This was an ad.We liked it.
I would like to welcome the listeners who are listening to Index's cultural podcast.I'm Péter Alvarez, the editor of Index's cultural podcast, and my guest today is János Székely, the editor of Élet és Irodalom, a screenwriter.Welcome to the show.
I'm very happy to be invited.
I would like to welcome the listeners as well.
Our conversation today, by the way, is given by the fact that the novel that defines world literature, The Heavy Breath, won the National Book Prize in the United States 50 years ago, and our guest János Székely turned down the Hungarian translation.
Let's try to put a little bit of Pinchon and his role in world literature.For example, according to László Kasznavorkai, he is the greatest living writer in the world, The Hungarian audience may know less about it.We can argue about this, of course.
So how do you see the role of Pinchon in the world literature?
Pinchon is the postmodern, let's say, neoconservative wave, the baroque wave, the most important and the most exciting representative.After that, there were more postmodern waves.
Now, from the perspective of these, he is actually already the last part, so he is a typical 60s, 20th century, second, to the third quarter.
Now, that world has already gone through several transformations, so there are those who don't have a spoon for it, there are those who don't like it, there are those who don't understand what the Pinchon cult is.I can understand that perfectly.
He was obsessed with me and he didn't let me.
What did you get obsessed with, let's say, this huge job that took on the meaning of conversion?
I think I read Peter Lengyel's small writing about Gravity's Rainbow in the Great World in 1975, not even that small, and most of the books we read were from that time. It was a manuscript, I don't know, about cultists.
Most of us said, well, what he writes about, according to them, this is what we write, so this is very serious.And then, for a while, I remembered that there was a book like this,
And after three years, at the British Library, one of the researchers from the American Library examined me and asked me who my favorite writers were, and I told them who I was used to at the time, Abdalek and Salinger, and who I really like and everything, especially Salinger.
And he says, and Vanigat, at that time he was already in the industry, and I loved him very much, and then he says, maybe now this Pinchon is praised very much, did he read it?I say not yet, and then I combined that these two,
I decided that I have to read only through snobbism, and luckily I found a Gravity's Rainbow book in an antique shop.I've had it ever since.The situation is that if I could forgive this, if I could keep it, I think it would have been
I have a paper-protective cover, I keep it, and what's the price of it now?Not a thousand, but I'd get several thousand dollars for it.So I didn't keep it, and I read it pretty badly.Now, the first reading experience is depressing.
In addition, it is not easy to read, because when a person reads it for the first time, he does not even understand what it is about.In fact, the details are very intriguing, and the whole madness of how someone's brain works.
But the music of the whole thing, and the world, and the peculiarity,
and how much it is related to the things that one considers important as an individual from the world, so with politics, organizations, technology, so what I am in the weekdays from morning to evening,
How much is it full of these, in contrast to other literary creations, which neglect these and distort the depth of human soul and existential questions.
This was typically American, and even back then, and even now, I was an American maniac, and I was amazed that someone could write so well from America, and so many important things, and so much music like this, so the sentences, which are not quite sentences, because very often they end with three points, so the
I'm not saying it's nothing, but in the basic roots, their music was completely stuck, so I think they could live through it.
In the past, those who, say, read Proust, so a different style, a different kind of speech, it was very hypnotic, almost a hypnotic effect on me.
How do you see the direct literary precedents of what Pinchon has created in this work?Are there any at all, or are such traces discoverable?
Absolutely discoverable.So he, on the one hand, in this postmodern, I would like to mention John Barth, who was nominated with a nationality.He was already read a lot, and I liked him.
but there is Donald Barthelme, for example, who was also not alone.On the other hand, this moral landscape or immoral landscape that he paints is very similar to what I saw with William Burroughs.So that kind of dark America that Burroughs
In addition, the critics showed that there were effects, not even in Gravity's Rainbow,
so bright, but in the first novel, in the V, they showed more, so Evelyn Boe, an English satirical writer, and from whom I had not heard until now, Juna Barnes, the significant American immigrant writer.
There were such, so there were favorite writers, and there were those who were not talking about the various ideological or philosophical and ideological precedents.
