Cornelis Bastiaan Vaandrager

He was a brilliant student at the Charlois Lyceum, where he received a straight A at his exam for his Greek translations of Homer and Herodotus.

[1] After his military service Vaandrager started working as copywriter for a local newspaper, and later for some publicity agencies.

[1] Late in the 1950s, together with Sleutelaar and painter-poet Armando, he joined the editorial board of the Flemish-Dutch literary magazine Gard Sivik (1955–64), which was then relocated from Antwerp to Rotterdam.

Later the three were joined by the poet Hans Verhagen in starting the new magazine De Nieuwe Stijl (1965–66).

[11] Vaandrager set his face against literary pretension and identified his work with the "dislocating, raw city mentality of punk and New Wave".

[15] The element of collage also carried over into Vaandrager's 1970s prose works, including the highly autobiographical documentary novels: De reus van Rotterdam: Stadsgeheimen (The Rotterdam Giant, 1971) and De hef (The Head, 1975), detailing the city's musical and literary scene during the sixties.