[biography] - [quotes] - [publications]
"The thing can be further complicated if we start
off with the word 'self-censored'. We get the message, we cross it out,
but since we are not rascals, we indicate the fact, we put in 'self-censored';
they give it to us, we feel intimidated, we acquiesce, so we cross 'self-censored'
out and put it back: self-censored. As you can see, the text is hardly
changed (long live close attention to detail), while the poor domestic
pen-pusher feels less than triumphant. And so does the reader. And if
you don't know why, think of the fact that what has been said above
might have also been influenced by what has been said above..."
(from A Little Hungarian Pornography, translated by Judith Sollosy)
"'I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that I have only one piece of bad news. And the bad news is that you, Comrade, are about to die.'" (From: A Little Hungarian Pornography, translated by Judith Sollosy)
"There's this woman. She hates me. Shadow. She calls
me Shadow. For instance: so you're here again, Shadow? she'll ask, hanging
about? At other times: it's stuffed cabbage for lunch, Shadow, you mind?
Or playfully I'm casting my Shadow before me, by which she means me,
it's a reference to me, and it's supposed to mean that I'm asking for
big trouble. However, this playful abandon does not necessarily mean
she's in high spirits, though when she is in high spirits, she sometimes
hoots merrily: Shadow world! which, like it or not, is yet another reference
to yours truly. On the other hand, when her spirits are low, when her
older sister calls from Lubeck, for instance, or when she takes it into
her head she's gained too much weight, though I swear to high heaven
that I could just die for every ounce of her living flesh, she'll declare
that I am the tree that keeps her from seeing the forest."
(From: She Loves Me, translated by Judith Sollosy)
"Esterhazy's prose is jumpy, allusive, and slangy. ...there is
vividness, an electric crackle. The sentences are active and concrete.
Physical details leap from the murk of emotional ambivalence."
(John Updike, The New Yorker)
[biography] - [quotes] - [publications]
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