mókus pokus

Moving House

2011-03-05T11:38:00.003+01:00

My new blog, which focuses on editing, writing, and publishing (particularly ebooks) is up and running at Wordpill/Blog. This message will self-destruct in 60 seconds. 59, 58...

NOVEL IDEA

2011-02-10T14:43:00.004+01:00

Well, I don't have to tell you that this blog is moribund. The squirrel has given up the ghost. I'm allowing it to do so for a few reasons. First, I have been writing content for a new blog that focuses solely on writing, editing, and publishing. Once the design is settled, I will get the address out there. Second, I have been working to get a backlog of old writing published for Kindle and other hand-held reading devices. The first book is my detestable first novel LUMPEN: A Novel of Prague. It was a bitch to write, and it will be a bitch to read. If you are brave enough, give it a try. I think after me and one very underwhelmed literary agent (who compared the novel to Janet Jackson's Superbowl nipple exposure) nobody has actually read the thing. The brief description is as follows:

A strange, loving but ruthless prostitute, a shadow that stalks its owner, and a new-age skinhead: Welcome to the dark world of John Shirting, a recent arrival in the city of Prague, back in the early 1990s.

Not long ago, Shirting held down a beloved job at Capone-cino’s, a coffee chain and global business powerhouse. When he is deemed ‘too passionate’ about his job, he is let go. Shirting makes it his mission to return to the Capone-cino’s fold by single-handedly breaking into a new market, and making the city of Prague safe for free-market capitalism. Unfortunately, his college nemesis, Theodore Mizen, a certified socialist, has also moved to Prague, and is determined to reverse the Velvet Revolution, one folk song at a time.

It is not long before Shirting’s grasp on his mission and, indeed, his sanity, come undone, leaving him at the mercy of half-bit mafioso, and his own shadow self.

A combination of Monster Magazine and Lord of the Barnyard, with a jigger of Confederacy of Dunces, Lumpen is a dark farce about globalism, expatriates, and coffee.

Have a look here for the Amazon product page: Lumpen: A Novel of Prague

Hello I Must be Going: Ten People in Hungary and the Likely-hood They Will Greet You

2010-09-25T11:00:00.007+02:00

Ranked From Most to Least Likely to Acknowledge You

1) People in an elevator: In Hungary, very busy, business-minded people take the time to greet you in the elevator, whether you are a colleague or not. It can be confusing, especially as Hungarians say ‘hello’ when leaving.

2) People in the gym locker room: Again, it can be a bit jarring to be pantlessly greeted by a passing stranger. I think they do it for that reason.

3) Bartenders: As with the rest of the civilized world, Budapest has its share of bartenders who take pride in their work, and want you to feel welcome. Usually, though not always, these are the not bartenders who are forced to give their tips up to the management. If you go to a bar long enough, they will even greet you by name, though you will have to wait much longer, sometimes years, to get a buy-back.

4) Homeless: and sometimes they don’t even want money, though usually, they do.

5) Store cashiers: it’s about a 50/50 chance you will get a craggly dragon-lady whose hemorrhoid cream is not up to the task. The good news is that the other 50 percent actually don’t seem to mind that you are giving money to the business that keeps them in a job.

6) Bus drivers: I was brought up to thank a bus driver and say good-bye. I still do, if I exit at the front. Bus drivers are genuinely surprised when you say good-bye to them, and occasionally even wish you a good day.

7) The random Hungarian you met at a party: Ignoring acquaintances is blood sport in Budapest. There are people whom I have met multiple times, had hours of conversation with, who will look deliberately straight through me on the street. It baffles me every time. I have no idea why people behave this way; if you do, please let me know.

8) The random expat you met at a party: The longer they have been living in Budapest, the less likely they are to greet you, having from being iced-out time and time again themselves. Expats in Budapest are a particularly susceptible group and have assimilated the worst habits of their host country; indeed, sometimes they perfect them (sloth, pessimism, cynicism, cronyism).

10) Your neighbor: If this list teaches us one thing, it is that the closer you get to home, the less likely you are going to get on a cozy first name basis with those who cross your path. Older neighbors can be trained to greet you by shamelessly blurting out a ‘Jó napot’ in their faces, but after a while, you begin to see their point: that it is easier to silently pass them by, not acknowledging, unacknowledged.

BKV: the Triumph and the Tragedy

2010-07-16T17:05:00.009+02:00

In Paris, fare-hoping has become a popular pastime, as well as a form of civil disobedience; so much so that there is actually a group that – for a small monthly fee – will insure you against the monetary penalty of getting caught. Leave it to the French, who treat sticking it to the man like a national sport (and doing it with such élan!). There is no doubt that such a scheme would fail in Budapest, where – like in my home country – somebody would certainly shout “socialist!”. Being caught red-handed, without a ticket, can be a disconcerting experience. Despite directives against such behavior, the controllers can be a grabby, peevish bunch indeed.

Like many Budapesters I know, I pay most of the time, but bliccel (fare-hop) when economics deem it necessary. I don’t do this with zero pangs of conscious, but the pangs are small and easily chased away: more like pings. From a passenger’s point of view, it makes sense. Three hundred and twenty forints for a few stops up the Grand Boulevard (as the BKV’s site call it) makes common taxi banditry look chivalrous.

But what about the oft-investigated, fund-hemorrhaging public transport company BKV? It turns out, they also have high expectations of their passengers. Which brings me to the real point of this meandering post: the BKV web site. It’s fabulous, for no other reason than they have constructed a little testament of denial, certainly created by people who never ride public transportation. In this case, context is everything. I ask you to pause for a moment, and go to the BKV English language main page. Have a listen to the sound bytes: if you live here, you know these as the jingle the tram makes before the doors close. It is actually kind of a sweet little tune as public transport signals go (is that a harpsichord?). But in real life, having sweated a bumpy ride, the tune sounds nothing but mocking. Real life on the BKV rarely lives up to the site. For instance, in the Terms and Conditions page, it states that it is forbidden “to behave in a way which is scandalous, antisocial or breaches law.” This is clearly a case of double-speak, as one can only benefit from being as anti-social as possible on public transport. Perhaps the porn crew that appropriated the back of an in-service tram for a shoot had researched the BKV and considered what they were doing quite social.

Asking their passengers to refrain from being anti-social and scandalous is optimistic, but further down the accepted-behavior list reveals the authors of the BKV constitution to be delusional. One is forbidden to “travel in filthy clothes or in a drunken state.” Instead of checking tickets, I would dearly love to see controllers sniffing underarms, socks. As for traveling in a drunken state: anyone who has taken it knows that the night bus is not much more than a poor man’s booze cruise.

But the BKV reserves its best for handicapped passengers. It is not enough to arrive at a metro station in a wheel chair to use the lifts: you have to pass both “theoretical and practical exams” to prove your disability. A more motivated writer would uncover just what the ‘theoretical’ aspects of paralysis one must master before being allowed to use Budapest’s public transportation, but – in terms of the practical portion – I am guessing that this is an exam that you pass by failing. You do, however, have the bonus of being allowed to humiliate yourself at either the Mexikói station, or the more luxurious venue of the Széchenyi baths, where the practical exams are administered.

Not long ago, according to pestiside, BKV ran a survey, attempting to analyze exactly why locals fair-hop. The answer seems obvious to me: with their thuggish controllers and silly by-laws, they have created an ‘us against them’ mentality. Instead of just punching your ticket at the metro, you punch, and then submit it for inspection. There is a whiff of subjugation in this act, and from that springs the urge to resist, to bliccel. And anytime there is a dynamic where an individual stands against some monolithic entity – public transport companies included – I have to side with the outlaw. Ride in good heath, fare-hoppers, no matter what your motives, or how antisocial and smelly you may be.

Interview: Katherine Shonk

2010-06-12T11:22:00.008+02:00

Every now and again, an expat makes something of their experiences abroad and publishes a book. In Katherine Shonk’s case, the collection of short stories The Red Passport stemmed from a post-collegiate patch living in Russia in the ‘90s. It has been a long time since she moved back to the US, but the book remains a closely observed, insightful testament to that unique period in history. Though I have yet to successfully negotiate a Shonk story for Pilvax, I was able to catch up with her over email, regarding her recently published novel Happy Now?.

Word Pill: How much did getting an MFA help you in your writing?

KS: My MFA (technically, it was an MA, from the University of Texas at Austin) was most valuable in terms of giving me a solid two years to focus primarily on my writing. I went at a good time, right after I got back from a year in Moscow and had lots of experiences to digest. I had some excellent, dedicated teachers and was with a great group of fellow students, but having the time to write was more important than anything else, and not having much of a social life helped too. For many years before my MA, I had studied fiction writing intensively in classes led by a great teacher in the Chicago area, Fred Shafer. That background has informed my writing practice—specifically, the importance of revision—more than anything else.

Word Pill: When living in Moscow, did you feel that residing outside the USA alienated you as a writer?

KS: I wouldn’t say that I had much of a self-identity, let alone a real identity, as a writer when I was living in Moscow. I was still learning to write stories, and in fact, I hardly did any writing while I was in Moscow. The awkwardness and lack of confidence I felt simply living day to day in Moscow probably translated into an overall lack of confidence in myself as a writer, which may have been why I didn’t write while there. I also felt as if I needed to get some distance on the place before I could absorb the experience of living there and write about it. Actually, it wasn’t until I returned home that I felt alienated from U.S. culture, which motivated me to start writing about Russia, a place that I suddenly missed very much.

Word Pill: Can you tell us a little about the experience of having your novel edited, once it was accepted by your publisher?

KS: I’m lucky to have a wonderfully sharp editor, Gena Hamshaw at Farrar, Straus & Giroux, who felt passionately about my book. The editing process began with Gena writing me a long letter that suggested four fairly significant changes (as well as a list of smaller ones) to the book. Initially, I resisted each of Gena’s major suggestions, but the more I thought about them, the more I realized they were all spot-on. Most notably, she thought that I should have my main character, Claire, read her husband’s suicide note near the middle of the book rather than at the end, where I had originally placed it. Moving the note to the middle of the book ended up giving Claire more time to react to it and, I believe, deepens the mystery of her husband’s death.
After that first round of editing with Gena, we cleared up some loose ends, and then the book was copyedited and proofread a total of three or four times. It’s an exhaustive process that leaves you feeling pretty confident about not finding typos in the published version.

Word Pill: Are there aspects of autobiography in your novel Happy Now?

KS: I adapted a lot of incidents from my own life to Claire’s, such as dealing with a cat who eats a poisonous flower, driving on Lake Shore Drive in a blizzard, and Internet dating in my mid-thirties. Writing the novel was a little like building a nest, with some of the twigs taken from my own life and others imagined. Some of Claire’s personal struggles mirror my own, though I imagined her more traumatic experiences, such as her parents’ divorce and, obviously, the loss of her husband.

Word Pill: Any advice for beginning writers?

KS: Read a lot. Cultivate the practice of revision, and learn to enjoy it: Don’t be satisfied with your first draft or even your tenth. Find a community of writers who you trust to give honest, thoughtful feedback. Grow a thick skin, because you’ll probably deal with a lot of rejection. Find a day job that gives you time to write. Teaching isn’t always the best job for a writer because it can be so time consuming and exhausting, especially for introverts. Editing has worked much better for me.

Word Pill is an editing service for writers of both fiction and non-fiction.

Adventures in Editing: Omara

2010-05-08T13:30:00.007+02:00

In the third issue of Pilvax, I had a chance to work with one of Hungary’s most esteemed Gypsy painters, Mara Olah—known more commonly as Omara. Originally, Omara was supposed to supply the occasional line drawings that we use to break up the text of the stories and poetry. Due to a printer’s error, two of her drawings came out faded and blotchy. Because we deal with such a limited print run, I was able to convince Omara to hand-draw the original illustrations directly into the magazine, making a unique work of art out of each copy. So, on a summer day, with two plastic Spar bags filled with magazines, Pilvax co-founder Aaron and I set out for Omara’s small country house, a few hours outside of Budapest.

With no street name or address, the house would have been difficult to find but for the fact that she was well known around the village. Omara greeted us by the gate of a trailer-sized abode, a woman approaching old-age, with a few missing teeth, trailed by a flurry of black hair. She led us into the house, warning us to avoid the well-sized pit in the front room. Before we had time to get comfortable, Omara insisted that she needed a shower. That was fine with us, though it turned out that Omara’s shower was a cold-water pump in the open air, out back. Aaron and I waited, avoiding looking out the window. Omara returned, wearing a towel, hair loose, looking refreshed if not a bit wild. Now it is your turn, she insisted. Our turn? For what? For a shower. Not for the last time, I would pretend not to understand Hungarian.

Still in her towel, Omara gave us a tour of the small house that she was building herself, by hand. The pit in the center of the floor? That would be the swimming pool. With almost anybody else, you would think they were joking. But one thing was clear to us early on: if Omara wanted to dig herself a swimming pool that took up half a room in a two-room house, that is what she was going to do.

Before we discussed work, Omara proudly showed us her press clippings: pictures of her with visiting foreign dignitaries, Hungarian celebrities and politicians, an article in Népszabadság, that emphasized her great love of taxicabs (Omara only traveled in taxis, not by train, never by bus). Then she told us it was time to go to work: but not at home. Only in a restaurant. Not to worry, she had already called a taxi.

Before arriving the inn, Omara had the cab stop at a green-grocer’s to pick up a watermelon. She loved watermelon, and chose the largest one. Now, you would think that an old gypsy woman walking into a restaurant with her own watermelon in tow would be an unwelcome surprise to most Hungarian waiters. But, no, the unflappable country waiters dutifully brought out plates and sliced up Omara’s melon for her, free of charge. Being one Hungary’s most illustrious painters has its benefits.

So, with colored pencils, we began to illustrate our 200 Pilvax’s, each of us contributing to the final result. Not much conversation transpired during the work; Aaron and I sipped beer, Omara slurped watermelon.

In her dealings with the waiters, and with us, one thing became clear: Omara was very conscious of the fact that she was Roma—playing it up for her audience, and using it to excuse herself from the mundane constraints of decorum. It seemed to be as much a tool as a part of her identity. Or, perhaps it wasn’t her ethnicity, which somebody like me – white, foreign – is so prepared, even eager, to experience. Mabye Omara was just an authentic artist, living by inner, constantly changing dictates.

Either way, there was obviously a lot more to Omara than a cartoonish, eccentric Gypsy woman. Early on in our visit, Omara had given me a painting. It was a deep-blue portrait of a beach-side house, dedicated to her daughter. The child-like subjects appear to inhabit a ghost world, indistinct and elegiac. Like her illustrations, it is a bit disturbing, and full of sorrow. It hangs on my wall, but it is not pleasurable to look at. But still, like any good painting, it seems to convey some truth or feeling that cannot be articulated with words.

The illustration job took longer than we had anticipated, and after the sun had fallen Omara announced she was too tired to continue. We had only made it through half the magazines, but editorial concerns had been set aside early on. It was obvious that we were indebted to the sloppy printing job—I think Aaron and I both fell a little in love with Omara that day.

Aaron and I took a room in the inn, and somehow Omara would make her way home. She had already refused money (though it was clear she didn’t have any of her own) and we were miles from her house.

Omara, how will you get back? I asked.

However God wills it, she said, gazing up at the sky. Then, after a deep breath, looking sage and oddly alluring, she intoned: call me a cab.

—Matt Ellis is a founder of Pilvax Magazine and edits for Word Pill fiction and non-fiction editing service.

The Love of the Last Tycoon: in Praise of Craft

2010-04-03T18:56:00.005+02:00

There is not much reason to read, much less publish, a writer's half-finished novel. Unless that writer is F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose final effort, The Last Tycoon (re-titled The Love of the Last Tycoon) was left uncompleted at his sudden death at age 44. Still, why read a book that you know will stop mid-way through; why get attached to characters that will vanish, or involve yourself with an incomplete, therefore unsatisfying narrative, no matter how masterful the writing? It turns out that there are plenty of reasons to read The Last Tycoon, especially if you are a writer. Fitzgerald also left behind copious notes and outlines for the novel, which the publishers elected to include to bulk up the volume. What the addendum unintentionally provide, more than narrative closure, is insight into the process of the man who, with The Great Gatsby, wrote the template for the Great American Novel.

If you have ever witnessed a question-and-answer session with a famous author, inevitably, the question will come up as to how they write. More often than not, the asker means 'How should I write?' Should I make notes? How much revision should I expect of myself? Should I outline a novel or just go along and see where the characters take me? Fitzgerald's notes reveal how he managed all those questions. Scrawled above the very first chapter of The Last Tycoon Fitzgerald wrote, "Rewrite from mood. Has become stilted from rewriting. Don't look [at previous draft]. Rewrite from mood." This reveals an astounding amount of self-criticism and a discipline that few writers are capable of. If you read the first chapter, there is some beautiful, incisive writing there. That Fitzgerald was prepared to rewrite the entire section on a notion as vague as 'mood' shows just how committed he was to craft and faith in his own judgment, even in his last alcohol-sodden years. You also see how fastidious he was in his planning. In a two-page graph, he outlines the course of his characters and events in five acts, breaking each portion down by how many words he wanted to use in each act. He planned on about 60,000 words for The Last Tycoon, and died having written that much, though the story was only half-way completed. This evinces that he planned extensive rewrites and cuts to the published material. In essence, you are reading a draft of a great novel that was never written.

Also interesting, Fitzgerald includes his vision of what we now call 'character arch' (really, more of a film term) for his primary characters, moving them from selfishness to altruism, snobbism to humility via the trials they endure. This is textbook story structure, which, as a script writer, Fitzgerald was no stranger to. It shows that Fitzgerald, while writing naturally and organically, also did so within conventions of traditional story-telling, and was conscious of doing so. Ultimately, it is heartening to see the sheer amount of work he was putting into his creation – a writer who could have rested on his laurels or just lived off the fat of Hollywood. Instead, he was true to his craft. The last words he wrote – in all caps – are invaluable to any fiction writer: ACTION IS CHARACTER. In this sense, at least in Fitzgerald's case, life follows fiction.

-Matt Ellis is a free-lance editor for Word Pill, a service for writers of fiction and non-fiction.

You Couldn't Make This Up If You Tried!

2009-12-29T13:30:00.004+01:00

Thanks to Sarah 'Colbert' Gancher for turning me on to the kitchiest of retro-Hungarian videos. Be sure you stick around for the chicken boiling. Ladies and gentleman: Z' Zi Labor.

Guest Spot: Lenore Weiss

2009-12-22T15:44:00.008+01:00

Every now and again we get some submissions that won't fit into the coming issue of Pilvax, but are too good not to pass along. Such was the case with the poetry of Lenore Weiss, daughter of Hungarian emigrants to America. Enjoy these two poems that are part of a cycle about Lenore's mother, and drop her a line if you like them.

Coffee with Mom

"Those busy arms of yours are cool now
like this river with its broad silence
winding soft and slow."

