My view on King Lear play by Peter Brook

 

I already made several videos about King Lear where one of the videos you can see below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJ3p_vZzkTI&t=1s

I loathe directors who try improve masterpieces with the passionate desire to reduce genius to their own mediocrity.   The greatest dramatic poet of the modern age could use language to ignite our imagination so that we can see and feel everything.  King Lear asks a blinded character how the world goes. “I see it feelingly” he replies.  We see feelingly what Shakespeare describes. Now the vile practices is to rape that language and our imagination by adding words like “King Lear looks around.” But we already know that, and we know it feelingly! So the only Shakespeare plays you should watch should be the original BBC productions organised by entertainment in the early 1970s.

At the time we were blessed with great actors and directors.  Laurence Olivier crowned his long career and old age playing King Lear.  Derek Jacobi’s Richard II, Kate Milligan in Measure for Measure, Helen Mirren (1978) in As You Like It are creations you will never forget.  One great advantage of them all is that they have subtitles, so people do not miss a word while watching the film. So instead of watching garbage television, it is best to watch the original BBC productions. 

The great versions of plays are the original production, which the BBC did with Time-Live Magazine when the BBC head of entertainment

The original productions with great actors and great expense are the best Shakespeare productions possible and would greatly enhance every viewer’s vocabulary and enjoyment. 

It’s not universally appreciated that the truths Shakespeare writes about so universal and lasting that it dissolves into even other languages and cultures.  I had been in Hungary’s national theatre on October 22^nd 1956.  It was a long way from England and an even longer way from the time of The War of the Roses (Richard III), yet the performance was interrupted with strong clapping several times.  We felt Shakespeare was writing about our own experience of tyranny and after the performance that the younger members of the audience went out to the street to demonstrate, which later that night turned into a revolution. 

It also reminds us that the greatest dramatic poet of the modern age we ever had really became what he became from acting.  He was an actor’s playwright, it often happens that in his plays logic is abandoned for the sake of a great scene.  The great characters in Measure for Measure alter in the middle of the play and in the beginning the Lord Angelo is given by the Duke the power of life and death yet in the second part of the play we learn that the villain, Lord Angelo, in fact libelled and discarded the rich woman he betrothed when he learned that her dowry was lost at sea.

It is still a great play despite the contradictions because every scene is powerfully true.  Hamlet, Richard II, King Lear and Twelfth Night along with several other of his plays are free from contradictions.  The plays have no broken storylines, which made the author the greatest figure in literature not only in English, but in many other languages and cultures.

King Lear by Peter Brook

There is one exception: Peter Brook’s direction of the play.  He filmed the play with Paul Scofield who was still a young man back in 1971.   Peter Brook was the most admired director both in France and England at the time. For this version a youngish Paul Scofield played King Lear. I watch this version once every year.

 

The Pugachev Rebellion

 

I am working now on how common humanity breaks through even enemy lines during the revolution.  During the Hungarian revolution of 1956 I led a group of fellow students (mainly from the Theatre and Film Academy) and I brought them to my mother for breakfast in the morning. We had two rooms on a villa on Buda (the hilly north side of Budapest) on Rosehill.  The huge apartment upstairs belonged to the Stalin-prize winning artist, the head of the Arts Academy. We had a car and we had our Russian submachine guns. When we arrived there was a small mob outside the villa and they wanted to lynch the painter – a famous member of the regime. Mother came out and was worrying about the family upstairs. I wasn’t driving and fired a round over the head of the mob, telling them to disperse as there wasn’t going to be any lynching there. I certainly didn’t risk my life to lynch anybody. I went upstairs to calm the family. The man was about fifty, but his wife was young and beautiful. They had two daughters, two young teenagers. They were scared out of their wits and I felt quite happy being able to calm them.

That very morning we all had a couple of near-death experiences.  I looked down at the barrel of a big gun from a tank and ducked my head.  

