A fine addition to an international fiction collection.” — Booklist
“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
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.
A fine addition to an international fiction collection.
A fine addition to an international fiction collection.
A great deal feels lost in translation in acclaimed Hungarian author Esterházy's collection of vignettes about the soccer-obsessed mother of an Esterházy-like author. From the very first sentence (it's footnoted) through meta-asides along the lines of “My mother spoke French like my father did in my novels (if he happened to be speaking French)” and a chapter near the end consisting of enigmatic epigrams spoken to or by the author (“You are emotionally unpretentious. [You, dear, are emotionally unpretentious.] Who, me? [Me?]”), the cloying self-references drain what little dramatic tension the largely momentum-free narrative builds. The anecdotes, monologues, and memories that constitute the work progress in apparently random order, although most have to do with the mother, who interprets the world through soccer. The footnotes about soccer and Hungarian history are refreshingly concise, and some early passages contain interesting details about life in Communist Hungary. Once in a while, Esterházy's style and subject matter spark a stray profundity, but this rambling, pretentious book will leave readers wondering what the point is. (Mar.)
Esterházy is an uncommon writer. In Helping Verbs of the Heart, which should be considered a companion to Not Art because it also deals with the death of the narrator's mother, he liberally uses other writers' work to express the narrator's feelings about his mother's death and has the deceased mother narrate the second half of the novel. Not Art concerns a son's relationship with his mother, a relationship oddly built around a mutual love of soccer. The characters include members of the Mighty Magyars, arguably the greatest national team in soccer history. The novel possesses many of the attributes readers come to expect from Esterházy's fiction: it is self-referential and filled with interesting and humorous digressions and makes known the presence of the author, busy creating the work of fiction. VERDICT By his own admission, Esterházy might have a limited audience; elements that make his fiction challenging and rewarding for some readers will confound others. Too appreciate Not Art fully, the reader will need a knowledge of Hungarian history and familiarity with the author's earlier work.—K.H. Cumiskey, Duke Univ. Libs., Durham, NC
Esteemed Hungarian writer Esterhazy (Celestial Harmonies, 2004, etc.) blurs the lines between autobiography and fiction in this novel about a mother, perhaps his own, whose life centers around soccer. There isn't exactly a plot. The middle-aged narrator, who lives in suburban Budapest, reminisces and ruminates about his childhood and adult life with the help of literary allusions and wordplay. Sentences run on for pages while he layers impressions on top of memories, metaphors onto philosophic concepts, characters' viewpoints within other characters' dialogue. While trying to navigate the flood of language, American readers will find themselves grabbing at the incongruous but useful footnotes, which offer some minimal help in sorting out the onrush of names and ideas. The narrator's 90ish mother, in failing health but still a pistol, talks incessantly about soccer (sometimes translated as football). Readers will learn more than they ever wanted to know about Hungarian players and team politics, as well as more significant issues of national politics and culture. When the narrator was growing up under communist rule, his father was brutalized as a scion of the famous Esterhazy family. His mother used her passion for soccer as a survival mechanism for herself and the family. She worked in a factory that also employed members of the national team. A beautiful woman with spirit, she manipulated her ability to make friends with the players to advance her career. But the soccer team was always watched by an informer, a party member who may or may not have seduced the narrator as a child. The novel emulates Lampedusa's The Leopard (referred to repeatedly and admiringly) in its aristocraticnostalgia and choice of an aging protagonist at the cusp of national change, but Esterhazy is far more ambiguous and convoluted in his approach to history. Murky, self-conscious meta-fiction, full of intellectual name-dropping.