--Attila József, Sleep Quietly Now

The removal of a kidney
brought you downtown,
yours didn't come out, but Daddy's did, buying him
coffee with a cheese danish
from across the street, whatever it took
to make a red light turn green again.

He had five more years left on the books,
marked by a daily dose of dipping his hands
in the waters of acetone to terminal cancer.
Better than staying in Hungary
during the War and becoming a ghost
on a railroad train. Choose your poison.
You left early, survivors

stuffing everything
inside a back pocket,
desperadoes
who taught me
to ride standing up
without losing my balance.
And so here I am.

You want to know if I've
been taking good care of myself.
Yes, I say. I have.
Afterward, we talk about the children,
there are no grand kids yet,
catching up on how the world's been doing
playing Disney on high-def sets,

wars, the presidency, and all the rest,
and how everything
is getting smaller
and costing more money. Money.
How it runs out like time,
the bottom of your change jar
with two pennies.

The Cymbalon and the Oud

A cymbalon and an oud
Growing out from the grass
Where a headstone beckons
For me to come closer.

It's my mother,
Powdering herself with
Silent Night
Under her arms, between her breasts.
She's busy and doesn't notice
When I sit down,
Measures a tablespoon of baby oil
Into her palm and smears her face,
Turns into a finger painting
With her nose on a plate.

She always had a sense of humor but now
Has become someone I don't recognize.
Disappears into her boudoir
Leaving only a smell
And a trace of powder.

Gone for all those times
I needed to know what to do.
The hammer of the cymbalon
And the cry of the oud
Is all she'll say.

Lenore Weiss is a poet, writer, and editor of Hungarian heritage who now lives in Oakland, California. Both of her parents came to the United States and settled in New York City where she was raised with her two sisters. Her father was a medal-winning soccer player and gymnast. Her mother had a uniquely strange sense of humor and knew how to bake cakes filled with delicious lekvár. She died more than 40 years ago. Lenore wishes she could sit down and have coffee with her Mom today with a slice of her cake. Lenore's email is: lenoreweiss@sbcglobal.net. She also serves as the fiction editor of the November 3rd Club.

Lenore Weiss
http://techtabletalk.posterous.com/

Five Great Hungarian Products

2009-12-19T22:34:00.007+01:00

5. Tokaj Aszú: Perhaps the wine of kings is virtually unknown in America because we have no tradition of royalty, or due to the fact that dessert wines don't figure into many menus. Or perhaps it is the price that is prohibitive, a modest 3 puttonyos bottle could set you back close to a hundred dollars at a wine shop. But in Hungary, Tokaj Aszú – made from grapes that have attained a 'noble rot ' on the vine – is available relatively inexpensively by the bottle – or by the glass at any of any upscale bar.

4. Tisza Trainers: Retro-hip has never been cooler in Budapest, especially to a generation that is discovering kitsch and didn't have to endure the repression of the Soviet-imposed socialist regime. This re-fangled brand of shoe updates the omnipresent state-owned Tisza trainer, to fantastic results. It is only a matter of time before Japanese shoe fetishists catch on.

3. Tomatoes: Try this: cut out the stem at the top of a summertime tomato, put it to your lips and suck. What you get is a burst of pure tomato flavor that might as well be another fruit from the pale, grainy supermarket-bought American variety. True, tomatoes are not originally Hungarian – not by a long shot – and they don't use them in cooking as much as they do in the Balkans, but a Hungarian tomato is one of our true simple seasonal pleasures.

2. Mangalica pork: believe the hype. The rescue of this species of wooly pig from near extinction and its ascension as a sought-after gourmet foodstuff is already well documented, so much so that it has become popular to bash the trendy pig. But there is a good reason mangalica it has found its way onto the menus of America’s most esteemed restaurants: the meat is beautifully marbled and fantastically rich. That'll do, pig.

1. Le Parfum perfumes: Using scents of derived from such whimsical sources as absinthe and smoky lapsang souchong tea, Zsolt Zólyomi’s perfumes, which he creates for his own line as well as already existing brands, are inventive and exclusive. But expect no Eastern European budget shopping here: prices of his artisan perfumes run close to $ 150 for a 100-ml size bottle. For a longer treatment of Le Parfum, and an interview with Zolt, stay tuned.

Judging a Cover by its Book: The United States of Arugula and The Omnivore's Dilemma

2009-11-18T16:21:00.011+01:00

Book covers never get their fair due in the review pages. I don’t know why only the guts of the book (in the publishing industry, referred to as ‘foul matter’) is worthy of note, when innovative designers like Chip Kidd have turned cover design into a form of public art – and one of the publisher’s most valuable marketing tools. A cover should be like a label on wine: eye-catching, emotionally evocative; though moreover it should communicate the feeling, if not content, of the book: a picture that is worth many thousand words. Consider the job: designing a book cover might be as difficult a task as creating an effective film preview, without showing any scenes from the movie.

If you were to judge a cover by the book: both these recent foodie offerings would come up lacking, though for different reasons. Concerning David Kamp’s The United States of Arugula, well, no book could be as bad as its tacky cover: the Statue of Liberty holding a bunch of metallic green arugula leaves; red, white, and blue bunting along the borders: it has to get the prize for worst-dressed book of the year. Combined with the clunky title, it is a packaging turkey. This is a shame, because Arugula gives a clear, cogent history of gourmet cooking and eating in America, beginning with the 1939 World’s Fair in New York when some of France’s top chefs alighted on American soil to showcase their county’s cuisine (and stayed), up until the celebrity apotheosis of TV chefs like Emeril Lagasse and Wolfgang Puck. Along the way Kamp charts sudden changes in our taste and desire for fine food: which, like the Calvin Klein brand, started as haute couture, and was eventually craved by the masses. The book is at its best when chronicling the unsung heroes of the food world (like food writer Michael Field, and Horatio Alger-like chef Pierre Franey). At its worst, it reads like an extended magazine profile (Kamp is a magazine writer for Vanity Fair). There is not much critical thought here, but how can you resist a book that narrates the heated and still-unsettled debate over the invention of pasta primavera?

In his chapter regarding the rise of organic, locally sourced cuisine in California, Kamp states, “The fresh food movement…may well have been the (sixties) couterculture’s greatest and most lasting triumph.” Though he doesn’t follow up on that tantalizing thought, Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma does, and then some. From its introduction, this book is filled with lazer-sharp insights into how we eat in America today, though, really, it is about how we farm today; which is why it is misleading and therefore an equally inadequate cover as The United States of Arugula. The sub-title – a Natural History of Four Meals – feels like a publisher’s afterthought to make the book a sexier package. The cover picture, which looks like the lunch of a raw-foodist French monk, has little to do with the material the book concerns itself: primarily corn and grass. You would think the industrial and organic agro-business of growing corn and grass would make for a fairly dry read, but in Pollan’s hands, it is a riveting, if not urgent, topic. After only a few pages of this book, you cannot help but realize that what you put on your plate is both a nutritional, ethical, and political act: and its ramifications go far beyond filling your belly. But, really, how do you make growing grass sexy to the upscale market of Pollan readers? I think Penguin has not given the reading public enough credit. This book asks to be bought by sophisticated foodies, when in fact it should be read by one and all, particularly those who believe their ‘cheap’ food does not come with unseen costs. I hope the paperback is at least marketed to the younger Fast Food Nation crowd, as The Omnivore’s Dilemma has more in common with Naomi Klien’s polemic – and extremely youth-popular – No Logo, than it does with a comfy Ruth Reichl memoir.

Luckily, both these books were lent to me by Budapest uber-foodie Carolyn Bánfalvi, so I didn’t have the chance to pass them over in the bookstore (especially in the case of Pollan, who seems to be popularizing, if not writing, the canon on ethical eating). With both titles, like corn manipulated to look like a bowling-pin shaped breakfast cereal, what you see is not necessarily what you get. Pollan knows this. Maybe some day his publisher will catch up.

-Matt Ellis is a free-lance editor for Word Pill, a service for writers of fiction and non-fiction.

Found in Translation: an Interview with Peter Strickland about his debut film Katalin Varga

2009-10-28T19:32:00.011+01:00

It is ironic that British expatriate Peter Strickland – writer and director of the lauded, soon-to-be released Katalin Varga, is getting a lot of attention abroad, from invitations to film festivals in Taipei and Mumbai, to the cover of Sight and Sound magazine suggesting he has made the best British film of the year. His first feature, seeded with his own money, has made barely a ripple in Hungary, his adoptive home. Indeed, the Budapest film community should have been the first to champion Katalin Varga (shot in Transylvania with a Hungarian-speaking cast) for no other reason that it is destine to reflect well on local film-making. Instead, a film that has already won a coveted Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, has thus far been ignored or subjected to hostile attacks regarding its politics. But I don’t want to dwell on the negative, because I have seen Katalin Varga on video and at a screening at Urania, and there is a much better story than the predictable local cynicism.

The film Katalin Varga is an enormous artistic achievement, and the making of it is a triumph of will and commitment to a dream. Though Strickland and his producers bill the film as a ‘revenge movie’ Katalin Varga really defies genre pigeon-holing. It is something a horror movie without a monster, or one of Grimm’s darker fairy-tales without supernatural intervention. It is an Eastern European gothic, which derives as much from Flannery O’Conner as Tarr Béla. The powerfully told story of a woman traveling across Transylvania to confront the man who raped her is told with minimal reliance on dialogue. Instead, the elegiac, forebodingly beautiful landscapes of Transylvania almost appear to narrate the story. Like baron, icy Nordic panorama in Lars Van Trier’s Breaking the Waves, the setting is a character in itself. But the most notable aspect, from this writer’s point of view, is that Katalin Varga is a work of outsider art which was written and filmed without compromise, and is succeeding in commercial release. Every aspiring filmmaker should take note and draw inspiration: despite the manifold obstacles and nay-sayers, it can be done.

Below find a brief interview with Peter Strickland about the making of Katalin Varga, and some of the reaction the film has received thus far.

Mókus: What has been the difference in the reaction from Hungarian film community and those at the international festivals?

Peter Strickland: Katalin Varga has yet to come out in Hungary, so I can’t gauge or compare the reaction. In general, the film has already fallen into some ridiculous and protracted arguments about its nationality or identity. It’s really tiresome and pointless, but one that always comes up. For me, film is mostly meta-national in that it's beyond nationality. With co-productions now, film-making is such a fluid process in terms of countries involved. If a story is specific to a country, locale or culture, then it can be national, but if we’re talking about a story non-specific to its environment, then that question about nationality really isn’t relevant. Some people say Katalin Varga is not British because it’s in Hungarian and Romanian, filmed in Romania with a Hungarian crew and post-produced in Hungary. Some people say the film is not Romanian because I’m not Romanian, the film is mostly in Hungarian with a Hungarian cast and crew and post-produced in Hungary. Some people say the film is not Hungarian because I’m not Hungarian and we filmed it in Romania. It’s quite surprising how rigid some people can be. Even national football teams are more flexible than this. For me, the film takes place in my world. I embraced some elements from the Szekély region – the rhythm, the Catholicism, the connection to the earth, but overall I would be an impostor to say I made a film about Transylvania. The characters you find in my film could be found anywhere. We portrayed the region as this hostile, forbidding world, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. I chose to make the film in Transylvania because it had that epic canvas, it had the ingredients needed for a ballad already embedded in its bloodstream and most of all, because of Hilda Peter and the actors in whom I trusted. Even if we had millions of pounds, I still would have chosen Transylvania. The question of authenticity will always come up when making a film and as an outsider, I had to think very carefully about how I portray an existing place even though the villages in the film are fictitious. Ultimately, audiences in Hungary and Romania will be the harshest critics simply because they know the region and culture. Film-makers have to accept that wherever they shoot. If someone from Hungary or Romania expects to see an authentic representation of Transylvania with this film, then the chances are that they'll be disappointed. Saying that, outsiders have an advantage as they can offer a slant on an existing landscape. One can't deny the formidable influence of foreign blood on British cinema starting with Emeric Pressburger.

Mókus: How would you respond to questions of misogyny in your film?

Peter Strickland: Almost every man in Katalin Varga is flawed with pride, aggression, chauvinism, and hypocrisy. Yet nobody has once accused me of hating men. True, the female characters in the film do suffer because of men, but if someone wants to equate that with misogyny, then there’s not much I can do to change that opinion. Contempt towards women is certainly present throughout Katalin Varga, but does that mean the film itself embodies misogyny?

Mókus: How much of the film (particularly in atmosphere, scene, and sound) did you discover on set once shooting began?

Peter Strickland: The film I wrote and the film that we made are two entirely separate things. The roads, houses, and terrain that drove the script never existed and it is very strange to force myself to think back to how the film looked in my head prior to shooting. Because I spent a lot of time preparing for the shoot, I knew what to expect in terms of the environment we were shooting in. So much of the time, we took advantage of the spaces we were shooting in and I chose them because they served the atmosphere of the film. We didn’t dress or design any sets. Everything is how you see it, apart from moving a few logs every now and then. The weather in the Carpathians is unpredictable. You can have four seasons in one scene. The film was difficult to grade in post-production because of the sun and the clouds being so volatile. If you look at the rushes of the lake scene, the light continuity is all over the place. This is probably one of the few films where thunder had to be taken out instead of put in. There was so much thunder during shooting, that it felt too Gothic to leave it all in. However, we were very lucky and at times the weather almost became a collaborator. When it rained during the lake scene, I almost shouted ‘Cut’ from the other boat, but since I noticed how Hilda was so lost in what she was doing, I just stayed out of it and that’s the best thing I didn’t do during the shoot. I thought it would look ridiculous with the rain, but what was on the screen was so serendipitous in terms of the ripples and the refraction of the light at just the right moment. It seemed as if Hilda and the weather had made some secret rehearsal together.

With the sound, most of the film was artificially constructed. We didn’t get so much good atmosphere during the shoot. The dialog recordings by Zoltán Karaszek were fine, but to get good atmosphere takes time and luck. We only had seventeen days of shooting. We put a few hours aside one night to record some frogs and general atmosphere, but the police stopped us and they took forever checking our ID cards, so I had to source recordings from elsewhere in post-production.

I went to Transylvania in 2004 with Clive Graham to start on insect and goat bell recordings. Clive recorded some good material and we combined that with a few of Zoltán’s pieces. The sound team during post-production also brought in their field recordings. György Kovács had some incredible recordings he made of wind, dogs and other things. Some elements that you would think were just there in the background during shooting took months to fit in. There is one scene with a scops owl hooting in the background. I spent months looking for the right sound, partly because I wanted to pay tribute to Luc Ferrari’s Presque Rien, which is one of my favorite records. I found the best scops owl recording through the National Sound Archive in London and the owl comes from Cserépfalu in Hungary recorded by the English ornithologist, Alan Burbidge. Quite a lot of birdsong comes from my record collection. The lake scene is 90 percent artificial when it comes to sound. Hilda overdubbed her lines a year later. The rain, the wind and the oars are all carefully positioned and layered on Pro Tools. I love that process of making a film and there is a high degree of sonic artifice to what we did. Transylvania does not sound so intense.

Mókus: Why did you elect to subtitle with Hungarian speakers rather than dub or use English-speaking actors?

Peter Strickland: There was no question about doing the film in any language other than those spoken by the actors. I remember speaking to an English film person about the project and as soon as I said the language would not be in English, he backed off and told me to forget about it. One executive in London refused to even look at a 3-minute clip of the film because it was in Hungarian and Romanian. I had the DVD on my person. I was in his office, which had a DVD player and he still said ‘no.’ One can’t deny that you lose a certain audience once you have subtitles in a film, but equally you lose another audience if you have non-English characters speaking to each other in English.

Films should be in the tongue of the characters’ nationalities. It’s not about authenticity or understanding, but it is about entering the mindset of a character through the tempo, the texture of language. Characters should be universal, but they can only be made so when they are true to their own voice and train of thought, and only then can we believe in them. Hilda and the actors brought something unique to Katalin Varga with their language. It would have been a very different film with a different rhythm alien to that region, had we made it in English.

Foreign literature has to be available in English because we only have text, but with film it’s different. The timbre of the voice when it is in its own linguistic environment conveys something far richer than when speaking in English if it is not the mother tongue. Spoken language corresponds with body language and everything is so intertwined when it's in the language it should be in. If we're having non-English actors speak in English because that's what their characters do, then that's fine.

Paradoxically, making a foreign character more accessible through English language only serves to distance the audience. So many historical films do this. It’s bullshit and I hate the way that they patronize an audience in this fashion. It’s a dictate purely fuelled by commercialism. How about we make a film about Winston Churchill talking to Franklin Roosevelt in German, but with the accent of an English person speaking German? It sounds ludicrous, but no more ludicrous than what we do with our representation of foreign characters. Saying that, I’m quite a fan of ‘Dad’s Army’. I’d forgive that show anything.

In terms of how challenging it was for me to direct a film in a language I didn't know well? It was fine for me, only because the cast and crew spoke such good English and they were incredibly astute in terms of understanding what was needed for the characters. The credit goes to them.

Mókus: How have you balanced day-to day needs of living and making money with the huge commitment of the film?

Peter Strickland: Throughout the ‘90s, I balanced day jobs with film and music activities. It was possible then because youth was on my side. When you’re in your twenties, you can go to an employment agency and pick up a basic job whenever you need to and with relative ease. When I moved back to Reading in 2007, at the age of 34, it wasn’t so easy to find a job either there or in London. The law states that you can’t be discriminated against because of age, but the reality is somewhat different. If you’re moving between jobs within your chosen profession or field, age can almost be to your advantage. However, if you have a complete career change or start looking for a job when you have huge holes in your CV, then age is definitely against you. After Katalin Varga failed in September 2007, I just tried to think about staying afloat financially and getting work in. I’d had enough of film and being treated like a prostitute by certain people in the industry. I tried to go for something similar, such as copy writing and built up a CV of fake paper adverts. The reaction in London was, ‘why hire someone inexperienced who is 34, when we can get someone fresh out of university?’

When applying for regular jobs, I learnt my lesson during the ‘90s, and that was to never put down more than a cursory interest in film on my CV. Once you claim any aspiration towards film-making on your CV, at best you are regarded as a dreamer. Even if they like you, from their point of view, they will see that your heart is not in the job and you’ll jump ship when something better comes along. So for me, after having spent years away making Katalin Varga, constructing a CV was a real challenge. My CV basically consisted of elaborate lies and fake firms with friends disguised as employment contacts. I couldn't say I had made a film. It was a crushing time for me to go back and plead for the most basic data entry jobs and be treated like a drifting loser by people ten years younger than me. Some people were very supportive, but the usual reaction was to regard a thirty-something, bald, unemployed man living with his mother as something that blew in with the trash. Who gives a hoot whether you put all that effort into a film? People only pay attention once you have some kind of ‘branding’ – be it an award or distribution company behind you. Everyone loves to champion an underdog, but it’s a lie, as one has to already be a successful underdog in order to be championed. A huge difference. ‘Katalin Varga’ is now a comparatively successful underdog story, but what about all the other people struggling to make films? I don’t think my story and situation is so unique, and that’s why I talk about it at length. It is relevant to other film-makers. We delude ourselves that we break into the industry because of our talent, but it’s more because of luck than talent.