None of the others in the car felt any differently from me. When you watch violent scenes of a revolution on television, the rampage is done by people who actually weren’t involved in the fighting.  Before the tank arrived (we were holding out behind a factory wall) I was opening a round 5 pound tin can of Kraft cheese. - It was a couple of inches from my head when I ducked. When I raised my head, the cheese was cut right down the middle by a shrapnel. Had the shrapnel fallen a few inches to the right, it would have split my head in half.  This kind of experience doesn’t make you bloodthirsty.

To finish the breakfast incident, the security police came to get me when the revolution was beaten – but I was already gone, so they took my poor mother.  The Stalin-prize winning artist went and got her out before they could ship her to an internment camp.

The same day the Russians caught me near the Austrian border on the assumption that anyone who was not local had to be fighting against them and was trying to escape. I had to produce my identity card, because Russian soldiers were accompanied by a communist Hungarian security officer who could read the Hungarian ID cards. He was asking everybody for their ID cards. The Russians, thank God, have Cyrillic alphabet and they needed a Hungarian security officer to read the Hungarian ID card. My ID card said I was from Budapest, but I looked at the Hungarian security officer with begging eyes and kept pointing at my ID, saying “Kőszeg, Kőszeg” – the near-border town to Austria when I had been caught. He didn’t gave me away – he said Kőszeg. For all I know, he may have had a nearly lynched experience when the Russians rescued him.

All this came back to me because I’m writing my next blog about Pushkin, the Russian Shakespeare.  His past ancestor was a Nubian Muslim and Pushkin wrote the story of “Negro of Peter the Great”

‘The Captain’s Daughter’ (he and Kleist said more with fewer words than any other writer).

That story is about the Pugachev rebellion.  He was a serf leader and got close to overthrowing Tzarina, Katalin the Great. While organizing his uprising incognito, the hero, a Russian officer, gives him a sheepskin jacket against the freezing winter and as a result Pugachev helps the officer to protect his love and winks at him before he is executed.

He had a Nubian black great grandfather whom Tzar Peter the Great had educated in Paris and before the Tzar died he had his Nubian married to a Russian aristocratic family. So you can see from all his photos and pictures that Pushkin was a black man; he is the greatest writer in the world.  As mixed marriages are very common these days, this is a very significant detail about Pushkin, which I am sure all your friends would love to hear.

My review of The Prince and the Pauper

 

People know about Mark Twain mainly as the author of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and later on The Adventures of Tom Sawyer - these are the books which are promoted academics, the champions of inoffensive literature. To my mind the most significant American writer is Mark Twain.  He became a writer during the great American Revolution.

Mark Twain

He grew up during slavery, a friend of General Grant and became the most eloquent champion of racial equality, a scourge of hypocrisy, religion and greed.  As he wrote in his autobiography “I know best myself and I assume that other people are like me and I draw all my characters good and bad from myself”.  It was a tough call. 

At the time Americans were more hypocritical than the English. Louisa May Alcott (author of Little Women), was outraged even by Huckleberry Fin “It’s a pity that Mr Clements cannot have anything better to say to our innocent youngsters”. Hemingway wrote that all of American literature grew out of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, but in fact the novels first appeared in Canada and England before they saw the light day in America.

MT is of universal significance because his work embodies the transition from a religious age to the post religious age. You haven’t lived until you read Letters from the Earth and A Mysterious Stranger.  After god created the world the archangels of course praised it, but Satan, one of the archangels wasn’t impressed.  “The spider kills the fly, the bird kills the spider, it is just kill kill kill”.  God was offended and banished Satan to the earth where he wrote back to his fellow Archangels about the strange beliefs of people on earth.  It reads like a prosecutor's speech, listing God’s crimes against humanity.  It is about a century later that the film The Life of Brian caused outrage although it is milder than The Letters from The Earth, so you can imagine what a hard time MT had when he wrote the books.  As Bernard Shaw wrote to him “If people understood what you are really saying they would kill you”.

 “In God we trust is a wonderful phrase and it would not sound any better if were true”, he said to Andrew Carnegie. 

He wrote to a friend "The difference the almost right word and the right word is the difference between a lightning bug and the lightning”.

His specifically American in that his work embodies the idea that all men are created equal and also the many ways that American reality failed to live up to this idea.

