PÉTER LENGYEL
[biography] - [quotes] - [publications]

 

he public should not remember authors' names. They should remember the title of their books. (Péter Lengyel)

1939 born in Budapest
1960-62 script editor of the Madách Theater in Budapest
1962 finishes his studies of Spanish and Italian philology at the L. Eötvös University, Budapest
1963-64 Hungarian language reader at Havana University
from 1964 editor of various literary journals
from 1975 leader of creative-writing workshops at the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest

Novelist, short story writer, essayist and translator. He translates from English, Spanish and Italian, such authors as Hemingway, Salinger, Chandler, Juan Goytisolo, Moravia and Pirandello. Though not an outright experimentalist, he engaged in such subliterary genres as the detective novel and science-fiction, only to elevate them with the power of his style.

"We have plentiful printed material - but I can accept only a few as real books... The writers of these became, unavoidably, my masters and examples to follow. Such is Ernest Hemingway, Jerome David Salinger and Géza Ottlik. I would try to define what I mean by 'real books' as follows: one afternoon someone is told that he will remain unemployed for many years to come, because the job is reserved for three-eared applicants. On the same day, his love deserts him, and his best friend trades him for a promotion. When he arrives home, he mechanically takes down one of his favorite books, begins to read it, and after half an hour he is in a much better mood. Not because the book made him to forget the world he must live in - because it made him remember it. Of course I would like to write such a book. Sometimes I say to myself: the thing is not impossible. Such books do exist, after all." (Péter Lengyel)

 

 

[biography] - [quotes] - [publications]

 

 

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