Who would now like to be influenced by our conversation to read this outstanding performance, let's hope it will be so, what kind of Mancos could you recommend?Because you said that first, and you turned to it,
It's about a difficult text that you may not fully understand at first reading.How is it worth reading?With various helpings or small details.
How do you think, how can this be processed, even at first reading, so that this experience, which you write down, can be born?
Well, the online ping-pong wiki is very helpful, where they practically end up as a page, what you refer to, well, it definitely helps, but the situation is that, and you forget about the details, so there are virtual and Mozart-like sparkling details in it,
It's very melancholic, it's poetic, it's intense, it's full of details.You can get lost in everything.And it's very melancholic in its own way.There are episodes that you can't read without laughing.It's a brilliant humor.You can read it calmly.
If someone wants to understand it, I would recommend it. He doesn't buy it, there's a Kalahuza for Gravity's Rainbow, but it's written by a philologist named Weissenberger.
You don't have to buy it, so it's a problem if you can only read it that way, but Pinchon Biki helps a lot, and I can only say that if someone wants to understand better, they have to read it several times.
Because you can't know for the first time that the strange thing that, I don't know how it gets there, and it refers to something, maybe something that will happen 400 pages later.And this can't be the first time, and it can't be recorded either.
How do you see, by the way, how this book was accepted in Hungary, or what was its reception like?Because I did some research on the Internet, and, well, how can I say, there was very little criticism of this book at home, in Hungarian.
What could be the reason for that? In view of the fact that this is a very significant work in the world literature, if not one of the most significant in the 20th century.
Well, there have been some very understandable criticisms, but really not many.
On the one hand, because very early on in the European literary tradition, so what we were talking about with the editor at the time, that he knows our European nuances and confusions and complexes, but he is above it,
It has a very serious European cultural reference system, from Rilke to Wittgenstein and Max Weber, but most of the philosophical problems that European literature deals with,
The other is that it came relatively early, so the truth is that when it was published, well, in a quarter of a century, it was published in Hungarian exactly a quarter of a century later, and after that, and I was relatively ahead of the line in terms of languages in the area, but by the time it was published, half of American literature had already started to come into fashion,
who, for example, likes Palaknyuk does not necessarily appreciate Lipincson.
And how, yes, you mentioned in your memoirs that with a quarter of a century after its publication, the Hungarian Translation came into being.Could you tell us about the circumstances of this?
or what was it that this book really should have been published now, it's so bad that it's not translated into Hungarian, so how did this process go?
And I would also be interested in how such a novel was really complicated, so that the translation work could not be done here either.The vast majority is simple.How did this happen?How long did they take?
And how could this Pinchoni language be translated into Hungarian at all?
It was born out of a request.The truth is that I wanted to turn back from the 80s, and then the end of the 80s and the 90s, for me, partly, very partly, because I did all kinds of things, but partly it was because I was looking for a sponsor.
who, on the one hand, would finance me while I was doing it, because the real profits were quite weak at the time.The other thing is that we were in an age before the Internet, mostly, and he couldn't imagine
with an American principle, that these Americanisms and references, and after all the hearing and environmental detail, I couldn't imagine without a principle, but now it didn't come together, so they talked about the line principle, they talked about the exceptions,
not important politically.
They didn't give anything to the Americans either, because there was such a campaign, it was towards the end, it was still on the eve of the regime change, that there was such a thing as wanting to introduce American culture, and then I reported that I was trying, and then they said, well, no, unfortunately not,
I would rather like to turn their books into political topics, so this remained, and in the end, sometime at the beginning of the 2000s, I received an application from a publishing house, and I took it very enthusiastically, not knowing that
what I do, both financially and everything.So I got a one and a half year deadline.The turnover lasted four and a half years.I couldn't do it faster.Our relationship was very interesting, but at that time they were still very understanding with me.
Later, I wasn't so... I wasn't as correct as I could have been, to be honest, with other jobs, so there were all kinds of problems at the time, and I simply couldn't turn a nice prose into time in time, so in the end, for a very long time,
And as I calculated, I turned the book upside down in a terrible bad hour.And I think this is what we talked about here before, why don't they turn it upside down.