He dedicated his first masterpiece The Prince and the Pauper to “Those good mannered and agreeable children, Susie and Clara Clemence, this book is affectionately inscribed by their father”.

Mark Twain is known to most people as a humourist.  His work can be best summarised by Stendhal’s definition of great literature.  “It conveys generous sentiments which inspires people to revolt”.  If you have youngsters, this is the book to give them during the lockdown from the coronavirus, they will be readers forever.  

The story is about a prince Edward the son of Henry VII and a slum kid who look alike and cannot be distinguished from each other, both experience the world in the eyes of both the Prince and the slum kid at a time, when they burnt witches and boiled people in oil and hanged those who thought differently. If you read the book you certainly glad that you weren’t around at the time. As always Mark Twain can give at least a double vision of everything he describes. Horror, cruelty and viciousness is relieved by feeling of goodness, trust and peace which melts your chest.   The emotional sway of the book can be compared to classical music, the loud and shocking passages are melt into adagios.

To continue with the musical analogy I would compare the novel to Hyden’s Morning, Noon, and Night symphonies. 

My review of Thomas Mann and Felix Krull

 

While I am waiting for the appearance of my new novel, I am reading Felix Krull for the umpteenth time and every paragraph and sentence is perfect.  Its an incredible thrill to read a joyful masterpiece.

A few decades ago, Thomas Mann was acclaimed the world over as the greatest living writer.  He got the Nobel Prize for The Magic Mountain in 1929, which is about the sanatorium of people suffering from tuberculosis before the cure for it was invented.  Thomas Mann uses this setting to give a summary of all the ideas, which were current at the time. It is like a weekly paper summing up what happened the previous week, except that it is a very, very long book.  I think you have to have professional interested in literature to be able to read it from beginning to end – looking for the flashes of genius.  This is true of most of his work.  For instance in his biblical novel Potiphar's Wife, she, the wife, the heroine and is in love with young Joseph and to test her love she has female friends over for a meal and have Joseph appear just when they are trying to cut some delicacy with a sharp knife.  All the women ended up cutting their fingers when they catch sight of Joseph. 

Like all great writers he could tell you also what he does not say, giving the reader the thrill of imagining what was not actually said.  A memorable moment in Buddenbrooks is when Mrs Buddenbrook is playing piano duets with a young officer. The piano falls silent just as her son comes home and runs to meet his mother.  His father waylays his son before the kid can open the door on the silent pair in order to ask him about his schoolwork.  

You can’t create great works without going through hell.  Thomas Mann was a bisexual and his work at the time when any deviation from the heterosexual norm was considered both a sickness and a crime. He came from a rich and tragic family of suicides where two of his sisters and one of his own sons committed suicide. His experiences enabled him to create works, which are lifted by a breeze and thrown by death.

His most famous novel “Death in Venice” is about a homosexual writer who was caught in Venice during the plague and he dies as he falls in love with a beautiful boy he has seen on the beach.  Falling in love and dying at the same time is one of the most moving masterpieces in literature.  I particularly indebted to The confessions of Felix Krull.  As a German critic spotted it, In Praise Of Older Women is inconceivable without The Confessions of Felix Krull.

It includes all the discreditable things which never find their way into memoirs. It is called “first part” because of the references of his later life in prison.  

Felix Krull is a unique character and I cannot think of any other literary figure you could compare him to.  He was a thief, a gigolo, a confidence man and what makes him admirable, in spite of all this, is his imagination the joy he has playing different roles in his life.

He is a great actor who plays and enjoys every role he plays, which makes his confidence tricks all the more enjoyable.  If you like good books and enjoy wit then you will enjoy Felix Krull.

This novel has an immense reputation in Germany and they clearly did everything to make it into a great movie – proving that there is no way to make a good movie from a great novel. Although the book includes all the discreditable things a young man can do it is also one of the best books on love.  Not sex but love in its deepest sense, which prompts you to touch and stroke a dirty boy’s head even if he may have a contagious disease.  

Felix is trying to seduce a young girl who has a horror of the flesh. He argues that the natural human reaction to other people is shrinking into oneself.  This is what the young girl feels and as he converts her to love, this is one of the best passages in literature. 

What is unique about the writing of the book is that he wrote most of it as a young man and the later part as an old man, yet  they bend together so seamlessly that it would be impossible to say what part he wrote as a young man and what part he wrote as an old man except his German gets more convoluted in the later part. You won’t notice it if you read the excellent English translation by Denver Lindley.  Some people say that Confessions of Felix Krull is an unfinished book, but I feel they are wrong because to finish with and ode to love is a perfect ending.

Thomas Mann described his writing as “Ironic conservatism”.  Quite apart from everything else the novel gives you an idea of what society was at the beginning of the 20^th century. I quote Thomas Mann in an Innocent Millionaire, “How inventive life is! It brings our childhood dreams to pass”. In Felix Krull childhood dreams becoming reality, which gives the book its unique charm. 

Just watched the Death of Stalin.

In early 1950's the movie explains the paranoia and backstabbing when Soviet Leader, Joseph Stalin dies suddenly.    I felt the movie was written by people who know little about power and a total falsification of facts around Stalin’s death.

I felt none of the real characters thought that they could convince anybody with their arguments.  Each of the characters had some armed force behind them.  The only realistic detail was in the fact that marshal Georgy Zhukov who was the head of the red army managed to disarm Lavrenti Beria forces.  Beria was the head of the secret police the NKVD, he had information of the crimes of all the other members of the Politburo including rape, embezzlement.   

He came to meetings with his own secret police. In effect the Politburo were prisoners of Beria’s troops, but while they surrendered the central committee one of Marshal Zhukov’s generals pretended to come to inform the committee of an American attack and was able to get to the committee rooms with his brief case.  Once inside he drew out a revolver from his briefcase and shot with a silencer Beria. So while the NKVD waited outside, the committee left the room by a secret passage and went to Beria’s home to get and burn the evidence, which Beria had on all of them. It was only a day later that Beria’s troops realised that something was wrong, but by then it was too late and Marshal Zhukov’s soldiers managed to disarm them.

I was fascinated by falsehoods, what engaged about the movie is how it twisted reality of what happened after Stalin’s death, although I watched the movie to the end.

There was not much else I can remember about the movie, but I watched the movie till the end.  The movie makes me think about how history is constantly being falsified. 

I noticed that Olga Kurylenko who played Maria in the movie was very stubborn in the how she felt about Stalin.  I remember that in Hungary I was in danger of being reported that I was glad that this mass murderer died.

You can find out more about the film on IMDB

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4686844/

My stay in hospital

 I am sorry I lost touch with my friends and readers, but I was in hospital over the past few weeks. I am ok now, but recovering slowly.  I received wonderful care in hospital, but the worst thing was that I was unable to sleep there.  So I think at the end I was sick of sleeplessness.  I was diagnosed with a weak heart on entry to the hospital, which led to a heart attack at the hospital.  I had also some kidney problems, because I fell at home and stayed all night on the floor, which the doctors told me would do damage to the kidneys. It is very boring to you and also to me and I long to finish my book and get it printed.

Stephen Vizinczey

While I was at the hospital, I was kept being tested for the coronavirus, practically daily and all the tests proved negative.  I was amazed incidentally that how hungry for literature the nurses were, they all seemed to love hearing about my work and about my books. The nurses practically liked “In Praise of Older Women” and they wanted to read about “An innocent millionaire”. 

Going off topic, Kate Hopkins is a very enjoyable commentator, but I parted company from her when she speaks of the more than fifty percent of people who are idiots.  Perhaps I misunderstand her, but she seemed to locate the idiots among ordinary people.  But stupidity is boundless and can be found in every strata of society.  To give an example from Hungary one of the greatest poets of the 20^th century Attila József a genius who was the son of an illiterate washer woman, the intelligence the brilliance of people who didn’t have much formal education is grossly underestimated.  

Attila József 

One of my most often quoted remarks is that “No amount of learning can cure stupidity, and higher education positively fortifies it”.  In fact I know more professors who are total idiots than people without formal education.  In fact I know more professors who are total idiots than people without formal education.