The conventional route during the ‘90s was to do work experience if you could afford to do it. I saved up enough money to work for a pop video production company for free for one month and it was thoroughly wretched. You think that you’ll gain some kind of useful computer skill or on-set experience, but you’re just told to copy from one Beta tape to another and go to the post office. If you complain, you’re very aware that there is a whole queue of people desperate to take your place. You're at the butt-end of the industry and that reinforced my idea about getting away from some vile people and being independent, taking a good day job unrelated to cinema and just doing film and music stuff with my friends during the evenings and weekends. It was an amazing and empowering time for us.

I did have some great day jobs – Edexcel, the examination board in London was one. Because it’s run mainly by ex-teachers, there isn’t the usual preoccupation with status and money. The majority of them were incredibly supportive of employees who harbored their own passions. When I worked at that company, I could work with my friends on music. With music you could do that because it was relatively cheap to produce. We could afford to be uncompromising and make financial losses. I put a huge amount of work and love into producing a seven-inch single of entomology recordings by Jim Reynolds and David Ragge, and we only sold around fifty copies. It didn’t matter and it was very liberating that we could act as purists. Film is too prohibitively expensive for that. So you are forced by its very financial nature to network, to get in there somehow and to convince people that they will see a return on their money.

I wasn't any good at networking or meeting people and when I ended up with an inheritance of 30,000 euros, I used it to shoot and edit Katalin Varga. That money went a long way. I had a steady and very flexible job in Slovakia at that time, so I could support myself and pay rent with my earnings and use the inheritance purely to fund the film. That was a very strange period of my life. I had lost my father and his brother within a few years. That was the only immediate English side of my family (my mother is Greek), so a huge change was forced upon me. A whole way of life had gone, so going further into Europe made sense. A few years later, the inheritance from this fuelled an incredibly optimistic bout of aggressive energy to make this film and just do what was always denied to me. I just felt I could work. It was so liberating to actually work and do what I always wanted regardless of future consequences. The chances were clearly that we would fail on the lack of money and experience we had, but I was so fired-up, I just threw myself into it. I was lucky in a sense because my family never discouraged me, even though they feared the consequences, so there was always a sense of good will despite the ridicule I faced outside the home. My uncle refused to watch any film made post-1960 and only cared about Jacques Tati or the Marx Brothers, so it's somewhat ironic his money went towards this. However, that money dried up during post-production in 2007, I lost my job in Slovakia and the rot set in very rapidly.

I fell into teaching in 2008 and that became a revelation for me. With all these data entry jobs, I could get away with being stubborn, lazy, and irresponsible, but with teaching, one has to embrace the inherent responsibility it entails and it does force you to forget your own troubles and give something of your personality and experience to other people. There is no space for one to dwell and consequently it does become uplifting and enriching. The danger with teaching abroad (and you really feel this when some English teachers you meet are also struggling musicians, writers, artists, or film-makers and often beset with alcohol problems) is that it’s viewed as a stopgap instead of something that can enhance your worldview, especially when teaching adults. Teaching is something I would never want to give up entirely.

The mistake I made during the ‘90s was to settle for non-committal data-entry jobs in offices. Easy to get into, easy to do, and easy to get out of, and the rest of the day is yours. However, that denied me a back-up career. One could argue that a back-up career is self-defeating because you can inevitably fall into it out of comfort, but at least you can pay the bills. The last decade was strange for me. I envied my friends with regular jobs because they had security and comfort. They envied me because I was pursuing my dreams. It would be difficult to advise others on what to do. One piece of luck got me to where I am now and that plays such a vital part. I gave a new script to Oana and Tudor Giurgiu from Libra Film along with a rough cut of Katalin Varga as an example of previous work. They didn’t like the script, but asked why the rough cut wasn’t finished and from that moment on, they sourced money to finish the post-production, a sales agent came on board, Berlin invited the film and so on. It had been eight months since I blew my money and abandoned the film, and suddenly it very quickly sprang back to life.

I’m slowly trying to piece together a comprehensive CV of all my jobs, which so far total over fifty. This is the reality for most people who are middle or working class and without connections or luck. The grip of elitism and nepotism in some places is stifling, and there are some very talented people I know who sadly have all the odds against them just because they don’t have connections through their families. Of course there are hugely talented film-makers who come from film industry families and they can put maybe 60 percent of their perspiration into making great films, but the one thing some of them fail to recognize is that for the rest of us, the act of making a film is only a fraction of our work. 99 percent of our perspiration goes towards getting into the position where we can actually begin to make a film – the endless application forms, waiting, rejection, phone-calling, hustling, and balancing that with day jobs. The whole of the ‘90s flew by on that generic response to an application — ‘you’ll get your answer in another two weeks.’ If you’ve spent a decade waiting ‘another two weeks’ for that letter, phone call, or e-mail, it’s very easy to understand how you’d use an inheritance to make a film instead of putting a deposit on a flat.

Saying all this, I've known of some people who just get that insanely lucky break at a young age — right place, right time, and that's it. Yet strangely I don’t regret that struggle. I’m a big fan of the TV series, ‘The Office’ and part of its power is in transforming such a frustrating part of my life into something very funny. I’m almost nostalgic for those endless weeks typing in codes into computers in sterile offices, dreaming of escape and what I could do for my first film. Those hours and hours of bone idle dreaming definitely fuelled that drive to make a film.

The Five Most Over-Rated Tourist Spots in Budapest

2009-10-23T12:08:00.004+02:00

5. Vásárcsarnok

The District IX market hall is basically a decked-out airplane hanger for produce. It impresses at first blush, but it doesn't take long to realize that an eggplant looks the same in Hungary as it does at home. It is left to the vendors to give the place some local flavor. A butcher at Vásárcsarnok once tried to sell me cow cheeks (which they don’t even put on display – they are so unsightly and unpopular) for a higher price than an equivalent quantity of a prime mangalica cut. He succeeded (crafty bastard) in selling me ground beef at twice the going rate. Central Market? Try, Central Mark-up.

Happy Alternative: District V Csarnok

Also designed by Gustave Eiffel, it is the Vásárcsarnok in miniature, without the busloads of Koreans, and without the attitude.

4. Szentendre

Aside from a few good museums, the charm of Szentrenre still eludes me. A small – albeit picturesque town – with big city prices. Most of what you find, aside from the most gaudy of Hungarian craft souvenirs, are other tourists wandering around looking at each other, wondering why every travel book insists Szentendre is an essential part of their itinerary.

Happy Alternative: Vác

Equally small and picturesque, with a few great produce and flea markets, Vác is an under-touristed gem. An excellent starting point for expeditions into the Bukk hills, and you don’t have to suffer the HEV to get there.

3. Váci U.

Featuring low-rent brands that pass for luxury shopping in Budapest, Váci is perhaps the last street in Budapest I would elect to show a visiting friend. With the konzum lányok, professional beggars, and bus tour ticket hawkers making forward motion a chore, it's not even all that pretty a walk.

Happy Alternative: Király Ut.

Before Andrássy was built, Budapest’s gentry paraded up and down Király, the city's most elegant shopping street. Though it lost its high-end status long ago, Király has retained its charm. From haute-cuisine to budget dining, 24-hour dentists, hipster bookshops, and a few of Pest’s best bars, Király is a more authentic representation of the city than Váci, or, these days, Andrássy.

2. Gundel

A former irreproachable bastion of Budapest fine-dining, it is now the favorite spot of reality clown Győzika. Enough said.

Happy Alternative: Klassz

There are always inventive takes on local produce for very reasonable prices at Klassz, which is why it is full every night. The menu changes every few months, but they always have goose liver (still legal in Hungary!) and much-hyped mangalica pork on offer. As Klassz is partnered with the Wine Society, their wine list is amongst the best in the city.

1. Lánc Híd

Hungarians love their fancified Chain Bridge. But in the scheme of great European bridges, it pales. Go to Prague if you want spectacular bridges. The Chain Bridge connects the equally over-rated Castle District with bone dry Roosevelt Square, making it all that much more avoidable.

Happy Alternative: Szabadság Híd

This is an honest, elegant, working-man’s bridge. Patina-green Szabadság just received a huge renovation and is open again for business, with its wonderful views of the Danube from the southern part of central Budapest. Connecting lovely Gellért Hill with Fővám Tér, Szabadság Bridge is also the top choice of jumpers. What is more Hungarian than that?

Wrestling Bukowski

2009-10-02T13:55:00.007+02:00

In his book On Becoming a Novelist, writing-workshop guru John Gardner suggests reading everything Hemingway wrote, then reading Faulkner to get the Hemingway out of your system. That formula would not work in reverse, because Faulkner, as great a writer as he was, doesn’t have the immediate impact on a budding writer’s style as Hemingway. Hemingway is what I call a totem writer; a writer who - to one who is aspiring in the craft - serves as much as a teacher of style as a storyteller. His style is so strong and effective that it would be impossible to read his oeuvre and not begin to write, if not think, a bit like Hemingway. In short sentences. That are full of portent. Other totem writers include: Virginia Wolff, Henry Miller, Jack Kerouac, Sylvia Plath, Bret Easton Ellis, and, more frequently these days, Charles Bukowski.

Having worked in an editorial capacity for over ten years, I can say that there is no other writer who has exerted as much influence over a young generation of scribes as Buk. And this is not a good thing, as much as I like his work. The thing about Bukowski’s writing is that it has the appearance of being written with incredible ease. You read it and you think “I could do that!” And you write your Bukowski poetry, perhaps after a few beers, just to keep in the spirit. And, maybe the more successful pieces actually have that Buk feel. But they can never be anything but pale imitations, because Charles Bukowski, in addition to being a writer with a natural gift for writing accessible poetry (kind of a Skid Row Maya Angelou), actually lived the life. You are trying to counterfeit Van Gough with watercolors from the stationary store: you just don’t have the tools. Bukowski doesn't lend himself to imitation, because so much of what the reader perceives in his imitators is the Bukowski stink. The man Bukowski and his work were inseparable. That is the real charm of each of his books; he is so present in every word, that it is like having him there in the room with you after a few pages. He lived the life he writes about. But more than that: he studied the craft of writing for decades before achieving a modicum of recognition. Bukowski was a workhorse, and a connoisseur of great writers. So, what looks easy, was actually the result of thousands of thankless hours painting his own proverbial nudes.

Strangely, there is a Hollywood cult of tough-guy actors who emulate Bukowski, starting with Micky Rourke, and ending (hopefully) with Michael Madsen, whose Buk-inspired poetry comes bound with candid photos of him on set. I don’t know what it says about human nature that the luckiest, most rewarded people on the planet identify with one of the most soundly rejected outcasts (the man did not lose his virginity until his mid-twenties and spent mot of his adult working life working at the post office), other than I suppose Hollywood actors feel entitled to not only the spoils of wealth and fame, but also the romance of artistic alienation.

But fame can’t buy authenticity. Neither can authenticity be falsified by drunken nights or assuming your own alienation entitles you to short-cut the hard work of creating a unique writing voice. Once you start writing like Bukowski, you have already lost the game, because he wrote without compromise, in a style of his own invention. As a totem writer, he is a wonderful teacher of elegant, minimal style and clean, powerful story-telling. Do yourself a favor and read everything he wrote, but then read Hart Crane flush all that Bukowski from your system.

But, better to let one of Buk’s own disciples have the last word on the subject:

those who would write like bukowski

know that he, as a young man, loved
classical music, wrote every day,
read world literature, supported himself
without parental or government assistance,
and drank a lot.
but when it comes to modeling themselves
on him as writers
they tend to forget everything
except the drinking.

painting by Jocelyne Desforges
-Matt Ellis is a free-lance editor for Word Pill, a service for writers of fiction and non-fiction.

Five Reasons to Quit Facebook (not that I'm going to)

2009-09-07T11:20:00.004+02:00

5. Parasite of Time. There is a miniature Japanese girl that lives in each of our minds, and she loves tiny little cute things: like digital eggs, packrats that collect trading cards, and virtual pets who eat cupcakes. She needs to satisfy these urges daily. You deny her at your peril. But like Samara from The Ring, once you give her a little attention, she demands it all.

4. Voyeurism. This is a personal, life-long weakness. The minutia of other people’s lives are secretly fascinating to me. I can’t get enough of rummaging around in other people’s stuff, and this is the easiest most anonymous place to do it. It is a bad habit, and facebook provides for a virtually limitless amount of poking. Basically, you are my reality TV.

3. Too Much Information. And I’m not talking about the continuously updated home page, which can be strangely addictive, like your friends are stocks on a ticker-tape. I mean that I am comfortable with my memories of past relationships, for the most part. But twenty years on, you find faces have changed, as have ideals: a friend turns deeply politically conservative, or a wild ex-girlfriend is ‘reborn’ and shouting about it, and a former feminist is keeping you up-to-date on her kids’ bowel movements. Folks, stay where you are, comfortably embalmed and unchanging—in my mind.

2. Communication Substitute. If email killed letter writing, facebook drove the final nail into that coffin. If you miss somebody, you can leave a note on their wall, and feel like you have been in touch. Everybody has experienced the rush to catch up with lost friend. But that is usually where it ends. Seeing that they are there, in your little digital stratosphere, then watching them slowly age, seems to be enough.

1. Activism Inhibiter. Like MTV with teen rebellion, facebook provides a kind of faux-activism. The danger is that people often feel like they have contributed something meaningful by donating their status to a cause, or joining a facebook group. But last I checked, there was no Minister of Facebook, ready to dispatch armies on China, once a threshold people have joined the Free Tibet group. Ahmadinejad does not care if you have turned your profile picture green to support the opposition, and homophobes certainly won’t be swayed by your status update. There was a time when, in America, people demonstrated. You had to be active to feel like you contributed. These days, the Million Man March might well be relegated to a digital group. Facebook promotes passive activism – an oxymoron – and the best reason to quit facebook, and never look back.

Skin Care, or: the Metro-sexualization of the Budapest Male

2009-08-10T14:26:00.014+02:00

Not too long ago, I wrote a post entitled the Hipster Conquest of Budapest, which delineated the susceptibility of local youth culture to overt and covert marketing strategies developed in the West. There is a flip-side to that story, however. Marketing is not entirely a social evil. There are instances where persuasive marketing can be a force for good (to my mind, Obama ran a marketing campaign as much as a political one–but that is another story). Take , for instance, the feminization of the average–typically Hungarian–urban male, disguised in the cloak of the metro-sexual: a marketing dream term if there ever was one. In evolving male conditioning about gender, where feminism failed in Hungary, marketing triumphed. Over the past ten years the average Budapest male is more attuned, whether they are conscious of it or not, to their feminine side.

There are several forces at work behind this transformation, and not all the usual culprits: the apparel and cosmetics industries, and mass media. I am thinking of role models, from the utter worship of ambi-sexual clothing horses like Freddie Mercury and football stars Ronaldo and David Beckham. And given that local men were already indulging in habits that would widely be considered overly feminine anywhere outside of LA (the double cheek, man-on-man kiss, and rosé wine spritzers); coupled with the lack of imaginative home-grown fashion, and adding unbridled acceptance of capitalism and mall culture, the territory was ripe for a metro-sexual revolution. Indeed, some of the change came from within. Take the Hungarian hip-hop band, Belga, who routinely, royally, and amusingly skewer macho behavior in their songs and videos. (On a digressive note: Belga also manage to consistently create original and entertaining Hungarian hip-hop. Not to mention, they smoke, live). Or the first openly out politician Gábor Szetey. Even Hungarian skinheads are more fashionable than ever, sporting their Lonsdale hoodies and Fred Perry logos. It absolutely delights me that working-class Hungarian skinheads are saving up 25,000 forints, around 130 USD, to sport a Fred Perry polo, along with 150 USD Doc Marten’s. The Magyar Gárda too, though far from the Magyar-Práda, are quite fastidiously dressed in their black Fourth Reich uniforms. Hitler’s tailor’s would have been proud

A change of attitudes is harder to verify. Correlating the drop in incidence of spousal abuse with the sightings of pleasingly colorful summer scarves, would be both speculative and irresponsible. But one thing is for sure: gay men are more comfortable coming out in Budapest, and have been doing so in legion; and showing their consumer muscle with the opening of numerous gay-oriented clubs and bars, and–for the first time in the country’s history–enfranchising themselves politically. This, in the eyes of anybody who believes in human rights, can only be a good thing. And don’t doubt that the marketing of gays to a straight audience has had a lot to do with that. Not everybody may cop to having a gay friend in Hungary, but everybody has seen Queer Eye for the Straight Eye. Just one more debt that will go unpaid by the straight world.

If we need any more evidence of the metro-sexualization of the local male, we need only look at the average cosmetics store, where there are a wide variety of colognes, and men’s skin-care products available, not to mention male cosmetics. These days the bald goon at the club door smells of winsome CK One and businessmen smell-test soap at Lush. I don’t want to harp on Hungarian Emo any more than I already have–it exists for a reason–and one of these reasons may very well be a rebellion against the expected standards of male behavior. (That, or the CEOs of all the hair-product companies got together in a dark room, scheming to leave no hungo-hairsyle unperfected without gel, spray or mousse.) As if this wasn’t enough proof, there is now a males-only day spa–because, you know, us men just need some alone space when nurturing our wellness.

The confluence of this might be the summer scarf–so aggressively pushed by Zara and H & M as the must-have summer accessory. Let’s face it, nobody, male or female, really needs a summer scarf, unless you are susceptible to hickeys. (Though, that kind of defeats the point of getting a hickey in the first place.) Summer scarves are gratuitous fashion, designed only to move more product off the shelves of the large department stores. Conversely, it does fly in the wind as a kind of liberating flag–that attitudes can change, albeit slowly, certainly slower than fashion. But that is not necessarily a bad thing.

I can’t prove, scientifically or otherwise, that marketing has done more to affect male behavior patterns than feminism in Hungary, but this being a personal blog and not a news-source, so I don’t feel particularly compelled to. But change for the better is afoot. It will not come without struggle or resistance, and backlash–but I am sure the marketers will devise a strategy to neutralize and sell that too.

-Matt Ellis is a free-lance editor for Word Pill, a service for writers of fiction and non-fiction.

Fuck You (Very Very Much)

2009-08-02T16:52:00.005+02:00

Is there any more universally understood phrase in the English language than a good old 'fuck you'? In this case, it is directed at our local frothing-at-the-mouth homophobes. Props to the various Hungarian sztárs here, whomever they may be. And a grand flaming fuck you to those who would deny them.

Trabant Two-Step

2009-07-29T21:53:00.006+02:00

Presenting a super DIY Budapest-based clip by former resident and Mókus Patrol member Ernst Schoen-Rene, otherwise known as Jean Mikoyan. It seems like forever ago when Jill (Ernst’s wife, the vampish Meg White of the duo in the video), taught me the meaning of the word senki-házi, and how to use it properly (for the record, that would be at 3 a.m. in the cellar of Vittula, when addressing some anti-Semitic fuck-tard). Here they are, as though they never departed—a’ rhymin and a’ ritalin to Ernst’s former band Trabant.

