacal love letter to himself. It’s a travelogue, it’s a war cry, it’s a rock ’n’ roll confessional before rock really got its balls.
He doesn’t write; he rants, raves, brags, and fucks his way across the page. He’s a painter, a fighter, a con artist, a soldier, a poet, and a whore — and according to him, the greatest at all of it. He bangs ballerinas, beats up toughs, gets shot at by Turks, jerks off in bunkers, and still has time to insult just about every nation, race, and political system he encounters. Cremer is equal parts horny teenager and jaded mercenary, and somehow he makes you root for both.
This book got banned and burned all across Europe, and with good reason: it’s pure jet fuel for juvenile delinquency. The language is crude, the politics nonexistent, and the misogyny is sprayed like machine-gun fire. And yet, I couldn’t stop reading. I wanted to punch him and then buy him a drink. I wanted to fuck his girlfriends and steal his boots. Cremer doesn’t care if you like him — he barely tolerates himself — but he dares you to look away.
For the SCREW crowd, I, Jan Cremer is required reading. It’s a reminder of what real balls-to-the-wall smut looks like when it’s soaked in existential swagger and raw animal confidence. It’s the bastard cousin of Tropic of Cancer and the greasy European uncle of Fear and Loathing. It’s dangerous in the way most things used to be before the internet neutered our imaginations and turned every pervert into a politely-branded content creator.
Don’t read this book for the plot — there isn’t one. Read it because it reminds you that freedom isn’t safe, sex isn’t sacred, and art should feel like an orgasm with shrapnel in it.
In the Church of the Damned and the Horny, Jan Cremer is a foul-mouthed prophet. If SCREW awarded PeterMeter ratings to books, this one would definitely earn 5 out of 5 erections.
You can probably find a used copy of I, Jan Cremer on Amazon, or here’s a link to a PDF file to read it for free on Archive.org. (Let me know if that link stops working.)
For more about Jan Cremer, visit www.jancremer.com.
—P.