My “3 Wishes” novel, which I believe is my best book is almost ready for the printer and I hope you will be able to read it in about a months-time if the epidemic allows it.  As I often said I am not so much of a writer, but a rewriter and I was writing and revising this novel for 17 years. Reading it over last time, I was amazed how much the world has changed during these 17 years, we are at a better place than we were all those years ago.  So part of the book is already past history.

I dedicate my new novel to my wife Gloria who died on November 19^th 2020, it was a big blow when Gloria died, because it must have contributed to my health problems. Anybody who has read any of my books and liked it I would like to comment on Amazon and on Facebook, to keep the books alive.

Incidentally I am asking readers to recommend my books without any financial motives. I had sold more 8 million copies around the world and now the books are building a result by people who have bought them and so those books are their properties, and then they resell those books where any money goes to them.

Stealing my name!

The late Graham Greene complained to me about someone using his name and went into a lot of trouble into trying to find the person did it.  I must say I sympathize, but I felt quite smug, feeling sure that because of the difficulty of spelling my surname "Vizinczey" that nobody else would ever try to impersonate me, but now I see that there is a film that I never even heard of that originates with me.

There were only 2 films of "In Praise of Older Women" both in Spanish and both were awful, so I do not recommend them.  Whoever is interested in my work, should read my books.

Terrorism and my experience

It seems to me that all the present talk about Islamic terrorism in connection with the knife attacks in France is a misnomer. Drawing on my own experiences as an immigrant, albeit from the same civilisation, but a different culture and language,  despairing bewilderment left me  no choice but to commit suicide. I took the lift to the top of a skyscraper intending to jump.  Looking down from a great height, I got scared that I wouldn't die but break my spine and would become a cripple and spend miserable life in a wheelchair.   

The next best thing to suicide is killing somebody.  What saved me from becoming a murderer was that I had been writing poetry since the age of four  which had grown into an ambition to become a great writer.  Learning the language and writing in English was preferable to a miserable life in a wheelchair. 

My guess is that terrorists are mostly simply ignorant immigrants. Knowing nothing of the country whence they come, they assume that the West is the same place, except that there  they can have benefits.  If they are unable to preserve a religion and culture, their only response can be suicide attacks.

Gloria Vizinczey Obituary

 

Gloria Vizinczey was the most brilliant and loveliest woman I have ever known.  Unlike many women who make sure that you know how smart they are, meeting her you would have no idea from her manner how intelligent and how well educated she was.  We have been together since 1962, for fifty-eight happy years. She was my editor, critic and researcher.  If you have read my reviews and essays and were stunned by the depth of knowledge and erudition, the credit should go to Gloria. When I reviewed for The Times and The Telegraph in the 1980’s and 1990’s, I read the book I was writing about and Gloria’s resumés of 15 – 20 books connected to the authors and their subjects were reprinted in major newspapers around the world. These reviews were printed in book form, Truth and Lies in Literature.  Collections of essays and reviews are notoriously poor sellers, but Truth and Lies in Literature sold a million copies around the world and used copies are still selling.

Gloria was a graduate of The University of Toronto, majoring in literature and foreign languages.  Quite apart from everything else, she was a linguistic genius.  She corrected even the French, German, Italian and Spanish translations of my books.  She could love without being blind to my faults.  One time when I said something very stupid, her daughter, Mary Harron, exasperated, asked me, “Stephen, how old are you?”  Gloria shot back, “He’s two and a half.”  Just the same, she helped me to believe in myself and my work.

Once I lectured a friend about women. He listened for an hour and then burst out, “You, you!  It’s easy for you to talk. You’ve got Gloria!”

If you comment on her death, forgive me if I don’t reply.  I’m cut up by her absence.

Gloria Vizinczey (1927, February 21^st - 2020, October, 19^th.)

The ignorance of officials of culture

I learned from Melvin Bragg's column in the Daily Mail that the Department for Sport and Culture removed poetry from the CSE syllabus on the grounds that “poetry is too challenging for children.” Such a claim shows up the arrogant ignorance of officials who are clearly unaware of the popularity of nursery rhymes. As Richard Littlejohn would say, ‘you couldn’t make it up’. Nations as well as individuals live in their language which is electrified by poetry, boosting s our imagination  and giving colour to the words. 

The only way Oliver Dowden’s children, if he has any, find poetry difficult is, if,  at home they do not talk. Of course  English is a world language, so it doesn’t really matter if the natives speak it badly. They can count on foreigners to figure out what they are saying. 

It is smaller nations which treasure their  language. I had grown up in Hungary, where  the evening news had been followed every night by a popular actor performing a great poem. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if BBC or SKY would adopt the practice, allowing millions to discover the liveliness, the fun of English. 

Millions would stop disfiguring their speech with innumerable ‘you know’s and ‘’like’s. Quite apart from everything else, the economic benefits would be impressive.

Grime Artist Wiley moronic statement on the Jews

Most of us are too lazy or too stupid to figure out what is happening in this complicated world, therefore they look for one simple answer that explains everything.  

The moronic Grime singer named ‘Wiley’ is all too typical by claiming that all our troubles come from the Jews.  Then why the fuss? The answer was given by Voltaire.  “Those who can make people believe in absurdities can also make them commit atrocities”.

My review of King Lear

Welcome everyone.  I recently done a video review of William Shakespeare play King Lear. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJ3p_vZzkTI

The most important things about the video of Shakespeare's plays is that it increases your vocabulary in a way that makes you understand more meanings of the world. 

My most often quoted line from my book "An innocent millionaire" is that "no amount of learning can cure stupidity, and formal education positively fortifies it", but it is also true that a lot of bright people think that they are stupid because they never had a chance to be introduced, to become familiar with the work of great minds.

If you have brains, even if you are ignorant then Shakespeare will wake up your mind and you will become smarter and knowledgeable about life as much as possible.

paul scofield plays king lear

I mentioned Paul Scofield in my video because he is a great actor and also because he worked with the greatest director Peter Brook.  There are many videos on King Lear, but the RSC production of King Lear in 1962 is the best by far.  You must also see Laurence Olivier's King Lear.  

laurence olivier

In Oliver's King Lear naive King Lear becomes sane by going mad when he sees the world as it is.

My thoughts about judgement in nuremberg

I just saw again a great film which is called "judgement in nuremberg", which was directed by a great director Stanley Kramer.  The film stars  Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark, Maximilian Schell, Werner Klemperer, Marlene Dietrich, Judy Garland, William Shatner, and Montgomery Clift. 

I was more struck by the acting of Montgomery Clift who had a car accident and created the best performance a mentally challenged castrated worker in the movie.  Of course much the credit should go to Stanley Kramer, who brought out the best performances of all these great actors.  I did not know that Abby Mann wrote an incredibly brilliant script, which reminds me of one of my stupidest things i have ever done. 

In 1965 Christopher Plummer invited me to his house in London to a party where Abby Mann was also present.  He wanted to write the script to In Praise of Older Women, I did not know anything about him then and I told him "no".  It is one of the things  I feel like hitting my head against a wall, at least once a year.

New videos released

Dear readers.

It has been a while since I lasted blogged, but I am hoping to start up again and I have a treat for my current subscribers.  I have recently started video blogging and hope that you can view my work.

My latest video is on review is on Voltaire Candide.  You can view the video below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKlBHYpa2GA&t=173s

My other recent video review is on Jonathan Swift novel "Gulliver's travels".  Please view the video below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EYZB4sn4tM&t=249s

I really am looking forward to comments about my video reviews and hope to hear from you shortly.

Gloria Vizinczey is 90

My wife Gloria is 90 and IF ONLY, my new novel, is dedicated to her. She has been the most important individual – as inspiration, editor and manager - of my life. You look at her photos as a young woman from the time when we met (she was 36 at the time) and you understand why In Praise of Older Women turned out to be such a lively novel. The articles reproduced here, especially the one written by her daughter Martha, give you a glimpse of our lives and her contribution. For the last few years I have to do some of the things she did for us - and I’m horrified to realise how hard she worked. The photos in which we look our age were made only a few days ago. As you can see we are still laughing, even after being together for over 54 years.

Here is the secret of enduring marriages: the couples must feel passionate about the same things. She was the first woman I met for whom literature was the most important thing in life. You have to be passionate about things outside of yourselves. Our favourite pastime was walking in the museums and great churches of Europe.  She is also the most intelligent woman I have ever met.

George Walden's The New Elite

“A truthful view of men and women in the mass would throw the entire English social game out of kilter. All the fun and ferocity would go from the debate if we were deprived of our traditional up/downery and forced to think.” Penguin Books published George Walden’s The New Elites  in 2000 and  it is growing in  importance and relevance ever since as it dissects the increasingly mindless culture in which we live. More than praise I think quotes give us a good idea of the book.  “ … feelings are supreme, simply because we all have them. Intellect, being less equally distributed, is seen as divisive, a non-profitable product.” Irony is good for a smile but there are also guffaws. 

Walden quotes a waiter recommending a wine to Randolph Churchill by saying it is very popular. Randolph Churchill wasn’t pleased. “What makes you think I want to drink anything popular?” 

Walden calls up Ortega for whom man in the mass was “anti-rational, anti-intellectual, anti-culture, someone who, in his chilling phrase, wants to have done with discussion. Ortega says that for the first time in Europe appears the kind of man who does not want to give reasons even to be right, but who is determined to impose his opinions. Today, you might say, there are more of these kind of people than in the 1930s. Walden writes an “honest view of the mass society might even rid us of our parasitical elites.” If you enjoy thinking it is typical of the sorry state of our cultural life that one of the best, one of the most gifted and talented persons of our time in the country is largely being ignored. They are more or less invisible but people who feel more alive when they think are still around. And if you are one of them, George Walden’s book would brighten up the dismal winter.        

About Voltaire

Voltaire wrote Candide in 1758, and it is timelier today than nearly four centuries ago. This is what makes a classic novel: it defines a problem, a predicament and basic human traits so profoundly, so exactly, that they are as true – and indeed truer – centuries later than at the time when it was written. The overwhelming majority of people whose views are formed and expressed by the mass media, believe that we are at the zenith of human development – we have planes, computers, the internet, human rights, the progress of medical science, etc. that we live in a better world than any previous generation and mankind’s prospects, but for climate change, can only improve.

Voltaire’s time, too, people were optimist, and there was no question that people were better off in the middle of the 18th century than in primitive world of human sacrifices, as we are better off than most people in the 18th century, but human stupidity is still all powerful, callousness, rape, bombings, beheading and genocide are still the favoured means to show one’s superiority to everybody else. There is a philosophical background to this, but the German philosopher’s arguments and learned Church fathers’ theological tomes were but an earlier version of what most people still believe - i.e. we live in the best of all possible worlds.

One of the wittiest writers of Western literature, Voltaire produces swift and amusing portraits of the main vices of the human race, but the greatest human failings embodied in Candide’s tutor, Panglos who survives being burnt by the Inquisition, robbed, cut to pieces by marauders – in short, subjected to all too many indignities, cruelties, injustices but still believes that all is for the best. Panglos embodies, like no other character in literature, the greatest fatal failing of the human race: the inability to learn from experience.

It is dangerous to believe in white lies: books which peddle them may reassure you, but they render your defenceless against conmen, authorities and demagogues who give you hope and lead you to disaster. It is best to be forewarned. If you read Voltaire, Jonathan Swift, Mark Twain you will be less likely to fall victim to trickery. And I could never have written If Only about our world without the inspiration of these giants.

I just lost an opportunity

I just lost an opportunity to promote my new novel, IF ONLY in a popular newspaper because I refused to put my name to an article which mentioned IF ONLY and In Praise of Older Women, but started by paying homage to "Madonna, one of the most famous persons in the world." Several incidents of this kind made me realise that it is not the lovers of classical music and great literature who are elitist. 

