In a Dark Wood Book

The Dutch author Marcel Möring with 'In Babylon' (1997) had awakened great expectations about his further literary evolution. With 'Dis' (2006), the first part of a trilogy that clearly refers to Dante, he has severely disappointed me.
The story of 'Dis' takes place in Assen, a town in the north of the Netherlands. Several storylines are connected to each other, with the themes of post-holocaust emptiness and the walking Jew as central elements. That looks like a promising concept, but Möring has made a mess of it, I cannot describe it any differently. Especially stylistically, the book is a real failure: it seems that Möring just wanted to demonstrate how erudite he was, how many literary references he could put into a single book (and play with them), and how many different styles he could handle. Already in the first 150 pages I recognized Joyce, Döblin, Svevo, and Becket, and of course Dante and Homer are directly and indirectly referred to in detail. And then it even aren't subtle references: Möring has followed his models into the extreme, with continuous repetitions, to the point of annoyance. Even the experiments with the typography fall dead on a cold stone.
Stylistic excess harms, and even more so when it's detrimental to the content: Moring's main characters, both Jewish, keep on repeating that our earthly existence is a vale of tears, that everything is only emptiness (yes, Ecclesiastes!). And consequently, despite their active wanderings, the protagonists lead a lonely and hopeless existence. Maybe this was intended as a brilliant variation on the 'Inferno' of Dante, but I became utterly annoyed by this book and quickly put it aside.