The Lyric Life with David Hill

2009-07-20T10:04:00.015+02:00

I am kind of on a poetry jag here, and see no real reason to abandon it at this point. The truth is that Pilvax gets so many more poetry submissions than we could possibly publish, thus it is nice to dedicate some space to verse here. It is interesting that, in terms of popularity, few genres of writing sell less than poetry. Even Pulizer Prize winning poets sell fewer, sometimes far fewer, than ten-thousand copes of their work. Most major publishing houses no longer consider poetry commercially viable. But poetry as a democratic art form is alive and well. Why is that? At my most cynical, editorial-minded, I believe it is because it is the least objective form of writing. Anything goes in free verse, and it takes a sensitive, well-trained mind to distinguish the real thing from the imposters. Or, more generously, I believe there is a real human need for poetry. It is the most elegant and expressive form of writing, and indeed, a poem like Sándor Petőfi’s Nemzeti Dal can change the world we live in.

One poet that did manage to get past the Pilvax radar was Budapest’s original lit-dude, David Hill, a co-founder of the Bardroom, Budapest's forum for live readings in English. His poetry is unique in its tempo, pith, and, above all, wit. His verse walks the tightrope between erudition and accessibility, and is the kind of stuff former editors of magazines like the New Yorker championed. Both Aaron and I were attracted to David’s work long before we conceived of Pilvax, and were thrilled to publish an array of his verse in Pilvax 4, including one Hill poem on the back cover. Below you will find a brief interview with David Hill, followed by a selection from his new book Consumed published last year by Ken Arnold Books in the United States.

Pilvax: What is the best pun with your name?

David Hill: Someone pointed out to me once (at a party in Budapest) that "Dave Hill" sounds a bit like "Devil." He speculated that I was actually Satan in disguise. That appealed to me quite a lot, although it requires some effort to make the pun work. It helps if you put on a Spanish accent. A few years ago, I went through a phase of writing poems that contained puns on my name, specifically in order to get around the irritating anonymity requirements that are common in writing competitions. But they were rather bad puns. No doubt that's why I didn't win anything.

Pilvax: What are a few things that surprised you about your move to the States?

David Hill: I didn't know the Pacific Northwest was so beautiful. And not just when you're visiting a waterfall, walking along the coast, gazing down into the Columbia Gorge or strolling in downtown Portland. Even if you're just shopping at some strip mall, coming out of the store to see the big sky and the coniferous forests on the horizon can be breathtaking.

Pilvax: How in this day of constricting publishing industry did you get a book of poetry published?

David Hill: I read in a writers' newsletter that this publisher was open to queries from writers. I sent in a resume and a work sample, they liked it, and we took it from there. To put that in context, though, I work in writing and publishing all the time (journalism as well as entertainment/arts things). I don't do anything else. So I'm always sending out stuff and keeping my eye on different information sources for opportunities. Most things don't lead to anything. This one did.

Pilvax: What else are you working on currently?

David Hill: I'm working with a composer in Portland on a piece for the Third Angle ensemble. The piece includes some narration, and I'm helping out with the text. It will be premiered early next year. I've been cooperating with the Hungarian band Little Cow since 2006. I translate their lyrics so they can record their songs in English for international release. There's an album in the works right now, which will be the third one I have worked on with them. Besides those projects, I have some ongoing gigs in online and print journalism.

Storchenbotschaft

Our names are on the headstones of our husbands,
Awaiting date of death. This warms our hearts.
Our friend's the man who makes the region's shop signs;
Our kids patrol their land in horse-drawn carts.

This spring the storks, fashionably untended,
With unkempt nests for nodding over brood,
Low-flying, halfway tame, wholly enchanted,
Did not home here. Nor did the frogs, their food.

First year I can remember when they didn't.
The lanes are filled with stork-news nonetheless,
White petals star-splayed, mimicking our village,
Whose spread arms pose as streets in our address.

Strange, changes. Now we're on a brand new railroad;
Vladivostok to Adriatic Sea;
At space-age white pavilions load and unload
One-car electric trains, infrequently.

Needing bridges

Each bridge defines a stretch of the flat town,
Lords over it; and makes its road continue
Deep into it; keeps taut its pulsing sinew—
But wartime photos show those bridges down,

And one ad-hoc bridge that was soon destroyed.
Plaques, pointing statues, tell the tale. It throws me.
I dream how this wet air might still enclose me,
Walking out on the flat face of that void...

The hilly town, sure in its bluff terrain,
Of course, has its own shape, is less in need.
This tram I'm in now, fastening the river,

That marbles with unnecessary rain,
Stanches the doubt. Up there we view, we read,
We live; a bridge would be how we deliver.

Anecdote

Despite being communists,
The leaders of Romania
Between World War Two and 1989
Were also nationalists.

Towns which had always
Borne Hungarian or German names
Were officially rebaptized
With Romanian ones.

My parents' village slipped through the net
And kept the same name
Throughout those atheist days.
Gottlob. Praise God.

Vârcolac

I do find Transylvania congenial:
Haunting a forest or Saxon town.
The tourists love me, but it's all quite menial.
Moldavia is where I wore the crown.

A corner of first Rome's then Kiev's empire,
I stood for all things Caesar never tames.
Werewolf, vermicolacius, or vampire:
My legend, like my towns, had many names.

Hero of global culture, I grew slicker,
Perfected chilling smiles and licked my lips.
But long before fresh blood became my liquor,
I ate the sun and moon. I was eclipse.

Between the mouths of Dnister and of Duna
Is still where I return to rear my young.
I teach them somnul dulce, noapte bună:
Our vowel-rich Thraco-Latin mother-tongue.

Lying Still

After a few nights of
Going to sleep in the searing heat
Drunk on fine fruit spirits,
I found my sheets took on a strange smell:

A headier, purer,
Double-distilled potion filled my sweat.
Soon I'll be fermenting,
Be a reaction, be truly still.

And Now A Word From Our Sponsor

2009-07-14T11:00:00.008+02:00

It took some time, effort, and lots of patience, but Pilvax 6 is finally out. Lots of great writing here, including jazz-noir by up-and-coming Irish writer Billy O'Callaghan, a magic-realist take on Cold War radio by Pilvax designer Tom Bass, and a novel excerpt by Ferenc Barnás, whose novel The Ninth was recently released in English on Northwestern University Press in the US. But as a blog excerpt, I am going to turn you onto some found-poetry by Budapest expat and former Fastbacks’ drummer Nathan Johnson. I have always had a soft spot for found art, particularly found poetry, which I also used to assemble to pass the hours while temping in the vendor compliance department of Montgomery Wards in Chicago. Johnson’s poetry comes from chat rooms dedicated to drumming, and has a warmth and humor that really appealed to me personally and editorially. Enjoy!

The New Cymbalism

These poems are the result of exploring amusing threads on the Modern Drummer website, and then scrolling through reader feedback and cutting and pasting text as seen fit, more or less in chronological order.

While a literary experiment such as this is hardly an attempt at serious art, there is an extremely high level of truth present here. No matter how the selected texts are arranged, taken out of context, or juxtaposed, nearly everything was originally expressed in all sincerity; in other words, the poems are truly a distillation of a particular psychological and phenomenological universe: the mind and milieu of the modern drummer. Thus, in the immortal words of David St. Hubbins, they tread a “fine line between clever and stupid.”

Tiniest cymbal

I need the smallest possible cymbal
I want a tiny crash

BING

With thimbled fingers
scratch my crashy itch
a 6-inch splash
a high-pitched, short-lived crash

What should I look for in a cymbal
if I want a tiny crash?

BING?

Sorry, I have a soapbox and a situation

I don’t want to go electronic
and I don’t want them stuffing foam and towels in my kit
Now they’re talking about putting things on my drums
Maybe they have a valid reason

We just have to end up biting our tongues
"I'm sorry I can no longer play drums
because I don't agree with these decisions."

Now I play in a church that was voted
the #2 place to hear a band in Salt Lake -
You're in a box, carpeted, veiled behind a curtain
The pastor gets to buy new gear and hopefully everyone is happy
You get to play your set (sort of)

I am morally opposed to drum machines

I suck at drums

It’s true
I tire out really quickly and then get super-sloppy and frustrated
My timing is all over the place
My feet are anything but consistent
I start having an "I suck" fit
I take my kit apart
I think this screws me up more than anything else
It's usually due to the height of my throne
I caught my jaw tightening up while playing
I have to constantly readjust myself
Throne issues might be the answer

I suck. You don’t
You definitely don’t suck
I sit down to play and it’s like I have palsy or something . . .
sweating like a pig . . .
Session ended with me whipping my stick
I sucked real bad last night

I do need to eat better
I've been trying to drink more juice and milk
Drumming requires all the muscles from your ass outwards

I'm ever so slowly learning to play
Rome wasn't burned in a day

It's ok to suck
Sucking is the natural state of mankind
Just realize that sucking is what people do, and be ok with that
It has thus been summarized

…ripped my blisters open...
Friction sucks

I want a 2-piece kit

Maybe a Yamaha kick and snare
or maybe Tama or Pearl
such a minimalist kit
the correct answer is
"full cocktail drumset"

More from Nathan Johnson's "New Cymbalism" can be found in Pilvax 6

For more on Johnson's handiwork on the drums, check him out here with original Hungarian Emo band Amber Smith

American Itinerant

2009-06-20T18:24:00.003+02:00

Posting is light this spring as I am on the road, essentially working itinerantly throughout Austria as a teacher. Speaking of which, on a late night binge not too long ago, I found myself laying into a fellow expat who had made the mistake of criticizing the profession of teaching English in front of me. His point was that it was beneath most creative types, unless is was simply a means to support their art. I hadn’t really thought about just how much teaching means to me until then, and only recently have I understood what a fulfilling profession it is, exclusive of any extra-curricular pursuits.

If you have ever worked in an office, you know that genuine and meaningful human interaction can be scarce. But people don’t typically work in offices to gratify any need for meaningful interaction. They work there for money, prestige, security, a sense of achievement, or, just as often, because they are willing to settle for a safe path. This was certainly the case for me when I worked in book publishing in New York. It is hard to match the feeling of receiving the first copies of a book you worked on, or seeing your name in acknowledgements, but these are rare enjoyments in a life of endless paperwork and corporate politics.

Teaching, on the other hand, is nothing but meaningful interaction. As one who spends a silly amount of time alone in front of a computer screen, the social aspect of teaching is not just gratifying, is sustaining. And it is one of the few jobs that makes demands on the entirety of your personality. You can even come away from classes with new friends, if you are open to that.

There is a long history of writers who make their living as teachers, from Robert Frost to Joyce Carol Oates, and James Joyce, to those that relied on it before they hit the big time like Stephen King, Dan Brown and J.K. Rowling. But even if I should be so lucky to have the most minimal success as a writer, I for one, would not give up classroom teaching. It is too emotionally stabilizing, and there is to much immediate gratification there. The classroom, any classroom, from Budapest to the far reaches of the Alps, feels like home. Teaching is not something to settle for, it is something to aspire to.

As this is the blog for a literary magazine, I am happy to include here a few modern haiku from a class I taught recent week in a Linz art school.

Maybe one day
I will understand the meaning
Of the decisions my Lovers make

—Sonja S.

(Dark) clouds gather fast
A light-elf is born to earth
(It’s) the first snowflake

—Luna R

Sleeping by the sea
Waves wake her up like lovers
In hot summer nights

—Christina S.

When he sings his song
I can’t say if it’s hot or cold
And my heart beats fast

—Teresa H.

The Akara of Budapest

2009-05-10T12:35:00.002+02:00

A short film by Mókus Patrol team member Nathan Kay.

The Case for László Sárközi

2009-04-28T19:19:00.011+02:00

Some day you will be able to talk about László Sárközi without having to mention that he is a Roma (and one of the very few Roma poets publishing in Hungary today). But now, for better or worse, he is burdened with that mantle and all the expectation and associations that come with being a gypsy writer in post-communist Central Europe.

Pilvax was lucky enough to be the first literary review to publish Sárközi in English. But getting Sárközi in print proved to be a challenge. For starters, he is not an easy man to find. I had to go through an intermediary, who kept promising me Sárközi, but whenever we were supposed to meet, the writer was indisposed. I finally did catch up with him, at a private writers’ canteen in Pest. He could only manage to make a scrawl on the publishing agreement as his writing hand was mostly unusable due to an incident that was either a bar fight or a slip on the pavement (the explanation was vague, as was about everything that came from Sárközi’s mouth). The second time I met him, he was in a hospital near Marczibányi Tér, where he was recovering from another mysterious accident, which left him slightly crippled. When offered cab fare to attend a reading of his work, he declined, preferring to take the tram. He did show up at the reading though, along with a gang of thuggish guys who tried the patience of just about everybody around them. Later I was informed that they were his former residents of the orphanage he was raised in.

There are many stories surrounding Sárközi and talking to him in person did little to distinguish the truth from the mythologizing. I know he was raised in an orphanage, and was discovered and mentored by the infamous Hungarian poet György Faludy. It is also said he was homeless (unlikely – there are relatively few homeless gypsies in Budapest – they tend to squat or live communally). What is for sure is that he is forever getting in accidents or otherwise injuring his body, his place of residence is constantly changing, and anybody seriously interested in contemporary Hungarian poetry knows his name. Sárközi may be obscure as a person, but his poetry blossoms in gorgeous imagery and is chiseled and rigorous in style. He is a genuine talent, and perhaps a genius. And, what he has made for himself in this life, he made through the craft of poetry, which is unlikely for a person of any race.

Below is a portion of László Sárközi’s Inner World: A Sonnet Wreath, expertly translated by Andrew Singer (the entire fifteen sonnet cycle was previously published in Pilvax Issue 3).

I. Night

I walk the valley of green and silent dreams
and still don’t know where I will be tomorrow;
my moods propel me, they drive me far,
anticipating night, craving respite.

Nightfall is a scaly wound, and then
night’s well holds the moon – a brave warrior’s fate
in shining armor; recoiling to die again.

Down endless streets, new streets run
and where this movement ends, I’ve no idea.
I straddle the border-stone, gazing at naught.

Cold flash, and yellow lamp regards me,
light glints off blue-musted cobblestones:
with ten thousand solitudes, the night caresses,
where a black moon renders every shadow brown.

II. Beggar’s Sonnet

Where a black moon renders every shadow brown,
from a dirty cardboard box a beggar coughs,
his dog poking him – “Leave me, it still hurts so…” –
and eying his master in a Faithful Zen Ring.
The dwarf shifts cannily; no one cares;
he is crawling now on backward-facing knees;
now he throws his cup pugnaciously down:
dawn’s anger recoils on marble walls.
So I wandered by with pocketed hands
and spat into the beggar’s jolting cup –
may the rest be veiled and then forgotten…
but neither of us turned lighter from it.
I’m wretched: good intention has died in me.
My twenty-nine years are just a giddy game.

III. Facing Eternity

My twenty-nine years are just a giddy game,
one day I am ornate; the next I’m plain,
an endless whirl of good and bad design.

My life is like a dream – it comes to naught,
realizing absurdly the weight of the grave –
nor is the stone’s perfume enjoyed in moss.

Whatever I build is in vain, for windmills
and dusty lips are rumbling from the past,
for all is fleeting that once was joy:
the once-shining diamond shall be as ash.

My light fades, morning falls to night –
Once you regaled the evergreen dark
Pandora: a box forever opened, as
I go on – shivering, wounded by light.

-Matt Ellis is a free-lance editor for Word Pill, a service for writers of fiction and non-fiction.

They Stank, We Stanker; or, What is the Sound of No Hands Clapping?

2009-04-04T11:17:00.012+02:00

I will begin this post by giving credit where proper credit is due: for a more informed, and superbly written post regarding Hungarian punk band Büdösök, click here. I know the Little Black Egg is – at this very moment (!) – working hard on a Miskolc punk rock primer, so we all have that to look forward to.

I have to admit, by last summer I had all but given up hope on finding any Hungarian punk rock band worth getting the back of my hand branded with black ink by some brutish doorman for (if none of those stamps washed off I would look like one of those Looney Tunes suitcases that made its way around the world, stickers from each country). Question: can one balls-to-the-wall punk rock band revive my lowly opinion regarding Hungo-rock? Answer: no. Because Büdösök seem to be the exception that makes the rule. To wit: earlier in the winter I went to see a Hungarian ‘underground music’ festival and I am not going to name and shame here, but most of the evening was a hodge podge of pastiches of popular music from abroad, played by proficient, but not terribly committed musicians. That these bands were the first ones to jump on the trend bandwagon makes them ‘underground’ I guess. But damn if the club wasn’t packed with cute H & M-outfitted Hungarian hipsters, many from the crowd lingering until the early hours of the morning. Contrast that with the Büdösök show. The Büdösök faithful comprise three punks who can usually be seen panhandling in the Blaha Luiza underpass, some rightfully wary travelers from a nearby hostel, and a handful of hard-drinking middle age men (men who wear big metal belt buckles without irony and order their mugs of beer two at a time).

The show itself was in the tiny Kamra club in the Eight District. Büdösök were supposed to start at eight, but they didn’t make it on stage until around ten. By that time the lead singer was thoroughly wasted, spilled his drink on his keyboards, and would only address the audience in a really creepy baby voice. It was either going to be a fantastic show or a total loss of my eight-hundred forints. Turns out, it was a bit of both.

Kind of shockingly, the first thing I noticed was that two-thirds of Büdösök could have been stand-ins for actor playing Hitler in The Last Days. I am still not sure if it was intentional, or if people from Miskolc just kind of look like that. The bass player resembled a studious skin head, and throughout the first song alternated between jabbing at the strings like he was stabbing his instrument to death and strumming as though it was a rhythm guitar. That’s kind of what they are about: chaotic, childlike outbursts where the singer caterwauls like Nick Cave in one of his his most onomatopoeic Birthday Party fits, followed by abrupt silences, and vaguely catchy choruses. Oh, and there was a horn, which somehow fit just right. Büdösök offer a gristly cacophony that has been pounded with a tenderizer into something vaguely palatable. Some of the songs actually had hooks, and a least two of them made reference to Santa Claus.

Then things got strange. This is the only show I have ever attended where nobody clapped or cheered in between the songs. There was just an eerie tension. I mean, it was uncanny and seriously weird. The only time somebody dared to shout something (it sounded encouraging, but it was in Italian) the singer from Büdösök yelled back “küss!”, which roughly translates as ‘shut the fuck up!” But by the end of the show, I was totally invigorated. They had played for about an hour. There was no encore, nor was there a call for one.

Büdösök are confrontational in the perpetually adolescent way only punk rock can be. They have the mark of authenticity that is missing from about, well, every local band I have seen in the pop/punk genre. Indeed, the really great thing about Büdösök is that they exist on their own terms, and kowtow to nobody. They will never play main stage at the Sziget, they won’t even get a chance at an alt-minded Gumipop show: they must know all this by now, and most likely knew it from the get-go. They are bound to fail, and from the looks of it, failure was probably the only acceptable result. But isn’t that at least part of what punk rock is about? Remember when punk was for misfits and outcast? Anyway, I don’t want to get too deep into the psyche of Büdösök, it is a dark, no doubt labyrinthine place: a place where Chucky dolls go when they die (though, as we have learned, Chucky dolls NEVER die).

I don’t think I have heard a more unique Hungarian band than Büdösök. That said, I do not particularly want to be a Büdösök fan. It is a lonely assignment. It means you are the only one clapping in between songs, and will get told to shut the fuck up for doing so. Right now, I am only too happy to.

Where Expats Fear to Tread

2009-03-21T20:11:00.005+01:00

Just because this winter is seemingly endless doesn’t mean you should stay in and pout. Nor should getting out cost a lot. If you ask me, most of the tried-and-true Budapest nightspots are pressing their luck: and the dwindling crowds at places like Ellátó and Szimpla confirm this. High prices, indifferent service, and lomtalanítás (street scavenged) seating do not scream “clean, well-lit place,” to this night owl. It is possible that community pressure, bureaucracy, and high prices are bringing Budapest’s famous beer-garden society to a close. But of course the death of one scene only heralds the (re)birth of another. I am talking about the gentrifying of the city’s késdobáló (dagger throwing) bars. Not long ago, most of these places opened at 5 in the morning to service the pensioners and homeless who whetted their whistles with 70 forint wine spritzers. These are curious, grungy places, attracting a disparate crowd, though almost exclusively Hungarian. But lately, the trend has been to stay open later rather than open earlier, due to the large amount of young folk looking for an inexpensive night out. Indeed, beer in these re-tooled dives can be half the price of boho bastions like Szimpla. Below are 5 favorites, at all of which a pint can be had for well under a euro, listed from most to least expensive.

5. Óbester Söröző: on Huszár near Keleti and down the block from expat owned Ba bar, Óbester had 250-forint home brew, called Brandecker. When the weather warms up, they have sidewalk space in this quiet, old-school part of the city.

4. Krúdy Söröző: on my old block, this dive has as much to do with Krúdy Gyula as Chef Boyardee has to do with Italian cooking, but nonetheless, this is a fine local pub with super cheap drink prices and a wide screen TV (if sports are your thing). 250 gets an Ászok pint.

3. Hordós Söröző: Üllői is the new Ráday. You could actually spend a whole night on a pub crawl up to Klinika and back. Lots of medical students from the nearby Semmelweis medical school pass the time at places like Hordós and my favorite, Corvin Söröző (currently closed for renovation). 220 forints get you a pint of Borsodi.

2. Not far from Hordós, Megálló is a new place. Sit at a picnic table and enjoy Borsodi of a mere 200 forints for a pint. I have yet to try this place, but it looked friendly and clean when I popped my head in.

1. Tett Hely. The ‘scene of the crime’, used to be the ‘scene of the grime’ but they have cleaned up their image. Still, this tiny pub on Kertész, makes Vittula look upscale. But at 200 forints for a pint of Ászok, there is a reason it is jam-packed with students, not to mention the odd expat like yours truly.

Buddha's Belly

2009-02-28T17:45:00.009+01:00

Sitting on a train from Vienna to Budapest with a colleague who also dabbles in food writing I arrived at a revelation: it is much more mentally healthy to approach restaurant criticism in Budapest with a generous, if not naïve, spirit. You are bound to enjoy yourself and your meal more. My colleague’s attitude towards even some of the most odious, philistine establishments in the city was one of a Zen-like acceptance and appreciation. He was even quick to praise a late-night establishment that has a policy of charging 2,000 forints should you happen to vomit at your table (I guess this happens enough there that they actually need a policy). As a result, he is rarely upset or disappointed.

Unfortunately, I know too much about how restaurants operate to keep his level of sangfroid. For instance, I know that restaurateurs can recoup a bundle before the place even opens by taking under the table cash – in some cases, tens of thousands of dollars – just to sign on to sell a particular line of beer or tobacco. I know the shysterism management directs against their staff to either siphon off their tips or wages. But, ultimately, the buck stops with you, and wait staff, in some cases, are forced to cheat you if they want to make a living at their job. The list of tricks employed is long and varied, from watering drinks to reselling leftovers, to adding a gratuity charge without specifying it as such.

Further adding to my cynicism about dining in Budapest is the sloppy, erratic service. The examples of bizarre service have almost nothing to do with the exclusivity of the restaurant. For example, at Klassz, one of Budapest’s best, the waiter arrived after about twenty minutes, took my date’s order, then walked away as though I wasn’t even there. At a worker’s lunch canteen, the counter help literally yelled at me because I ordered a beet salad with a vegetable stew, two items that are traditionally not coupled, according to local eating traditions. Wary of that, the next night at Ellátó, I asked the bar staff what side went well with the entree I had ordered, only to be chewed out again because they are not “a fancy French restaurant where things like that matter.” Other dining slights have included being shortchanged 10,000 forints at Pata Negra, being denied a glass of water during the longest heat wave in recent Hungarian history at Bamboo Sziget, and having the waiter pour himself a glass of wine from my bottle of Pinot Noir at BORlaBOR. More endearingly, at a now-closed eatery, a waiter offered to pick the pork from my bean soup when reminded him I had asked for a vegetarian dish.

I am not sure how my colleague would have handled these situations. I tend to complain, shoot dirty looks, up and leave, then write nasty things on chew. Hence, the list of restaurants that I actually frequent is surprisingly low. It has gotten to the point where I am afraid to revisit a restaurant I actually like because service and quality of food are so erratic in this city. So, next time, instead of a date, mabe I will bring along my pocket-sized Buddha, to remind me that cynicism breeds cynicism, and it is also OK to come to a meal with an open mouth and mind.

Guitar Heroes

2009-02-06T22:47:00.009+01:00

There is a line in Szomjas György’s film Kopaszkutya where the singer of a struggling rock band, in their dilemma as to how to reinvent themselves, asks “OK, but who should we sound like?” This seems to be the first and foremost question in the minds of local pop musicians. Old school band Bikini answered that question for themselves in late-eighties video for their single “Legyek jó” (Be Good): everybody in spandex and a mullet. So what you get, in this delightfully cheesy take on life behind the Iron Curtain, is an admixture of Outfield, Mr. Mister, and Duran Duran.

It is easy to mock Bikini (trench-coats with the sleeves rolled up is never a good look), but in reality, "Legyek jó" was a fairly bold video. Instead of the subtle coding that many musicians under Socialism used to express their disdain for the authoritarian government, Bikini went for a balls-to-the-wall representation of dark government forces keeping down the little guy (who is clearly ready to rock). You could make the case that this is a far more daring protest song than anything Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, or Rage Against the Machine put out, considering the freedoms those artists enjoyed and the monetary gain that resulted from their rebellion. What could Bikini hoped to have gained? Pretty much the same thing that the band in Kopaszkutya wanted: a following big enough to support themselves, and, most importantly, a public venue to play in. Kopaszkutya’s venue was a rock club in Kőbánya, Bikini’s was their own country, without fear of censorship or arrest. And by using the language of Western consumer culture (videos, rock music, fashion) to express themselves, it was a double affront to the reigning regime. True, Solidarity was well along in catalyzing Poland’s defiant stance towards the Soviet Union, and Hungary was always the most permissive of the regimes, but still, nobody knew for sure that Gorbachev would back down, and the freedom of the media was far from tested (if anybody can enlighten me as to how this video was broadcast or distributed, please do).

On a more atomic level, there are some wonderful details in "Legyek jó". First is the representation of the police as mini-skirt wearing, anti-Bond-girl vixens, constantly sharpening their long red fingernails. Apparat-chicks, anybody? It is not just Bikini that has pulled back the Iron Curtain to reveal a burlesque show: look to Elton John’s “Nikita” (made in the same time period) to see the sexy side of Socialist repression (Elton John looking no less silly than Bikini, something like Truman Capote in his fat phase, if Truman Capote was a swishy Bedouin). Also, there is a wonderful truth is the real enemy in "Legyek jó": bureaucracy. The video begins with the singer about to knock (police?) files down like dominoes, and ultimately, the authority figure drowns in his own paperwork. It is not a very sexy target, but telling and real to anybody who has had to navigate the preposterous amount of bureaucracy needed to accomplish almost anything legally even in post-bloc Hungary.

Ultimately, it seems Bikini has been lost to the ages, which is a shame. I wonder if local bands, who are still asking “Who should we sound like?” shouldn’t also ask, “Who should we emulate?” It would nice to see the pop world make good on at least some the daring of Bikini during that tumultuous period.

Top 5 Expat Traps

2009-02-01T13:00:00.010+01:00

5. Relationships. Hungary may seem like a bachelor’s paradise at first blush, but the reality is much more complicated. It is true that any number of long-term relationships and marriages spring up between expats and locals, but there also seems to be a disproportionate amount of break-ups, infidelity, and co-dependence. When so much around you is foreign, it is really easy to cling to somebody who can navigate that web. The real test of the relationship’s value seems to be in the dynamic change that occurs outside the context of this country.

4. Cadism. The sleazy cousin to the above. Despite the sad-sack expats lined up at the bar of certain local establishments, is relatively easy to carouse in Budapest, so much so that it becomes a viable pastime for those with any talent for it. But this ultimately turns into a hollow pursuit, even for the most lascivious of us.

3. Cynicism. With so much corruption and negativity around, it is easy to become infected by lowered standards and expectations. But dreams never get downsized, no matter where you escape to, and if you are not going to make it as a writer or artist in the West, it is equally unlikely that you will make it here. The result is a blaming of the crass commercial forces that dictate to whom the spoils are granted, rather than honest self-appraisal.

2. Alcoholism. “When the morning comes twice a day or not at all.” That Uncle Tupelo line rings harrowingly true if you have ever seen the sun rise from inside a kért for a few consecutive mornings. It is always easiest to look at the next guy and say he is worse off, because there is always somebody worse off hereabouts. Lots of factors conspire to make alcoholism particularly easy to fall into in Budapest. First, drinking is an acceptable part of the social culture of Hungarians. But equally dangerous is the lack of real diverse English-language entertainment. Film, theater options remain limited. Bars are just the most convenient, cheapest form of play-time activity.

1. Stasis. What day is today? If you can’t answer that question then you probably need to check yourself. Most boho expats fall prey to this condition at one point or another. Stasis enables all the above, which is why it is number one. I know people who are repeating word for word the same grandiose plans they had when they arrived to Budapest so many years ago, without having taken few, if any, steps to accomplish them. It is just simpler, and probably less psychically damaging, to talk. And because you can create a bubble around yourself here so easily, you can live in a state of suspended animation, without having much meaningful contact with your native community. Unfortunately, time does not stop, and when you come up for air, friends have started families, bought houses, made something of themselves. Then again, there are those who travel here precisely not to make anything of themselves. And in this success-driven, globalized culture, that goal is at least a little applaudable.

-Matt Ellis is a free-lance editor for Word Pill, a service for writers of fiction and non-fiction.

Erről Van Szó!

2009-01-11T14:55:00.013+01:00

Last week’s post got me thinking about some of the strange, beautiful, and funny Hungarian words I have come across. I have compiled a brief, but by no means comprehensive, list of my favorites, in no particular order. For a guide to Hungarian pronunciation check here.

megszentségteleníthetetlenségeskedéseitekért: means because of your holier-than-thou attitude, and allegedly the longest existing Hungarian word, though I seem to remember a word that has to do with cabbage that is similar in length. Anybody dare to count the suffixes here? Ten?

pitypang, pünkösdirózsa: flower names are great in Hungarian. Dandelion and peony respectively.

vízicsikó: means seahorse. Of course, when translating seahorse into Hungarian for two young new students, I made the mistake of calling it a vízicsikló, which roughly translates as a sea-clit.

csecsebecse: one of the first words I learned in Hungarian, and I still get a kick out of saying it. Csecsebecse is the collective term for knick-knacks. Say it out loud, it's fun!

link alak: lazybones, good-for-nothing. Well understood in these parts.

ölni: Hungarians have few homonyms, but the ones they have are very telling. This is the verb for killing as well as the noun for one's lap. Ölel means to hug or embrace: dangerously close to the verb for killing. In the same category is paradicsom, which means both paradise and tomato.

arcátlan, szemtelen: literally faceless and eyeless, but both mean obnoxious or insolent.

lurkó, rajkó: the first is a street urchin, the later a Gypsy street urchin.

palimadár: a sucker bird, or just a sucker. There is one hatched every minute, I’m told.

csaj, csávó: slang adopted from the Lovári Gypsy dialect. Girl and boy respectively.

házisárkány: literally, a house-dragon; figuratively, a woman who is overly dominant around the house. Also in this category is the papucsférj, or slipper husband, a man who is henpecked. The papucsférj is quite the opposite of the házisárkány, but somehow they get along well together.

smárolni: slang, means to make out.

kolbászolni, lekenyerezni: two verbs created from food-related base words. Kolbász is sausage, but to kolbász, means to wander around. Kenyér is bread, but to bread somebody down, is to bribe them.

Elefántcsontpart: Even the Hungarian announcers at the last World Cup got a kick out of the translation of the Ivory Coast: literally Elephant Bone Coast. Even better: elefántcsonttorony, which is an ivory tower, or, an elephant bone tower. If that is not evocative language, what is?

If It Ain't Broke, Don't Suffix It: A Book Review

2009-01-06T06:33:00.009+01:00

“It should be against the law to mock somebody who tries his luck in a foreign language.” So begins Chico Buarque’s novel Budapest. It’s a winning opening line, both disarming and knowing, especially when read by somebody who has tried to learn Hungarian, “the only tongue the devil respects.”

To learn a foreign language, especially one so different from English as Hungarian, takes a certain leap of faith, a willingness to participate in a mode of expression that appears to have been rearranged and, in many cases, dissected and reassembled. It takes a similar leap of faith to enjoy Buarque’s novel, in which stories unpack themselves like Chinese boxes, and realities and narratives are constantly shape-shifting, challenging and undermining whatever presumptions the reader has already anchored themselves to.

The story begins when the Brazilian narrator’s plane is waylaid in Budapest after a bomb scare. As a ghost-writer and linguist, he becomes immediately enchanted with the Hungarian language and Budapest itself. On the most simplified level, the story follows the path of the narrator, Jose Kosta, (Josef K?) on his path to fluency in Hungarian, after breaking with his wife and falling in love with his language teacher. But nothing is so easy in Budapest, as Kosta observes of the language, “he had no way of knowing where each one (word) began or finished. It was impossible to detach one form the next; it would be like trying to cut a river with a knife.”

Like Budapest’s körút(s), the language is circular: base words are stacked with suffixes and prefixes that hang off them like weights on an unwieldy barbell. The characters’ destinies run the same circular route: histories, texts, and relationships bleed into each other until the reader is not sure if Kosta can be trusted as a narrator, or if he is the narrator at all.

In one phantasmagoric sequence reminiscent of Victor Pelevin (who I have brought up before in this blog: he is the ‘thinking man’s’ Murakami), a night of drinking turns into a potential ménage-à-trois, then morphs into a game of Russian roulette, then a robbery, then back into a night of drinking. Buarque stays with the scene only long enough for us to think we have a grip on its reality before he pulls the rug out from under our feet. Buarque, a composer and writer, wisely keeps his actual observations and use of Hungarian to a minimum (which led me to suspect he doesn’t actually speak Hungarian, though perhaps he simply doesn’t want to confound the reader further with its utter strangeness). But then he floors you with an occasion description like the following, “Seeing Hungarian in words for the first time, I felt as though I was looking at their skeletons: ö az álom elötti, talajon táncol.” Or “I couldn’t distinguish the words, so I knew it was Hungarian.”

In the same way every New Yorker inhabits a different city, with its own individual, constantly changing landmarks and signifiers, Kosta’s Budapest is not to be taken too literally: he employs made-up names, cigarette brands, street names, literary societies, and hungaricum (perhaps accidentally-on-purpose referring to Tokaj wine as Tajok wine). We know to take it all with a grain of salt when Kosta is both ghost-writing poetry for a has-been Hungarian poet and correcting locals on their grammar. Kosta’s Budapest is not my Budapest, just as his story, in the end, is not even his story.

Because of Kosta’s occupation as a ghost-writer, ownership of the text is a theme that is constantly returned to throughout the book. Indeed, a writer for whom he has ghost-written a book uses that very book to seduce Kosta’s own wife away from him. Like Jim Crace’s Genesis, and to a lesser degree, Arthur Philips' Prague, or even better, like having a friend from out of town come visit, it is a thrill to experience Budapest through somebody else’s eyes, to see it reinvented, even if that invention does not conform to your own. Budapest is a pleasing, occasionally perplexing read: like the Hungarian language, it is potent and fluid, but then again, so is nitro-glycerin.

-Matt Ellis is a free-lance editor for Word Pill, a service for writers of fiction and non-fiction.

My Other Car is a Rolls from IKEA

2008-12-29T16:57:00.004+01:00

It appears that the economic downturn has affected even the very rich, who are now buying their wheels by bulk (but still pay extra for a plastic bag to carry it home in).

Second Cities

2008-12-22T18:49:00.010+01:00

Once there was a dusty, grey city in the middle of a flat countryside, where almost anything went: prostitution was tacitly legal, white slavery was common practice, bunkos angled for your gambling money, tax-dodging was a local pastime, and corruption from organized crime reached the highest levels of municipal government. A hit could be put out on a rival for a pocketful of change, delivered by thugs who congregated around popular nightspots. Sound familiar? Welcome to Chicago before the turn of the twentieth century.

Of course this could also be modern-day Budapest. There are more general similarities between the two cities as well: both lie in the center of vast swaths of agricultural regions, both are waning industrial hubs, and both have experienced, at one point in their history, influxes of German and Polish immigration. There is a working-class feeling common to Chicago and Budapest, despite growing prosperity. More importantly, both cities wallow in their underdog status, and compensate with inflated local pride and grandiose architecture. In hearing how the daredevil Hungarian construction workers defied safety regulations in erecting the Megyeri Bridge, I couldn’t help but think of the perils of creating, not to mention riding, the first Ferris wheel, invented for Chicago as a landmark for the 1893 World’s Fair, or the completion of the world’s first skyscraper, the Home Insurance Building on LaSalle.

Even at the most visceral level, upon arriving in Budapest for the first time, I felt it shared a kinship with my hometown. There was a gracious decay to the buildings’ facades, particularly in District VII and VIII, that harmonized with my memories of Wrigleyville and Uptown in the 1980s. It was gratifying to learn that a particular section of District VIII was referred to as Chicago, for its shady reputation and criminal element. And, lucky me, for the first several years in Budapest I lived on the outskirts of ‘Chicago’, observing the sleazier aspects of Rákóczi tér, and discovering, late one boozy night, a local speakeasy.

