About two weeks later Thelen wrote to his family:
My publisher wants to bring out the Vigoleis “novel” in German, too, as a co-production with a German or Swiss company. He holds great promise for my jottings, based solely on a preliminary chapter that he found very impressive. I’m calling all the characters by their real names, “concealing nothing and adding nothing,” and so I plan to preface it all with a notice to that effect… I occasionally pull back from my own self, dropping the first-person narration and reporting on Vigoleis as an invented character. May the Muses look kindly upon me!
On June 7, 1951, Thelen writes to his brother Ludwig concerning his progress, and for the first time he uses the descriptive term “memoirs” in connection with the Island:
This in haste. I’ve got much to do. I’ve just finished the chapter in my memoirs where I explain how Vigoleis wants to adopt a child, and how everything works out differently from what he expected.
Before he takes a trip to Switzerland, Thelen writes to Ludwig from Amsterdam on June 13:
My tome is making progress. I still don’t have a main title, but I’m considering calling the first volume “The Island of Second Sight.” Being in the role of Vigoleis gives rise to mirror images that I am reluctant to associate with my other self. I hope to get busier in Switzerland than I have been here, where I can’t seem to calm down.
This hope apparently goes unfulfilled. Having arrived in Switzerland, Thelen writes to his family on June 25 from Locarno:
At the moment I feel stupid. No progress with my tome. I’ve lost contact with it. It will be some time before I can reconnect.
At the end of August, Thelen and his wife are back in Amsterdam, but it isn’t until October 4 that he returns to the subject of his book, in a letter to his sister-in-law Martha:
Before I put a new sheet of paper in the typewriter and get back to fiddling with my Vigoleis’ recollections, I’ll type out a few lines for you.
And on October 16, 1951, Thelen gets more specific in a letter to Ludwig:
My memoir publisher is active again. The German manuscript, ready for translation, has to be in his hands by the 31st. One chapter went to the press today, in Dutch. In a few weeks it will appear as a pre-publication in a journal that takes risks like this one, and not just because it has the name “Libertinage.” The translation is in the best hands. No less an expert than Thomas Mann’s translator has taken on the task.
The translator was named C. J. E. Dinaux, and the chapter entitled “The Single-Chair System” appeared in the November/December issue of the Dutch literary journal. At this time, van Oorschot was planning to have Dinaux translate the entire text.
Thelen continues writing, but the deadline for submission of the manuscript (October 31, 1951) has already passed.
Speaking with Saint Paul, I no longer live, but Vigoleis lives in me. This guy Vigoleis is pestering me to deliver his recollections as the contract says I should. The manuscript keeps growing, and with it the author’s recklessness” (Postcard to his family, November 6, 1951)
And in a letter to Ludwig on November 28:
Yesterday I finished the first part (of three) of the first book. But now I must work hard in order to get the manuscript ready to pass on to the Dutch translator by the end of the year… If I’m not disturbed, I can write up to 10 pages a day, my average being 5. When complete it will be more than 400 pages.
Both the author and his publisher radically underestimated the final size of the Island. Thelen’s “cactus style” repeatedly caused his stories to engender further stories. Or to put the matter as he himself did in a letter to Ludwig on January 20, 1952, like the “sorcerer’s apprentice,” the spirits that he conjured up produced new spirits:
My publisher was just here, and told me that he doesn’t intend to produce a first edition of my tome in Dutch. Instead, he wants to take it to market directly in the German original. A Dutch translation would have taken a whole year, and would have lagged behind the original in any case. The book has to come out by the end of November. My manuscript must be finished by June 1. So I’ve got to scribble away faster than ever, seeing as the spirits I call forth always bring new spirits along with them.
Thus the Dutch translation was never completed. But if van Oorschot intended to bring out a German edition, he would have to locate a publishing partner, as he lacked the necessary distributing connections in German-speaking Europe. Thelen understood this, too. On February 1, 1952, he told his brother Ludwig that he could well imagine having his Island come out simultaneously in a German edition:
Unfortunately he [Oorschot] wants to produce an expensive book, a half-bible-paper edition involving Europe’s best typographic artist [Helmut Salden] (incidentally, a close friend of mine), the price, I would say, 12 — 15 marks. I would prefer ro-ro-ro [German publisher of inexpensive novels], and maybe Oorschot can be persuaded. He has never printed books in German. I am his first original German-language author.
Meanwhile Thelen keeps sending chapter after chapter to his brother Ludwig, whose literary judgment he trusts. Ludwig makes corrections and adds commentary, eliciting from Thelen an extremely interesting response:
I have the overall impression from your marginal notes that I haven’t succeeded in giving you as a reader the impression that the “applied recollections of Vigoleis” is a parody of popular memorial literature. Of course I don’t know whether you are familiar with this type of literature. I often plunge ahead and write some exceedingly banal idea, and when I re-read it, I get the impression that what I’ve done is lay on huge gobs of kitsch.
Thus Thelen assigns his work to a definite literary category, linking it with Thomas Mann’s Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man, which was published in 1954. Mann also characterized his book as a parody of popular memoirs.
Work on the manuscript continues unabated at the beginning of 1952. In March he tells Ludwig that he has completed the third of five books, and a month later he announces that he has reached seven hundred pages. But the end is far from being in sight. In May, Thelen predicts a finished work of a thousand pages, and hopes to reach completion by the end of the year. Even though this goal is illusory, in October he takes an important step toward finding a German licensee for his work. On October 18, 1952, he writes to Peter Diederichs, with whom he was corresponding concerning a German edition of Pascoaes’ book on Napoleon:
I would like to speak with you also about the German license for a book of my own. The rights are now owned by the local Dutch publisher G. A. van Oorschot, who intends to publish the book next year in the original German (The Island of Second Sight. From the Applied Recollections of Vigoleis). It deals with my years in Spain.
At first Diederichs is skeptical concerning the stipulations of a license, but he agrees to examine the manuscript and, if necessary, to offer advice with regard to distribution. In the meantime, the Dutch publisher is urging Thelen to bring his ever-lengthening work to a close. When Thelen finishes it in February, 1953, it is 1,255 pages long. Diederichs has yet to read a single page, and Thelen cites the work’s size as a reason to delay sending it. He believes that a personal meeting would be the proper way to negotiate, and such a meeting actually takes place at the end of February in Amsterdam. Thelen, Diederichs, and van Oorschot have a three-way discussion. They give attention to the work itself, and in particular to the details of a publishing license. They apparently had partial success, for on March 3rd, Thelen finally sends the first 126 pages to Diederichs, who now begins reading, as does his wife Ursula, who is pleased with the text. A preliminary decision to go ahead with the printing must have been made in Düsseldorf between March 3 and April 13, for on the 13th, Thelen writes to Ludwig: