Transcript Tibor Fischer - School of English and American Studies at ELTE

Tibor Fischer
Tibor Fischer
• born in 1959 in Stockport
(soon moved to South London)
son of emigrant Hungarian
basketball players
• educated at Cambridge (Latin and
French); journalist
• 1988-90: Daily Telegraph’s
correspondent in Hungary
(”big changes”)
• returns to England and writes
Under the Frog
rejected 58 (!) times, yet first debut
novel ever shortlisted for
Man Booker Prize
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Novels
Under the Frog (1992)
The Thought Gang (1994)
The Collector Collector (1997)
Voyage to the End of the Room (2003)
Good to be God (2008)
The Hungarian Tiger (2014)
• Collections
• Don't Read This Book If You're Stupid (2000)
(US title I Like Being Killed)
• Crushed Mexican Spiders (2011)
Hungarian as ”mothertongue”, dropped at school
"One of my proudest achievements is that when an authoritative book
about Hungarian literature came out about a decade ago, there was a
little article about me which said I was a Hungarian writer but
pretending not to be. Bearing in mind I can hardly write a cheque in
Hungarian, I was delighted to be included in the pantheon of
Hungarian writers. The simple answer is, though, that I am delighted
to be me."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/ha
y-festival/9239196/Hay-BudapestTibor-Fischer-just-delighted-to-behimself.html
• Under the Frog (1992)
written for an English speaking audience (Zrínyi, Petőfi etc.
explained)
• yet based on Hungarian stories (heard from relatives and
friends)
Hungarian diacritical marks (Róka, Ladányi, Üllői út)
mirror translations (cf. title; mothering)
occasional Hungarian words: pálinka, csárda (cf. Rushdie)
• ”I went to a British Council event a while back and there
were lots of German professors of literature. About half of
them were convinced I had a German sense of humour and
the other half were sure it was British. They are probably
still arguing about it now."
major writers crossing language boundaries:
Joseph Conrad, Vladimir Nabokov, Samuel Beckett
[Agota Kristof]
post-colonial?
” I was born in England; I grew up there, I was educated
there, so it's a completely different thing. I mean, it's
possible that a Hungarian influence is lurking, or was
lurking, there in my subconscious somewhere. […] I had
to sort of relearn Hungarian later on, to an extent, when I
was working as a journalist. I think studying anything can
have some influence on your outlook and writing, so it's
possible that that coloured my work slightly, but it's not
something I'm aware of, something I could consciously
point out.”
http://webdoc.gwdg.de/edoc/ia/eese/artic97/bayer/9_97.html
• ” I am very British. You can't grow up in a country, go
through the educational system and so on without having
been affected by it. I'm very keen on tea and Shakespeare.
But at the same time I suppose the family is a very
important influence and both my parents came from
Hungary. So, I suppose, in some senses that makes me a
bit of an outsider.”
• Gerd Bayer: Is there any biographical information that
you think readers should know in order to be able to
understand or have access to your books?
TF: No.
• outsider / insider
• immigrant mentality?
rootless drifting as a general symptom
of a globalised, postcolonial, postcommunist, migrant age
• home not a place?
• „It was true that at the age of twentyfive he had never left the country, that
he had never got more than three days’
march from his birthplace […] On the
other hand, Gyuri mused, how many
people could say they had travelled the
length and breadth of Hungary naked?”
• a historical novel, set in a fixed period
essentially documentary
• ”Human nature under a rather absurd and
pointless political system”
• Integrates a defining event of Hungarian
history into the common cultural tradition
available in English
• national epic in English?
comic and irreverent tone
private view
apocriphal / profane / carnivalesque
version
• welcome change or sacrilege?
cf. Judit Friedrich: ‘Variations on the Theme of
Cultural Memory in Tibor Fischer’s Fiction’
• ” The life of both those Hungarians who left
and those who stayed were defined by the
revolution.”
a series of losses Gyuri suffers:
hopes for a decent life in Hungary
his mother,
his friend,
his lover (a foreigner, the Polish Jadwiga)
and, finally, his country.
cf. Saleem Sinai
”He gains his freedom through these losses in
the sense of being free to leave Hungary, and
having nothing but his life to take along.”
• Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to
lose (Janis Joplin)
• 12 chapters (frame: Nov 1955 – Oct 23rd, 1956)
otherwise straight chronology, ca. one chapter per year
• Hungarians as the victims of history
• ‘Fischer, Fischer, this is deplorable. You can’t let a little
war interfere with serious scholarship. You know our
history. As a Hungarian you should be prepared for the
odd cataclysm.’
• ” It was like Hungary being between Germany and the
Soviet Union. What sort of choice was that? Which
language would you like your firing squad to speak? In
these circumstances, of course, a brilliant Cardinal might
not be any more useful. Being clever and far-sighted
wasn’t always of use. Does it help being the clever pig on
the way to the abattoir?”
• narrator: self-conscious metropolitan youth
” Going back to his origins didn’t seem to excite Ladányi
greatly, but as Gyuri surveyed the territory, where the shoe
was still seen as a daring new fashion idea, where only the
sound of crops growing disturbed the peace, he could
comprehend the lack of enthusiasm. There was nothing to
be said about the landscape apart from that it started where
the sky finished.”
He could see the title of his autobiography: Women I almost
slept with. […] ‘1950 was a good year, I almost slept with
four women: a heroic production increase, under strict
Marxist-Leninist principles, from 1949, when I almost slept
with two women.
• Gyuri found Gombás’s office to be vacated. He stared at
Gombás’s black telephone. The idea of picking up the
receiver and putting a call through to abroad, somewhere,
anywhere West, sneaked into his mind. He toyed with the
idea of just doing it, of placing a call, just to hear them say
‘Hello’ or ‘Good morning’, just to hear the sound of abroad,
the crackle of free air, the ineffable language of out.
• Progressive intellectuals from all over
Europe had sent telegrams of protest to
Hungarian Consuls. Gyuri had seen one
from the West Hull Branch of the
Friends of the Soviet Union in an
exhibition about Rákosi’s life. The
telegram had spoken of their ‘emphatic
disgust’ at Rákosi’s conviction. Gyuri
had reflected that he might well feel
more friendly towards the Soviet Union
if he lived in West Hull. [...] Odd that
the progressive intellectuals were so
silent about the abounding convictions
in Hungary now.
• If the Lieutenant-Colonel took this seriously, if he believed
what he was saying, Gyuri pondered, it was sad. If he
didn’t believe the nonsense he was spouting, like a parrot
or a khaki gramophone player, that was sad too. Which
was sadder?
cf. Orwell’s laringal speech or human gramophone
• Strange that I had to wait twenty-two years to see someone
saying what they thought in public; there was something
almost improper about it.
• That was one of the worst things: the boredom.
Dictatorship of the proletariat, apart from the abrasive and
brutal nature of its despotism, was terribly dull. It wasn’t
the sort of tyranny you’d want to invite to a party. […] Not
only do I get a dictatorship, fumed Gyuri, but I get a tatty
dictatorship, a third rate, a boring dictatorship.
• a comic book (cf. Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four in
Anthony Burgess’s opinion)
"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were
striking thirteen"
fireworks of humour and comedy, achingly funny
‘seriocomic’ (Rushdie): humour to introduce tragedy:
Gyuri leaving AVO
(also: dictatorship involved in his love-life)
”Looking back, Gyuri could see that they were out,
because of a faraway row of guard-towers behind them. He
was out. Suddenly, unexpectedly, he started to cry.”
tragedy: short, factual description (cf. Jadwiga’s death)
Other works
• puns, linguistic brilliance, grotesque details
• Plots are not obviously there
• focus on something memorable from Western culture:
History, freedom and basketball;
philosophy, France and food/drinks; (The Thought Gang)
art, originality and categories; (The Collector Collector)
faith, religion, false preachers, real help (Good to be God).
These novels seem to suggest that whatever exists should
be recorded and catalogued while they are still there – as if
we sensing the imminent danger that all Western culture is
about to disappear.