If you want to talk about vice in the USA, forget Vegas. Turn-of-the-century Chicago had entire blocks, neighborhoods, filled with nothing but bars and brothels, where girls from the countryside and from Europe were baited with well-paying jobs by the gangs of strongmen Johnny Torrio, Harry Cusick, and later, Al Capone. Even locals were not safe from the gangs that operated with impunity, due to large police and political payoffs: it was known that men sometimes sold their dates into prostitution from dance halls, or for girls to be kidnapped off the street and held captive. As we all know, institutionalized human trafficking has by no means disappeared; post-soviet trafficking must be one of the least policed abominations of recent times.

Other tactics modern vice seem to have been invented in Chicago, and perfected in Budapest. Chicago’s Mickey Finn was a saloon owner who was famous for baiting tourists and unsuspecting men with seemingly available girls, who would then drug their drink with knock-out powder. The men would wake up, sometimes totally naked, in an alleyway in the back, with no memory of what proceeded. Budapest's Váci utca, is home to any number of konzum lányok (drink girls) plying this trade, with scant notice from the law. And it is not just tourists who are targeted. Tales abound of expats having been slipped a Mickey Finn at such crime-neutral places as Cha-Cha-Cha, Sark Presszó, and A38 to name but a few. As for gambling: I love that card games designed to swindle unsuspecting Chicago gamblers were called ‘bunko’ games. For those that don’t know, bunko in Hungarian is a meat-head, or thug. I am not sure if there is an etymological connection, but there is definitely a shared spirit.

Everybody, naturally, sees associations where they choose to. I have heard Budapest referred to as the Bangkok, or even the Tokyo of the West. There are those who call it the Paris of Central Europe. Nairobi of the EU, anybody? Perhaps it is a touch of homesickness that causes me to see Chicago everywhere, even in the decrepit corners and seedier streets. That is fine: Chicago, and all its vice, daring, and pride, is an inextricable part of my personal history, and I bring it with me wherever I travel.

A Letter from Gyula Krúdy

2008-12-06T19:10:00.004+01:00

My most esteemed friend and Editor:

I won’t bore you with my private affairs—as a matter of fact, I haven’t any that might be of interest. For years now I haven’t done anything that wasn’t for my own pleasure or displeasure…My way of life, my solitude and indifference have nurtured this horrible luxury. But now I feel called upon to tell you about something that happened over Pentecost to upset my daily routine. Old man Szabo brought me a letter from America. (You see, in my neighborhood we know everyone by name, the letter carrier, the chimney sweep, the woman at the corner newsstand…just like in a village.)

The letter came from Edward K. (I won’t spell out the name to spare him from all sorts of junk mail) in Los Angeles, 352 W. 96 St., inviting me to come to America. He’d heard about my illness, and that I am an author, and not so rich (they hear about everything in Los Angeles!) So he suggests that I should up and leave Margaret Island and move to Los Angeles where recently Lajos Biro was paid $15,000 for his play Hotel Imperial. The Hungarians already there, Erno Vajda, Vilma Banky, Ilona Fulop, Mihaly Kertesz (Michael Curtis) and others, are doing quite well, “for producers are crazy about foreign talent these days”. Therefore, I should embark without the least worry on an ocean liner, ticket compliments of Gyula Zukor, who is from Nyiregyhaza and thus my ‘homey’. Well, I haven’t answered Edward K’s letter so far, perhaps I never will, because I owe a lot of letters. But one thing is for sure, I won’t be going to America.

Back in the old days it was village folk who were enticed to go to America; these days it’s actors and writers…But what would I do in America, going on 50, and no longer able, or willing, to indulge in theatrics, showmanship, razzle-dazzle, and doubletalk. And what would I do with my $15,000 over there, feeling queasy abroad, where each moment would be a reminder of friends going hungry back home in impoverished Hungary? Oh yes, I could use $15,000, right here at home in Budapest where $15,000 is still a princely sum straight out of Thousand and One Nights that would buy a house with garden, a sumptuous plot in the cemetery and plenty of friendship. If they only sent that $15,000 to me here, I don’t think I’d resent old man Szabo for delivering it one day.

But to travel by ocean liner, and train, a stranger among strangers, where sweets taste bitter, the cushy feels hard, and the stars in the sky seem fake; to study new faces to learn what those smiles mean, and grimaces, and what is true in their eyes and what is inside their heads, to know when open arms mean to hug or choke, and who has murder on his mind—$15,000 is not enough to make me learn a whole new world. No, my dear Edward K., it’s not worth it to me even to dream of $15,000 at the sacrifice of discarding my old garments, changing the expression on my face, to hop around when I’d rather stay seated, to laugh when I’m not in the mood, to play the aspiring hopeful when in truth I no longer aspire to anything; to load my shoulders with new burdens and my head with new ideas, and fall out of love with my old ideals and exchange them for new ones (that have proven to be unfortunate). New way of breathing, new way of sleeping, new daily routines to confuse my limbs, and never again a whiff of the air I’ve gotten used to at home, or a sleep like some old vine stock that every year bears less fruit, but still does its duty…Why take on new tasks when I can’t fulfill the ones I already have.

No, my dear Edward, your $15,000 is not worth it to turn me into a migratory bird, to be a distant observer of my homeland from some far-off neutral star, and never again hear the sounds of our domestic squabbles and jealous bickerings—just so I can get acquainted with a new ailment: homesickness. I believe that homesickness is the most unbearable of all ailments. Why should I buy myself another illness, when I have plenty of that already?

My Dear Odon, I won’t be going to Los Angeles…So I’ll just stay right here at home, because I wouldn’t be able to get used to a brave new world. In the end, you get to love your unhappiness and your illness.

(1928)

Translated by John Batki, used by permission. This letter, along with a previously untranslated story by Gyula Krúdy will be published in an upcoming issue of Pilvax Magazine.

Starvation: A Food Review

2008-11-27T18:15:00.015+01:00

The best way to put it is that I needed a secular kind of Lent; a purging of toxins as well as an atonement for overindulgence. And when you write for a food website, and don’t object to the occasional 5 a.m. nightcap, Budapest is an easy place to overindulge. So, based on approximately no one's good advice or any worthwhile guidelines, I decided to go on a fast, an exercise that blurs the line between self-discipline and self-torture.

Day 1

Fasting should be all about not eating, but once you are deprived of food, it becomes all about what you are not eating. Morning is difficult, not because I need a lot of food when waking, but because my morning habits are fairly well-ingrained: coffee, food, writing, shower, writing, and chasing money for the rest of the day. But the simple act of removing food from the equation throws the whole ritual off balance. There can be no writing while fasting, and morning becomes nothing more than the after-math of sleep.

Words, however, over the course of the day, take on sublimated meaning. Brioche becomes a one-word poem, evoking something at once forbidden and essential. Saying Hungarian food words is particularly tantalizing: füstölt gomolya, körte, zsemle: scalloping out each syllable as though they might materialize from my mouth, and sate my hunger.

The city is a carnival of food smells: hot yeasty air from the bakery on Tatra, Subway Sandwiches (which you can smell from halfway down the block); and the carnal olfactory incitement of gyros meat roasting on the spit. The soap in the window of Lush makes my mouth water. Every fruit is a precious artifact: an object of desire. On the street, I split people into two classes: those who are eating, and those who are not. One thing is for sure; the world is a very unfair and cruel place without food. I would forgive anybody a crime who experienced this feeling after being overtaken by the smell of roasting meat. Hunger turns you outlaw.

The evening is spent thinking about food. You never realize just how omnipresent it is until you are deprived of it. Distraction through entertainment should provide some relief, but while characters in Victor Pelevin’s novel Clay Machine Gun feast on Soba noodles, I silently urge them on, to eat more and more, hoping their gorging on food turns into a pivotal plot point (but this being Pelevin, plot points are illusory as the noodles I was imagining). Rented films are not much help either: in Finding Forrester, canned tomato soup had never looked so good; and, of course, Diner is on TCM. Though exhausted, sleep comes slowly.

Day 2

Dreams exclusively concern food. Oddly, it is lencse fözelék that recurs during the night. Only later does the significance of the lentil occur to me. I enjoy meal after meal of it before I wake, instantly knowing I will have none on this day.

With nothing to chew over but thoughts, I acknowledge there is a sort of masochistic pleasure at work here. With that in mind, I wander over to Westend City Center and sit myself down in the middle of the food court for lunch rush. The sensory overload of the vivid colors, smells and sights, create a kind of synaesthesia, whereby the colors are full of flavor: it isn’t the food that looks edible, it is the colors. Even the orange food trays appear tasty. Smells, too, are painfully sharp in my nose. What a preposterous amount and variety of food we consume. But while food has gained meaning for me, it seems to have lost it for everybody else. It is like porn: an instrument of selfishness. People eat and eat, discarding piles of what they cannot eat, and leave. I watch for a while, then suddenly, something clicks, and the whole scene revolts me: who are all these people, with all their meals? The thought of food is disgusting. Appetite is a weakness. Eating is gluttony. I cannot watch any longer, and home I go.

The night brings nothing but loneliness and depression. As somebody who spends a lot of time by myself, loneliness is actually a fairly rare state for me. Sure, I have plenty of friends I could call: but they are all eaters. Hunger makes you isolate – hunger makes you profoundly alone.

After a fitful sleep, where my muscles ache, where I dream lucidly of food, I wake, shower, and am the first in line at the nearest étkezdé. I order lencse fözelék, and from the first spoonful, savor it patiently, gratefully, then return to the society of the living.

The Hipster Conquest of Budapest, or: Teenage Lobotomy II: It Came From Within!

2008-11-18T14:52:00.015+01:00

This is a continuation of post The Hipster Conquest of Budapest, which can be found below.

Of course I was just funnin’ ya with that Ramones video, because there has been no force more powerful in the appropriation and reselling of youth culture than MTV. Thanks to its far-reaching, Vans-shod tentacles, kids here can see exactly how their counter-parts in the West are dressing; and H & M, plus any number of fly-by-night mall boutiques, fall all over themselves to cater to those dictates. It is a nifty closed-circuit for sellers: MTV brands the look, the labels that sell the look advertise on MTV. It is win/win for all involved, and has globalized fashion trends (to wit: these people have a lot of Hungarian wiggers to answer for – I hope they sleep well at night). Couple the perpetually replenishing cool-factor of rock (and all its sub-genres) with the visual stimulus of MTV and, as that Vampire Weekend song goes, the kids don’t stand a chance. And countrymen, let’s not fool ourselves that post-bloc youth are aping our style because it is ‘American’, it is because MTV is American.

To call kids who comb the images on MTV for fashion cues ‘fashion victims’ would not be too far off target. But youth everywhere are a marketer’s dream. They come to the game with open minds, and deep identity insecurities. Basically, kids would buy the dirt from under their own fingernails if you could figure out a way to sell it to them. Which is why – in Hungary, at least – hallways and even classrooms of schools are prime advertising space for youth-oriented products, a nefarious little practice that has raised objections in about zero quarters. It is not just the usual suspects like Coke getting in on the action. Because ‘cool’ marketers know, when something takes here, it takes big: Green Day, for example, the only thing that both my second graders and high-schoolers could agree upon. (Green Day themselves were only too happy to benefit from their unlikely success in Eastern Europe – nice fifty dollars a pop ‘punk’ show, boys).

But the youth market sought by MTV and kids who have appropriated hipness are not the same thing. MTV is cool, or at least what passes for cool. Hipness is harder to nail down, and should be harder to market and, thus, to market to. Take Tisza trainers, for example. For those that don’t know, Tisza is the former state-owned brand of athletic training shoe that was sold under socialism. These days, under the guidance of a young entrepreneur, they are hundred-dollar a pair, high-design sneakers that are so omnipresent on the first generation of youth not to know socialism, that they are almost a cliché. They are not only a great product, Tiszas are cool – but they are not genuinely hip. Should kids start collecting vintage Tiszas, that would be hip. Hipness is all about indirect consumerism: building an identity from consumer artifacts of the past (whether it is your nostalgia you are indulging in, or somebody else’s does not seem relevant). For example: cowboy shirts (plenty of those here, these days), Star Wars figures, Members Only-style windbreakers, cartoon-character lunch boxes, or, say Def Leppard tee shirts. Star Wars figures are nobody’s idea of cool, but if presented in the correct ironic framing, they are very hip.

In the tipping point (an overused buzz word these days, but applicable here) of hip in Budapest, something interesting happened: Csendes Art Bar. Few locals and fewer expats know about Csendes, but it represents the first real home-grown expression of Hungarian hipsterism that I have encountered. What trips me up about Csendes is that it looks like no place in Williamsburg, Silver Lake, or Wicker Park, but you could set it down in any of those locales and it would not be out of place. It is only imitative in its aesthetic, not in its actual style. It is totally Hungarian, but hip to the gills. For starters, there is virtually nothing in Csendes that is new. It is a shrine to ironic comment on childhood. Virtually every decoration (or installation) uses a cartoon character, scavenged doll, or old movie poster, not to mention, a vintage Tisza trainer bag; plus they did something I have never seen a bar or café in Budapest do before – they kept the name and a portion of the old sign of the business preceded it – the Csendes Étterem – and incorporated it into the design. Needless to say, it is also pretty great place to have a beer on a Saturday night.

In the States, way back when, hipsterism began as an organic set of values (of the beat generation), then changed into a lifestyle, then finally evolved into a fashion pose that could be appropriated by media and corporate interests, and sold back to the youth market by the likes of Urban Outfitters, Capital Records, and eBay; whereas the Hungarian hipsterism has worked in the opposite direction, from a mediated style sold to the youth market over the airwaves, to something more organic, and authentic feeling, that is at least attempting to defy being sold to. They do tend to do things in reverse here. Optimistically, there will also be a set of values that will bind this community together other than coveting new/vintage KISS tee-shits, but perhaps that is hoping for too much.

This embrace of consumerism, without buying anything ‘new’ that is the hallmark of hipsterism, must be a conundrum for marketers who had it so easy with Hungarian youth ten, even five, years ago. But they didn’t clock all those credits in Ivy League psych-departments for nothing. One way to get their dollar, at least in Budapest, is to create new ‘vintage-looking’ clothing. There is plenty of that, in used clothing shops and department stores alike. Another way is to brand something as cool so persuasively that you can sell the mere logo, like they do with the Vespa bags. This all leaves me nowhere in terms of my own black bag. What the hell, I might as well chuck it all and buy that black Ramones official diaper-carrier bag – my own checkered soul was sold long ago: some hipster kid is probably cutting it up into Kockás Fülű Nyúl sock puppets by now.

-Matt Ellis is a free-lance editor for Word Pill, a service for writers of fiction and non-fiction.

Pretty Ugly America

2008-11-13T10:41:00.002+01:00

This is a little off message for Mókus, but I was recently accused of looking down on Hungarians and asked why, oh why, don't I just pack up and go home if I find so much to fault. Well, this is what is waiting for me there. Besides, unless you can't infer from the thought, time, and interest-level that goes into my blog: I love this city.

The Hipster Conquest of Budapest, or: Teenage Lobotomy

2008-11-11T20:10:00.017+01:00

Anybody who knows me knows I carry a black book bag, basically, at all times I’m clothed, and sometimes when I’m not. They tend to last a year or two before the strap or zippers break, or holes wear through the bottom. Budapest, it is no secret, is about the worst place to be if you need something both specific and basic, such as knee socks, contact lens fluid, or, perhaps, a black shoulder bag. No problem: I know the drill. Hit every Iguana, Alter-Ego, or alt-rock haberdashery until something turns up. Only this time, nothing is turning up. Sure, there are plenty of black bags, but the trend (and there is no bucking trends, not in this city) is for shoulder bags with Converse, Vespa, or Nightmare before Christmas logos. I am making due without until I am next in Vienna.

It must be a great time to be a marketer: getting the cool kids to act as walking billboards for your products, and having them pay for the privilege. Of course, there is more to this whole scenario than just bags and logos. And not all of it is bad. Budapest has experienced, in the past few years, an amping up of youth culture and its youth-culture cool-factor. In other words, Budapest got hip. I had always taken comfort (albeit small) in the existence of Prague and Berlin, both cities magnetically drawing all the American hipsters off course before they could reach our humble town. Budapest has no heat, no buzz, and even less cool. And that is fine with me, and just about everybody I know. But what I didn’t anticipate is that hipster culture would spread like a virus, ignoring all boundaries of border and nationality. Hungarian kids got hip all by themselves. Well, not exactly. There was a ton of help from those who profit from their consumer choices. Local youth are sitting ducks for this kind of ‘cool’ branding, and have swallowed it whole. Their lives simply haven’t been the media blitzkrieg of that of the average American teen. Thus, they either haven’t developed the necessary defenses or haven’t been taught to see through the manipulation. And they tend to move in larger herds, whereas American teens have far more sub-sets of counter-culture to chose from. Hungarian – and youth of all over the post-Soviet era – are far more susceptible to 'cool-branding' than their American counter-parts, if for no other reason than we invented it. Or maybe they just don’t care. For whatever reason, it seems that the entire sub-22-year-old population is hip.

It is no great revelation that marketers love nothing more than a solid counter-culture with its own organically grown aesthetic: the more authentic and rigid the better. It is a brilliant trick, appropriating a sub-culture’s aesthetic, and then selling it back to them. I should learn how to do that. Take, for instance, punk rock. Ever heard of the Vans Warped Tour? When I was a teenager, Vans would have fit exactly nowhere into the equation of punk-plus-tour. Then came the almost overnight uptake of punk by American youth via the (major label, lest we forget) likes of Nirvana and their ilk. Whether kids like me, who helped create this sub-culture (by buying indie-label records, going to shows, reading Maximum Rock and Roll) were buying was irrelevant. Nirvana created a ‘mass sub-culture’, and one that demanded to be out-fitted. Too obvious? Forget Nirvana, let’s look at the Ramones: perhaps the coolest band of all time, and one of the primary forces in actually inventing punk. But that was then, this is now. The Ramones are no longer a band – they have cashed in on all that cool-band cache and have become a brand: and not in the way KISS is a brand: they have become a clothing and accessories brand. Ramones tee? check. Ramones belt buckle? check. Ramones scented candle: smells just like teen spirit! ok, check! Only, ask a hipster Hungarian kid which their favorite Ramones song is, and you will see just how hollow a trend it is. "A Ramones album? You mean, they make music too?" Can I get an ‘I wanna be sedated’? At least the kids know Nirvana was a band, not a fashion label.

But let’s imagine you are totally out of it, or just too young to remember when grunge ruled the radio waves and runways. How about Disney? Yes, even they are going for the hipster's pocketbook with a darker, edgier branding. Now that the kids who have grown out of their Little Mermaid backpacks have grown up, it is time to comment on the passing of that childhood phase with, what else, but more Disney gear. What hipster wouldn’t want a hip-hop-inspired graffiti Mickey Mouse baseball cap? I am this close to wanting one myself.

Hey: bad news for idealistic former punks, great news for the average young Hungarian hipster. Buying quirky things, creating your identity around some ironic pastiches of childhood is fun! You get all these funky anime dolls to collect, you can pierce yourself anywhere you choose, look cool in the eyes of your friends, and more importantly, your parents just don’t get it. And, let’s face it: buying things is fun, period. It might not be authentic individualism, but at least they think it is, at least they are trying, and that is nice to see. It is far more appealing than the drab beige or brown uniform of the Hungarian male circa 2000. Plus, all this has fueled a boom in vintage clothing shops, which has made clothing shopping in Budapest much more affordable and interesting. From a purely selfish angle, this hipster marketing triumph is good for the likes of me, as it increases my own choice as a local consumer. I, too, wear Tisza trainers, and have a Def Leppard tee-shirt, without ever having owned a Def Leppard album. But American and Hungarian hipsterism is different, and in a vital way. How so? Return next week for Part II of The Hipster Conquest of Budapest, or: Hey! Ho! Let’s Go (shopping!).

But, for now, a Ramones video, which I highly recommend not skipping. It will do you a power of good, and, for the time being at least, it is free.

-Matt Ellis is a free-lance editor for Word Pill, a service for writers of fiction and non-fiction.

Picking Up Something Spicy and Illicit at Rákóczi Tér (Csarnok)

2008-11-05T12:40:00.002+01:00

The Gustave Eiffel-designed market halls, with their iron girder lattice-work, look like huge hangers for old-time zeppelins. But this being the Eight District, the flight is mostly chemically induced, and the only contraptions of bodily transport are the home-built half wheelchair/half bikes favored by a local stripe of paraplegic. With the gentrification and, now, total gutting of Rákóczi Tér, the neighborhood that is the former welcome mat of the red-light district, has almost become upstanding. But there are still oddities to be found in my favorite csarnok, if you just scratch the surface a little. Here are a few:

5. Tiny pickled melons. Looking like aborted watermelons, I have never seen their like outside of Hungary. At once sweet and sour, and occasionally fermented along with hot peppers, the tiny dinnye can be found at any of the row of pickle stands.

4. Zsaru, Krimi, and Pandúr magazines. Want to know what strip of Pest gigolos and rent boys cruise, how many break-ins there were in Borsod County, or just see some grizzly pictures of dead bodies? The newsstand has the best and bloodiest crime magazines, written in easy to read, low-brow Hungarian, and an excellent source of new and shocking vocabulary.

3. Horse sausage. I don’t know the history of eating horse in Hungary and Austria, but I suspect it coincided with a wartime famine. The spicy links look innocuous enough, and unless you know the word for horse in Hungarian (ló), could be easily mistaken for standard pork sausage. A decadent, nay, downright taboo-busting snack, especially when coupled with number one on our list.

2. Chinese porn. But I just bought it for the…characters. Along with soy-bean drinks, fermented eggs, dried greater-lizard fish barbeques sauce, and frozen crabs, the Chinese market at the Rákóczi Tér csarnok is one of the city’s best, and might just be the only local purveyor of Chinese pornographic magazines and soft-core movies.

1. Moonshine. Cheap házi pálinka is to the Eighth District what oil is to Texas. Only don’t light a match too close to the codgers and nénis whose tables run down the center of the building. The hootch is not on display with other only slightly more legal goods: home-made hot pepper sauce, odd-looking onions that could only be home-grown, and already-baked squash. Their fruit brandy is made in backyard stills, sold in mineral-water bottles kept hidden from view. Last I checked it was but a thousand forints for .25 liters. Drink up: now who says Rákóczi Tér is getting respectable?

Gloomy Someday: Kristof Hajos of The Unbending Trees on Their First Album, International Recognition, and the National Pastime of Melancholy

2008-10-27T11:00:00.001+01:00

Ah, the Hungarian pop scene, a target so big you could drive a tour bus through it. With bands like the Moog, who basically represent the outsourcing of western indie pop, and MC Speak becoming a Jonathan Safran Foer character come to life, it is like a bad joke that somebody keeps retelling, hoping it will eventually get a laugh, if but for no other reason than out of mercy.

True, you get the occasional Balkan-infused bright spot, but mostly it is a grim world for new-music lovers. It shouldn’t have been surprising—yet it was—when The Unbending Trees’ first video, "You Are A Lover", shot in a stark and minimalist black and white, capturing all the melancholy of a Budapest that looked trapped in time, started making regular appearances on MTV. Even more gratifying, The Unbending Trees actually turned out be one of Hungary’s own, though backed by an international record label. Having been spotted by Ben Watt of Everything But the Girl on myspace, and subsequently signed to his label Strange Feeling Records, The Unbending Trees are aimed at an international market. But it turns out Hungarians also liked what they saw, and the elegiac, affecting song rose to number 5 on the local video charts before the album, Chemically Happy (Is The New Sad) was released this earlier this month.

I sat down with The Unbending Trees frontman Kristof Hajos at his favorite Ráday street café Mode (since closed) to find out what he was thinking by putting out melodic, carefully arraigned and written music, and thus confounding all my nasty preconceptions about Hungarian pop, and discovered he had more than one story to tell.

Mókus: In terms of “You Are A Lover”, it made me a little angry that some foreign band came to Budapest and captured the feeling of the city so well, then I discovered it was Hungarian, which was pleasing.

Hajos: It was a funny thing because Ben (Watt) didn’t want a video, because of it not being cost effective, and then I thought that there is a young guy who I used to work with on some web pages, and I asked him to help make the video. I was just coming up with ideas of what to do, and I was just sitting on the underground, the földallati, and I was thinking, wouldn’t it be cool if there was just some couple who would snog next to me like hell. And I told him this idea and we were thinking like, to do this in the BKV might not be such a good idea, so why don’t, we just do it in a car? So I asked my colleague who sits next to me ‘do you feel like snogging in a video?’ So they came but they split up after the video, but it was a lucky combination because the video cost zero forints and the welcome has been really warm.

Mókus: The famous Hungarian song "Gloomy Sunday" came up on my youtube search of you.

Hajos: We covered that version live, and it comes up on all these sites for some reason. But it is also going to be on the UK edition of the album.

Mókus: Why not on the Hungarian release?

Hajos: That would be too cheap, too obvious, but for England it seems like a good thing to do. We also used to do "A Whiter shade of Pale".

Mókus: I read that Hungarians were rated the third saddest population in Europe.

Hajos: I think our music is not going to help. But when we signed with Ben, I did not think the album would be published here because it is so against the mainstream here in Hungary, but the welcome has been a lot warmer, I would have never dreamed to be played on MTV like we are.

Mókus: Well, it is fresh.

Hajos: But Hungarians don’t care about what’s fresh, they care about what the trend is. But we are not Kylie (Minogue).

Mókus: Then what is your logical predecessor?

Hajos: I don’t know–I don’t really listen to music like that. The music itself is written the two other guys, Peter Hary and Havasi, the renown pianist, I only write the lyrics and sometimes the melodies. But the melodies sort of come from the music anyway. So what they say is we are sort of like Nick Drake or Tim Buckley or all these people who have died prematurely. We were also compared to Antony and the Johnsons, but he has a much higher voice. It might be just because he plays piano, I don’t know.

Mókus: Is there anything specifically Hungarian about your music?

Hajos: I don’t know. The Kodaly way of music education is in our blood, so maybe.

Mókus: Do you mind talking about what the album title refers to?

Hajos: That is fine to talk about. The album is called Chemically Happy (Is the New Sad). I had a nervous breakdown in 1997, and they started treating me with different kinds of drugs, tranquilizers, and antidepressants. It was useful at the time because I could finish university and quit smoking, but I developed something of an addiction, which was very depressing. It was like, before age 30, every day wondering if you forgot to take your pill in the morning.

Mókus: Is going off the medication perhaps not worth the psychic sacrifice?

Hajos: Not really. For the first couple of years, but afterwards, I had to be really careful. It was just too much chemistry, but not the right chemistry. I have come off tranquilizers completely, and struggling to come off anti-depressants, but it is difficult, because it is not a physical, but mental addiction.

Mókus: Do you feel the medication altered your personality?

Hajos: Well, it took away my moods. That is what that line is about, chemically happy is the new sad. Not really happy, not really sad, just in the middle. But that is also an experience.

Mókus: Do you think Hungarians are resigned to being sad as part of their national identity?

Hajos: Yeah, well I definitely think Hungarians are not the happiest people. I lived in Slovenia for a year, and it is an amazing change. You cross the border, and people start smiling, well maybe it is not so black and white, but wherever you go, people are so much more optimistic. Even if you go to London. There is not much to be happy about in London either. But I don’t foresee moving out there. I am quite happy with my job right now. So unless it is really necessary, I don’t think I will move. Maybe if the band becomes that successful over there, but that is not very likely. Seriously, that would probably fuck me up again mentally. I like walking in the streets like everyone else. It is perfectly lovely playing in small clubs, having a bunch of people that appreciate your music.

Mókus: I also like the new video to "Overture", was there a story behind it?

Hajos: "Overture" is a duet with the every-so-lovely Tracey Thorn (of Everything But the Girl). It is funny when you get to sing a duet with your once idol. When she agreed to do it, that was one of the most amazing times of my life. The song is about trying to open the other. I find we are getting more and more closed and trying to hide our real selves from others.

Mókus: What are Strange Feeling’s expectations of the album?

Hajos: We just had a little chat with him (Ben Watt) about that, now that the album has actually been in the stores for two weeks. I don’t think he is interested in sales. He just wants to get us out there, in the first place. If we sell a couple of thousand copies, it’s fine. Of course playing music is very enjoyable and I don’t want to worry about it. I do find releasing an album very tiring both physically and I don’t want to end up in an asylum.

Mókus: I sent the video to a friend of mine in New York. He said he loved it, but detected a sort of underlying hysteria.

Hajos: Underlying hysteria? I don’t think it is underlying at all? I think it is quite obvious.

The complete interview with Kristof Hajos will be included in the upcoming music-themed print issue of Pilvax Magazine.

Photo of The Unbending Trees by Balint Radoczy, used by permission.

There is a Light and it Never Goes Out

2008-10-20T17:19:00.001+02:00

Schoolgirl Suicide Cult Forms around Forgotten Hungarian Classic! Okay, that is a little misleading, but the novel Journey by Moonlight by Antal Szerb is rumored to have pushed more than one weepy romantic coed over the edge. Unlike similar cultish works such as Goethe’s Sorrows of Young Werther and Plath’s The Bell Jar, Szerb’s novel is not actually about suicide, at least not in the literal sense. Its appeal is more cryptic and profound; lying in the narrator’s vacillation between the world’s expectations, and their incompatibility with his own youthful ideals, as personified by an elusive femme fatal.

The case for Journey by Moonlight as one of, if not the best, Hungarian novel of the last century (that can be read in translation) deserves to be made. Less interesting Hungarian novels have received far more attention in foreign circles. But not once have I heard the rigorous, but bloated masterpieces of Esterházy or Nádas recommended with the evangelical zeal which accompanies that of Szerb’s novel. Unlike those more lauded Hungarian authors, Szerb actually was a renown scholar, and didn’t have to prove his erudition page by page. Nor are the more narrative based works of Márai or Kosztolányi as packed with such tantalizingly sugar-coated ideas. You can’t read Journey by Moonlight without mentally casting it as a film.

The story follows Mihály on his honeymoon and eventual abandonment of his wife Erzsi, when the ghosts, both literal and figurative, of his past surface in locations across Italy. With its morbid, magnetic, and simultaneous attractions to love and death, Journey by Moonlight is most easily compared to Death in Venice. But Journey by Moonlight is more pastoral, bubbling over with sticky sweet, but ultimately fatal nostalgia for youth and lost love; it actually has more in common with Haruki Murakami’s South of the Border West of the Sun, or Donna Tartt’s Secret History.

Perhaps Journey by Moonlight has never been fully embraced as Hungary’s greatest novel because it was not based in Hungary. Antal Szerb was truly a novelist of the world, setting his first effort The Pendragon Legend in England, Journey by Moonlight in Italy, and Oliver VII in an imaginary European country. Unlike other Hungarian writers, his love of country was never expressed through meditations on Hungarian society, or via revolutionary poetry. Much like his stories, his patriotism was somehow not bound to such terrestrial conventions. A lot of good his subtlety did him; as an ethnic Jew, he was forced by the Arrow Cross into a labor camp in 1944. Antal Szerb died before age 45, at the hands of his own countrymen. It should be pointed out that Szerb was given many chances to emigrate, even while he was enduring the degradations of labor camp, but he refused to leave his family and fellow writers behind. Unlike his protagonist, he never surrendered his ideals in the face of an uncaring and brutal world. He died the quiet death of an unsung hero. The world of literature is vastly richer for his brief journey through its midst.

"We carry within ourselves the direction our lives will take. Within ourselves burn the timeless, fateful stars."

-Matt Ellis is a free-lance editor for Word Pill, a service for writers of fiction and non-fiction.

Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter, or: Budapest’s Real Underground Culture

2008-10-09T20:35:00.000+02:00

The underpasses that lay under Budapest’s main boulevard intersections, and spill out from the main train stations, are the toxin-collecting lymph nodes of the city. Or, more generously, autonomous break-away zones of punks, prostitutes, and free-ranging men not adverse to a tipple. They are the malls of the downtrodden, each one offering its own particular brand of service and its own individual grimy culture, or, sub-culture, if you will. If you are lucky you can find a few of the city’s more colorful street artists performing, some descent grub, or get a good buzz on, all underground. But which has the most dynamic range of services and entertainments? We rated select city underpasses based on the street-food available, the entertainment value, the cleanliness, and the avoidablitiy, (meaning, how easy it is to bypass aboveground), to determine a winner. Which one came out on top? Read on.

Spoiler: it’s Nyugati Underpass.

Blaha Lujza: Resembling a social club for retired circus carnies, or casting call for Sid and Nancy Go to Budapest, Blaha has turned into a run-off ditch for miscreants, homeless, and worse, missionaries. We send our missionaries to Africa, Africa sends theirs to Blaha. It also serves as the main canteen for the Krishna soup kitchen, a gathering place for refugees, and a supporting wall to more than a few drunks. Punks claimed the center pillars for a while, and Roma have ad hoc vegetable stands, selling whatever is in season. That the Scientologists haven’t set up an outpost from their nearby headquarters seems short-sighted. After all, if you believe in aliens, Blaha would be a good place to start looking for them.

Eats: 2/5 There is but one bakery, and a decent looking gelato stand inside, though the Krishna soup line that forms outside it is open to all.
Entertainment: 2/5 Plenty of missionaries and nationalist organizations set up camp here, but few of the classic Hungarian street musicians deign to play this seedy venue.
Cleanliness: 2/5 That it is cleaned nightly does not matter. It just feels dirty down there, even with no dirt in sight.
Avoidablilty: 3/5 nearby crosswalks at three of four streets of the intersection make it easily avoidable.

Keleti: The extensive Keleti underpass recently underwent a huge renovation, leaving it with significantly fewer kiosks. An international and commuter travel hub, Keleti has always attracted its share of loiterers. Former home of Budapest’s speed chess players, Keleti suffers for their loss. That said, if you are willing to dine with the hoi polloi, food possibilities abound, as do book stalls.

Eats: 3/5 Very good, with the Baross Étterem in Keleti and several Hungarian büfés, a stand to get sausages and beer, as well as a Pizza Hut outlet. Gone with the renovation, however, are the excellent potato lángos and fried chicken stand.
Entertaiment: 1/5 Surprisingly under-utilized by buskers, considering all the tourist traffic. No pubs or gaming.
Cleanliness: 4/5 Doesn’t feel that bad, probably due to the really dim lighting.
Avoidablility: 1/5 Want to cross Rákóczi by the station? It is a must, though Keleti station itself is accessible without going underground. If you want a local train ticket, however, it’s down you go.

Boráros Tér: Also with an open air courtyard, it serves as a connection point for commuters coming in from the burbs, or crossing over into Buda. One of the more palatable underpasses, mostly because there is so little to offend. Homeless gravitate towards the matronly babushka sculpture/drinking fountain, and her bronze patina bosom and oblong wine casks.

Eats: 4/5 Burgers, gyros, bakeries, pizza, plus lángos and sweet kürtos kalács – there is a lot of fast food here, some of it not terrible.
Entertainment: 2/5 Not even Zámbó Jimmy could entertain the grim commuters that speed through Boráros. Have yet to see anybody try. There is a pub, though.
Cleanliness: 3/5 Nothing too stinky going on, though the darker the corner, the more likely it doubles a minimalist pisseur.
Avoidability: 2/5 almost unavoidable if you need to pass this way.

Déli: Buda has so few underpasses, but Déli pu. makes the most for its Buda residents. Déli is the gentlmen’s underpass. With a jewelers and a bank, it is the Switzerland of underpasses. An open air courtyard offers a few creature comforts, including seats and a curious geometrical sculpture. There is much to love here, including varied cuisine, and lots of shops.

Eats: 3/5 A sit-down restaurant, a Chinese büfé, pizza, and traditional Hungarian can all be found on the environs, plus a late-night green grocers, and a really good bakery and donut stand in the corridor that runs under Alkotás.
Entertainment: 2/5 Most of the best street entertainers can be found in Buda, but not at Déli. They favor the outdoor venue of Moszkva Tér. There are a few pubs, however, and a gaming room.
Cleanliness: 4/5 Pretty good considering the foot traffic.
Avoidability: 4/5 Doesn’t connect major thoroughfares, therefore easy to avoid.

Nyugati: The crumb de la crumb of underpasses, it is a scary, strange, fascinating world unto itself. The catacombs that run towards the train station are filled with kiosks selling knock-off designer wear, perfumes, and a few book stalls. And, for the record, they don’t take kindly to having their picture taken.
Eats: 5/5 Fank me? Fank you! They have it all here, from Subway and Burger King franchises, to American hotdogs, gyros, an all-night green grocers, and a really good donut stand. Venture further in to find Hungarian büfés and pizza by the slice.
Entertainment: 5/5 The venue of choice for Korean missionary choruses and the dudes who play on half-filled glasses, some of the most interesting street performers can be found here, just keep your hand on your wallet. The speed chess players have taken up residence towards the Westend mall entrance, and take on all comers. Also, a casino, and a really cool American-diner looking bar, plus a pub that sells Ft 70 wine spritzers. The wayward Roma girls and attendant managers have made it the new Rákóczi Tér.
Cleanliness: 3/5 Food smells tend to overpower the stink.
Avoidablity: 1/5 There are days when I shudder knowing I will have to pass this intersection, and I have seen friends take their lives into their own hands by trying to frogger their way across the street rather than brave the journey under Nyugati. But like a black hole, you are ultimately powerless against its pull. Might as well make the most of it, and have a fank on the run.

Fall Out Baj: the Trouble with Ákos, Emo, and One Drowned Kitten

2008-10-03T22:51:00.000+02:00

Hungarian singing star Ákos turned 40 this year. The world at large failed to notice.