So there are still the other two huge novels, Mason and Dickson, and that's against the day. It's similar in terms of its scope, even the translation is a thousand pages, even in English.
It's probably similar, so, how should I put it, in Hungary as well, but especially in Hungary, it's the worst paid job in the world.In essence, those who don't have a lot of time and money, it's very difficult for them to turn such a pile down.
Well, yes, but we have to admit that a culture nation should have all the pinches, right?In its own language.Well... So that this effort, at least the effort, we should see the effort.Well, it would be very good.
Well, now the publishers are in a situation where it's terribly difficult.
I don't know how much it could be sold and how much it would be on the market, but I haven't thought about it yet, that if I got such a request, I would take it in the years to come.
By the way, it's also very interesting, if we're already here at Magán, at the book, and at the Hungarian edition, that what we've been talking about so far, the heavy breathing or the gravity rainbow, that it's simply inaccessible.
If it can be acquired, then for astronomical amounts, So the cheapest example is 38,000 forints, which is now available on the internet.I even managed to get an example for 20,000 forints back then.
And the better ones go on the internet for 50,000-90,000 forints. So that's also a big question, to get another print.
Well, the 49th edition of Téte is now available for 10,000 forints in Antiquariums, two of which can be found all over the country, which is in good condition, and it contains the new translation, so the re-translation, because there has been a little rework, I know.
So that's why I think that if such an interest or such a person can be acquired, then maybe these bonds would even achieve new pressures.But I don't know why the publisher doesn't blame itself.I don't know, I didn't ask. I understand.
As I say, the Gravity Rainbow is quite captivating people, even on TikTok.I did a little research, but how can I say, it turned out to be a rather extreme feeling from English-speaking listeners.They would light this book up, throw it out the window.
Someone in an amazing way, enthusiastically asked, what is the reason for this, a more extreme emotional scale than the relationship with the book?So, on the one hand, the reason for this is that it's difficult.
So, it's not written in a language that you think you understand first.So, there are mysteries in it, and there are a lot of artistic elements. what I really like about it.The other thing is that someone, really, someone either likes it or doesn't.
So it's a matter of adjustment, so there are people, there are people you irritate quite simply, because it's not what, let's say, a fiction expects.
What do you think, by the way, about the success of his books, this secretion, this self-cultivation, how much did it contribute to it or not?
So the fact that Pinchon is one of the most secretive great artists in the 20th, 21st century, is this a conscious, or simply from the writer's personality, and the books, however, have such an effect that it somehow elevates the cult as well.
He is supposedly a completely normal person, closed, natural, and there is a certain contradiction to modern media in him. Maybe he saw that if he got caught up in the big media, he wouldn't be able to maintain his autonomy.
Now, this has proved to be very successful so far.He doesn't give interviews.And that's completely in his favor.
Does this interpretation of the works make it difficult for you not to give interviews or explanations to the poems, or does it just expose the possibility of interpreting the works?Well, there are...
They are very useful and very helpful.So, in those, about writing, so what the writers usually say about their lives, and about writing in general, and about the given society,
in small articles and in the last words, he writes in such things, and these are very useful for understanding, but from his point of view, it may not be necessary for interviews.
Thank you very much to the listeners for being with us.We recommend that you read the book Súlyszivárvány.Try to get it as cheaply as possible.I was Péter Alvarez, you listened to Arutluk, the Index cultural show.János Székely was our guest.
Thank you for being here with us.Thank you for having me.
This is the end of this episode.Listen to the advertisement.Did you know that in Switzerland it is illegal to keep only one sea bass?And that the average weight of a sea bass is almost half a million kilograms?
And did you know that if you advertise with us, you will meet people who really listen to what you want to say to them? If you have a product or service that you would recommend to them, ask us.
Details on the betonnetwork.hu page or write to us at hellokukacbetonnetwork.hu email address.Let there be more independent quality podcasts.Beton Network.Did you hear the ad?The show is sponsored by Beton.
Sign in
