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September 05, 2006

GYORGY FALUDY DIES

Faludy_gyorgyGyorgy Faludy, a poet and leading figure of the Hungarian anti-Nazi and anti-Communist resistance movements, has died at the age of 95.

Mr. Faludy won international fame with his interpretation of Francois Villon ballads in the 1930’s and his autobiographical novel “My Happy Days in Hell” in the 1960’s, which related his escape from fascist Hungary and his return, and imprisonment, in a country under Communist rule.

MOTEV called and insisted we note his passing, the first time she has exercised any sort of parental editorial prerogative around here, although we assured her we were already on it.  She shared this memory with us:

MOTEV:  He was an icon for us, for our generation. Somebody that everybody looked up to. We all loved the Villon interpretations that the Times talks about, although we knew they were really Villon a la Faludy. The recital he gave after he was released from prison was like a political demonstration, it was packed, standing room only. We could have all been arrested. He was admired, adored, idolized. All of my friends can quote something of his. I would like your generation to know the name.

Posted at 12:30 AM in Obit |

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TEV DEFINED


  • The Elegant Variation is "Fowler’s (1926, 1965) term for the inept writer’s overstrained efforts at freshness or vividness of expression. Prose guilty of elegant variation calls attention to itself and doesn’t permit its ideas to seem naturally clear. It typically seeks fancy new words for familiar things, and it scrambles for synonyms in order to avoid at all costs repeating a word, even though repetition might be the natural, normal thing to do: The audience had a certain bovine placidity, instead of The audience was as placid as cows. Elegant variation is often the rock, and a stereotype, a cliché, or a tired metaphor the hard place between which inexperienced or foolish writers come to grief. The familiar middle ground in treating these homely topics is almost always the safest. In untrained or unrestrained hands, a thesaurus can be dangerous."

SECOND LOOK

  • The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald

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    Penelope Fitzgerald's second novel is the tale of Florence Green, a widow who seeks, in the late 1950s, to bring a bookstore to an isolated British town, encountering all manner of obstacles, including incompetent builders, vindictive gentry, small minded bankers, an irritable poltergeist, but, above all, a town that might not, in fact, want a bookshop. Fitzgerald's prose is spare but evocative – there's no wasted effort and her work reminds one of Hemingway's dictum that every word should fight for its right to be on the page. Florence is an engaging creation, stubbornly committed to her plan even as uncertainty regarding the wisdom of the enterprise gnaws at her. But The Bookshop concerns itself, finally, with the astonishing vindictiveness of which provincials are capable, and, as so much English fiction must, it grapples with the inevitabilities of class. It's a dense marvel at 123 pages, a book you won't want to – or be able to – rush through.
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    Tim Krabbé's superb 1978 memoir-cum-novel is the single best book we've read about cycling, a book that will come closer to bringing you inside a grueling road race than anything else out there. A kilometer-by-kilometer look at just what is required to endure some of the most grueling terrain in the world, Krabbé explains the tactics, the choices and – above all – the grinding, endless, excruciating pain that every cyclist faces and makes it heart-pounding rather than expository or tedious. No writer has better captured both the agony and the determination to ride through the agony. He's an elegant stylist (ably served by Sam Garrett's fine translation) and The Rider manages to be that rarest hybrid – an authentic, accurate book about cycling that's a pleasure to read. "Non-racers," he writes. "The emptiness of those lives shocks me."

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