Ákos, who made his mark before the days of the pre-fab, TV-packaged Megasztár, is one of the few home-grown stadium draws in Hungary. To the casual observer, he comes off as a typical self-aggrandizing, bloated crooner, whose videos are filled with weepy, candle-holding, Hungarian flag-waving youth, designed to reinforce exactly what Ákos means, or should mean, to his fan base. Ákos is also an outspoken advocate of nationalism and center-right politics within Hungary. But it wasn’t always blatant nationalistic pandering for Ákos. Before his solo career, he played in a much-loved, but much less listened-to synth-pop band, called Bonanza Banzai. Highly derivative of Depeche Mode, the Hungarian Depeche Mode Fan Club still regularly play Bonanza Banzai videos at their parties. So, how did this spandex-wearing, died hair aficionado of glam pop (and all the "People are People" values it represents) turn so deeply conservative?

The answer is that Ákos (as a persona) always was conservative, much like so many members of what constitutes your average ‘alternative’ community here in Budapest. You are more likely to see a Hungarian flag pin on a typical Hungarian punk than an anarchy symbol, as likely to see a swastika as a pentagram decorating a goth. Many counter-culture movements, which tend to be so socially progressive in the States, share a union with right wing nationalism in Hungary. And, by all appearances, it is a very comfortable marriage indeed. One the same bill, I saw Egészséges Fejbőr (Healthy Head Skin, or Healthy Scalp, a loud and profoundly racist hate-core band) and a rockabilly band Sonic Cats play together, the audience seamlessly transitioning from do-woping to "Blues Suede Shoes", to heiling Hitler along to lyrics of songs like "Fekete Majmok" ("Black Monkeys"). What is surprising about an EFB concert, is just how easy it is to fit in: they don't play to just skinheads, their audience is, by all appearances, a cross-section of (white, non-Jewish, obviously) Hungarian society. People bring their kids.

The most conspicuous manifestation the right/left union in Hungary was the recent (alleged) coupling of a far-right anti-Semitic blogger and the Hungarian chapter of the Animal Liberation Front, who paired to execute and document an action against entities involved in a theatrical performance at a Jewish run and patronized club, Sirály, that involved dumping a bucket of pig shit on the objectionable person's head. That an artist who drown a kitten on film was targeted by ALF, doesn’t really bear much comment; the art itself was banal, heartless, and just dumb, and ALF typically take such radical action against abusers of animals. What was shocking was the partnership of Hungary’s most vocal right-wingers and an organization with an ultra-progressive cause.

Why does such a thick cord of nationalism tie together so many counter-cultural factions here? The lameness of Hungarian rock is partially to blame (I am coming to realize that Hungarian rock is going to be the whipping boy of this particular blog). The majority of both successful and up-and-coming Hungarian rock bands give their audience little more than pale imitations of foreign bands, and have so piteously little to offer by way of non-manufactured rebelliousness, originality, or social agenda. Just look to Hungarian emo for a truly toothless, mall-ready, and vapid music scene. It is hard to see local emo as more than foreign fashion and identity filtered through semi-talented opportunists. Conversely, a band like EFB, in addition to longevity (their hate is a slow-burning one, they have been around for almost 25 years now), they offer passion, community, and social agenda. And believe what you want about youth apathy—they do want the structure of social agenda, a scene to aspire to (where acceptance is not signified by mall purchases and expensive hair-cuts), a cue about how to cope in such a quickly changing society—and I would venture to say that the world of the Hungarian teen is vastly more complicated than mine was when I was growing up.

Or perhaps its attractiveness lies in the fact that nationalism is one of the last causes which resists being bought and sold, or turned into a transient fashion, despite the best efforts of Ákos’s sellers (MTV, VIVA). Nationalism holds little hope of attracting corporate sponsorship. It is one of the few authentic grass-roots movements around, and Hungarian identity is a cause worth fighting for in these borderless days of the EU.

But god, don’t I just want to stop every flag-waving Hungarian punk and point out the disconnect there; that they are walking oxymorons. Don't I just want to take them by their shoulders, shake them really hard and demand to know how they could have possibly taken "God Save the Queen" literally. And as much as I also just want to write the whole thing off, I can’t. These are the kids I have taught, laughed with, cared for, who I don’t want to disavow because of a scribbled swastika or Justice for Hungary tee-shirt.

I don’t know, maybe Ákos is more relevant than I give him credit for, and at 40, is still a true representation of Hungarian counter-culture. That is a scary thought.

Top Five Budapest Cafés for Writing

2008-09-29T20:26:00.002+02:00

Since the tacky renovation of my favorite writing café, Angelica Kávéház, on the Buda side, I have made it my business to scout some other attractive places to sit for a few hours with a notebook and pen, or laptop. It is not easy. A good café for writing is one where you can find solitude while still being amidst a crowd (which is not entirely unlike a writer’s function in society). There should be noise present, but not invasively so. And, for me, there needs to be an unnamable sort of moldering in the air, the knowledge that writers before you have fearlessly taken up their task in the space you are sitting in, and others will come after. Every good café has a ghost or two.

New Starbucks clones, as well as old Viennese-style coffee houses, abound in Budapest. Some are opulent beyond belief (the New York Café), some are local-minded and packed with students (Praga café) but only a few are truly ideal writing spaces. It is worth pointing out that, at the turn of the last century, the city’s cafes were hotbeds of intellectual activity, and social clubs for the those involved in the golden age of writing in Budapest, when the famed Nyugat literary review published the work of Hungary’s most daring, innovative, as well as revolutionary (in the real sense of the world) writing–the writers known as the nyugatos. Those days are gone, but the writers who lived and wrote over a hundred years ago (Móricz, Babits, and Ady, to name but a few) are paid homage in one way or another at cafes across the city, which are quick to put on display any paraphernalia connecting them to this unique literary scene.

As for me-I write, live, and commit acts of minor revolutionary import, on the Pest side, and the list reflects that:

5. Café Eckermann: the only truly new space on my list, though its former incarnation on Andrássy was a regular spot of local artist and writers, including Esterházy Péter. Not many revolutions were started from that place, but more than a few drinking binges were. The new space on Ráday is one of the only cafés that can still actually lay claim to hosting a literary community: editors of the German literary review Harom Holló (Three Ravens) meet here regularly, and their review is available for purchase. Eckermann also offers great vegetarian and home-cooked food, as noted in my review on chew.

4. Puskin Kávéház: Nothing grand or spectacular here, but the Puskin has always been a wonderful spot to people watch, and be left alone (in a good way) by the wait-staff for hours. Its space is functional, but all the components come together well, and the coffee is very fairly priced. Frequently doubling as a gallery, up-and-coming Hungarian artists and photographers are chosen by a curator who knows what they are doing. This is a great fall-back café that stays open later than most others. Puskin, it should go without saying, is named for one of Russia’s greatest writers.

3. Uránia Café in the Uránia National Cinema: they invented the cliché ‘painstakingly restored’ with the Uránia Café in mind. The details on the vaulting and ceiling are worth a trip alone. There are surprisingly few tables in the large space, and they are set far enough apart that conversations of surrounding patrons diminish to nothing more than a pleasant babble. Plus, there is a choice table, but only one, on the balcony overlooking Rákóczi, for those who really want to be alone to work.

2. Művész Café: I have been going to Művész off an on since arriving in Budapest so many years ago. There is a faded, refined feel to the place; it is homey and well patronized by expats, though it also attracts its share of tourists. That they closed for renovations was cause for worry, but they reopened with no real modernizations; it still looks old, just a bit more polished. Művész is a Budapest classic, and good for writers who don’t mind overhearing the next table’s chatter, and can allow for interruptions from friends, as it is quite popular. Prices reflect the Andrássy location.

1. August Cukrászdá: Just when I thought I knew every good café or pub to go to in Budapest, friends over at the food/music blog Dumneazu turned me on to this classic café. Old and elegant without being ostentatious or stuffy, professional and deferential service, a few dark, shadowed nooks, and fantastic pastries, cakes, and coffee, it has everything a writer could want. August is a quiet, atmospheric, and intimate space, hidden in a courtyard off Rákóczi. It attracts mostly locals, as the tourist traffic is no doubt lured away by the near-by Café Central, which reeks of literary history, but is a bit too up-scale for my taste. August is great for those who like solitude and quiet within a public space, and like to write in long hand (I have yet to see a laptop there); which means, ideal for me.

-Matt Ellis is a free-lance editor for Word Pill, a service for writers of fiction and non-fiction.

Sign Language

2008-09-24T16:41:00.000+02:00

There is something romantic, and totally Budapest, about the old store signs around the city, be they hand painted, neon, or graphic. They are artifacts of by-gone times, and are disappearing all too rapidly in this climate that only seems to value the new. Like the architecture, the old signs in Budapest have an elegance that ages well. They just look nicer when a bit faded.

There is a certain word lettering, that I have not yet been able to identify, that has a Bauhaus feel: blocky and modern, yet timeless, that is typical of the style of sign that brands the store as uniquely Hungarian. This flower-store sign is a perfect example:

I have been documenting as many old style signs as I can while they are relatively plentiful. Following are some of my favorites, mostly from central Budapest.

A timepiece seller:

A wine cellar:

A furrier:

A bookstore:

A women's hair-dresser:

Ham-radio hobby shop:

A beer hall:

A movie theater:

And, finally, the defunct baggage check at Keleti, the eastern train station of Budapest:

Cover Me

2008-09-13T15:11:00.000+02:00

If one were to sum up the Budapest live-music scene from the point of view of a touring band, it could only be, "highly skipable". The list of bands that have bypassed Budapest in favor of more receptive markets is too long to contemplate, and includes some of our favorites: the Pixies, the White Stripes, the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs, and Arcade Fire. It is particularly irksome that most of these bands take their shows directly from Vienna to Belgrade without stopping off in Budapest, which, last we checked, was on the way. Even worse, indie bands like Hawk and Hacksaw are actually coming to live in Budapest to absorb what they can of the recently hipster-approved Balkan sound, then hightailing it back to the US without even playing a token gig for the local audience.

Far be it for Mókus Pokus to speculate as to why this is the case. There was that instance where ticket buyers to a Liza Minelli show were treated to the last-minute substitution of Bonnie Tyler who, if reports are correct, thought she was head-lining all along. Liza, apparently, didn't even know about the concert. This might be the most obvious manifestation of the kind of short-term chicanery that plagues most service-oriented business in this town - but, again - who can say? The result is that the only way we will get a whiff of bands like The Hold Steady and Okkervil River is if there is a strong wind blowing in from Vienna.

Ideally, the dearth in touring bands would create an atmosphere where Hungarians would fill the void with hearty, non-GM, home-grown rock. But, sadly, Hungarian bands are to rock what the Yugo was to automotive transport. There is just not to lot to keep one's interest, beyond the two seconds it takes to figure out who they are ripping off.

The upside is that there is a lively tribute-band culture in Budapest. And we are not just talking about the phenomenon of the Depeche Mode Fan Club (which deserves a post all its own), but ranges the pop spectrum from tributes to Led Zeppelin, the White Stripes, to KISS.

Within the legal-theft realm of the tribute band, Hungarian musicians thrive. One of our favorites is Kiss Forever (in pic at top: fake band, real groupies!) who, as we remember, did a scorching salsa version of Detroit Rock City. (On a digressive side note: we will never forget when the 'Gene Simmons' of Kiss Forever looked us dead in the eye after a gig and, without a trace of irony, said, "We don't like playing in Germany. Germans don't get pyrotechnics.") Never doubt the sincerity of these projects: they are pure expressions of fan-dom and, for the most part, technically adroit covers. What is surprising is that there is a market to support their sometimes prosaic enthusiasms. KISS was designed to self-replicate - but Toto? And why are tribute bands so attractive to play in? We put that question to local expat musician Kris Wackerman, founder of the White Stripes Project. He gave his answer in an eight-point plan:

(1) I am a beginner-level drummer with no formal training, and the White Stripes' songs have basic, but interesting drum beats, perfect for me to play and to grow as a drummer at the same time. The beats are so bare that they leave room for improvement and touches that I can add as I get better.

(2) I met Gabi, the lead guitarist, about a year and a half ago and we became fast friends. Until I met her, I didn't know that chicks could even play the guitar. We formed a two person band named "Horny Tea", but we could not really agree on what type of cover songs to play. Most of the songs had "heart" in the title, or were by Jack Johnson. I finally convinced her to learn Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground, which blew me away when she played it. I knew then that a White Stripes cover band with the roles reversed - a male drummer and female lead - could be very popular. But, I could not get Gabi to learn a complete song from start to finish, gave up on the idea, and we broke up the band.

(3) My obsession with the White Stripes continued, and the idea of a tribute band began to burn a hole in my brain. I figured the only way I could pull it off would be to get a third person to sing and to help me get Gabi focused. I posted an ad on Caboodle, got a lot of ridiculous responses, and then, when I was about to give up, Lisa Steele started emailing me. We met, we practiced, the band took off, and we suddenly had played six gigs within the first three or four months.

(4) The White Stripes are not very well known in Hungary.

(5) Writing original music is difficult and potentially soul crushing. I honestly can't imagine being in a band that plays only original tunes. Great bands, the greatest bands, started out playing covers of popular songs. Pink Floyd used to play R & B covers and discovered their sound by changing the songs, by playing an extended 11 minute solo of Johnny B. Goode or something. I figured, I love the White Stripes sound, why not learn it, and then start to modify, see if we can't grow into something of our own. The original plan was to learn 20 White Stripes songs perfectly, start modifying the songs a bit, start covering other songs in the White Stripes style, and then start writing original music of our own. This is easier said than done. After nine months, we are just now at the point of starting to truly modify the songs.

(6) I wanted to show Hungarians that you do not need a bass player or an electronic keyboard to be a rock band.

(7) I wanted to show people that chicks can also rock out with their cocks out.

(8) I wanted to be a band leader. I was in a horrible, horrible cover band called Aggressive Washing Machine, playing covers of the Beatles, the Doors, the Cars, and some classic Hungarian Rock songs The band was so dysfunctional and disorganized that I knew I could do it better.

*video of White Stripes Project shot by Nathan Kay

It would be nice to say that we don't need the original bands to come to Budapest: who needs Jeff Poraco when we have the Jeff Poraco Experience! This would be rationalizing more than we are comfortable with. But until Liz Phair or Vampire Weekend decide we are worth their swing-by time, I am pretty sure there is some scrappy kid from Miskolc who is going to pick up a guitar and say, "It's time for a show. Here I am, rock you like a hurricane!".

Below, we have compiled a long, but by no means comprehensive, list of Hungarian tribute bands:

The Queen Is Dead (The Smiths)
Pornography (the Cure)
The Queen Unplugged Project (Queen)
SlipChaos (Slip Knot)
Jimmy Hendrix Experience (Jimmy Hendrix)
Back In Black and AC/DH (AC/DC)
Station (U2)
White Stripes Project (White Stripes)
Blackbird (The Beatles)
The Lennon Memorial Band (John Lennon)
Cry Free (Deep Purple)
Szepultura (Sepultura)
Alchollica (Metallica)
Zep Session (Led Zeppelin)
Synkronized (Jamiroquai)
Piknik Park (Linkin Park)
ABBA Show (ABBA)
Stoned (The Rolling Stones)
Dust N' Bones, Hollywood Rose (Guns N' Roses)
Nem Csak Berry (Chuck Berry)
Cosmik Debris (Frank Zappa)
Jeff Porcaro Emlékyenekar (Jeff Poraco, of Toto)
Iron Majdnem (Iron Maidon)

Public Bunny Sightings (1)

2008-08-30T22:59:00.000+02:00

The elusive Public Bunny is best spotted at night, and seems to favor District VII.

For some reason, they are very attracted to thickets of graffiti,

and phone booths (who are you trying to call, Bunny?)

Public Bunnies tend to speak a sort of dzjibberish only others of their sort can understand.

In translation, "Cake makes this whole mess almost bearable."

The Latest Fret of Collective Nouns Arrive

2008-08-24T12:42:00.002+02:00

Collective noun designations recently approved of and released by the English/Hungarian Transliteration and Pajtásság Society.

1. A scold of néni(s)
2. A tiff of skinheads
3. A floss of poppy seeds
4. A bloat of lángos
5. A squabble of ticket collectors
6. A stumble of thongs
7. A jabber of waiters
8. A nettle of panhandlers
9. A scruple of tourists
10. A rubato of rioters
11. A blunt of riot police

-Matt Ellis is a free-lance editor for Word Pill, a service for writers of fiction and non-fiction.

Hungarian Cheese Plate (1)

2008-08-22T11:03:00.000+02:00

On August 20th, singing sensation Zséda, gave a free concert in Erzsébet park. Like most 'singing sensations', Zséda' gets by on palatable, predictable songs and an alluring stage presence. In other words, it's hard not to like her, even when she is earnestly mangling the lyrics to Imagine. Zséda is but one of the front-runners vying for the audience left behind when 'the king' exited stage left after an alleged self-inflicted shot to head with a beretta. Zámbó Jimmy - Hungary's answer to Liberace (also of Eastern European descent) remains irreplaceable, over eight years after his death. How many other artists have had their albums hold all top ten spots on the charts? Guinness agrees, it is a world record. In a country where 5,000 records sold garners gold status, Jimmy's albums have all gone platinum by western standards - in a country with but ten million potential customers. Per-capita, it makes Thriller look like the Spin Doctors' second album.

Jimmy's life has been well-chronicled in the Hungarian media, and has even garnered a native-English-written wiki entry, but here are a few facts about Jimmy you might not know:

1. He was mistakenly deemed one of the ugliest women in the world by a mean-spirited site dedicated to spot-lighting unattractive people.

2. His coffin is shaped like an upright grand piano and was chiseled from over a ton of Italian marble.

3. He was a proud resident of industrial Csepel Island.

4. There is a Zámbó Jimmy Pub deep in District VIII, where his mother sometimes works the door.

5. Jimmy did time on cruise ships and in Las Vegas honing his act, before returning to Hungary.

It can't be denied that Jimmy has a powerful, if not beautiful singing voice, but that cannot alone account for the sheer mania for his music within the borders of Hungary, particularly amongst working-class and country people. To attribute it to schmaltz would be underestimating mass taste, nor can it be chalked up to his lyrics - which are by-and-large forgettable love songs. Jimmy just had something more concrete than charisma; he was a character (not unlike one of Jim Henson's more successful creations), and possessed a demigod-like belief in his own entitlement to fame. Only from this plasma of misguided self confidence, and an exuberant love of entertaining people, can something as ultimately bizarre and compelling as Jimmy emerge.

Indeed, there are many new faces trying to take the mantle from Jimmy, including his own brother Árpi, who had a short-lived career lip-syncing to Jimmy songs. The likes of him, Zséda, and a few other up-and-coming Hungarian pop stars can try, but there can only be one king. And like the song goes, the king is gone but he is not forgotten.