Stupid is the new elite, and they do their best to make us disappear - or at least become invisible, so people won't know that there is another world beyond the mass media. When I came to the UK in 1965, the "Culture" sections of the leading broadsheets were about thinkers Bertrand Russell or great classical musicians, great writers - individuals who had added something of value to civilisation. Today even the "Culture" pages are featuring predominantly articles about television programs. And they are surprised that newspapers lose readers.

If you love pop music, every day there is something in the news to reassure you  that what you love is the most important thing in the world.  If you are an intelligent person you are made to feel lonely by the media, confirming that you are member of a very small minority. It’s no use spending money on education if everything outside school tells you that fame is the greatest achievement in the world. The BBC, financed by taxpayers, is as guilty of this as any other media organisation. Talking about the importance of mental health and then feed people explosions, mindless thrillers and nothing that could inspire them to exercise the minds is pretty absurd. You could become mentally unbalanced just by watching a few hours of BBC television. 

This is not just a question of high culture which inspires you to think, reflect, practice concentration and have deeper feelings - the country's mental health, security and  productivity depends on it.
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Taking time to read great books

Readers, especially young readers hungry for knowledge and experience, pledge to read dozens of books this year, but I think that they should plan to re-read at least 10 books a year which they like. There is no way to take in everything from a simple reading of a book. Re-reading books we find that superficial books are boring at second reading, when we already know what is going to happen. Really good books, however, are much more exciting when we reread them. We discover a great many insights, great phrases which we had missed the first time and we find deeper meanings also because we are already familiar with the context. Good books become better at each reading, there is no way to get everything out from a good book at a single reading. As bad books become worse, and good book become better, we also learn to tell apart what is true and what is a lie. Lies are not so convincing at second reading. 


I read every year at least a few chapters from Stendhal, Balzac, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Swift, Defoe, Kleist and Pushkin – and of course Shakespeare. Shakespeare is the Bible of all good readers. Even after decades I still pick up new insights and if my own work is good and enriching it is then thanks to reading great literature every day and find about the technique of writing a detail I had earlier missed. 

If my work is any good, half of the credit goes to my rereading some great literature every day. Whenever I feel low, I reciter myself lines from Shakespeare, a Hungarian or English poem – mostly from Auden these days - to keep my spirits up. 

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There are millions of books and there is no way to read everything, so it is more important to read a hundred great books over and over again. We can never know everything, it is much better to know fewer things, but at least know them well. I guess another way of putting it this is that it is more important to be wiser than well informed, in regard to books as well as everything else.

I became a missionary on the subject of re-reading on a Caruso beach in Mexico.
It was at the end of the school year in the USA, and there were many school leavers around from the southern states celebrating. I asked the kids what they wanted to read and most of them were going to college and were intending to study English. On one occasion about a group of thirty kids gathered around me learning that I was a novelist. I asked them what their favourite novel was. Not one of them could name the title of a single one. Finally a girl piped up, declaring proudly that she was reading novels all the time. I asked her for her favourite novels. “Oh, they are too many,” she said. I kept urging her to name some of them. After a long silence she then gave me a title of an Eugene O'Neill play, ‘Long days journey into night’. 

If you are interested in the subject I would like to hear your comments, hope to see next time.

Very grateful for the reviews on my new book "If Only"

Hello everyone.

I have not blogged for a while, but thought to write a quick blog about the wonderful reviews on Amazon.  It clearly attracts only intelligent and eloquent people. The latest is from Jaideep Prabhu a wonderful; review of IF Only on Amazon.

Here is part of the review Jaideep has written.

"I have just finished reading IF ONLY. I waited until the Christmas break so I could give it my undivided attention and read it in one gulp (as it were).

It’s a wonderful novel, with many different facets that I’m still in the process of digesting.

First of all, it is entertaining. I kept turning the pages, wanting to find out how things were going to turn out. The characters are memorable, as are the worlds Vizinczey describes. He does a brilliant job, for instance, of describing the inner workings of a large business, and all the ruthless machinations of those at the top. He also conveys in many moving ways the ups and downs of a long marriage, especially a childless one."

You can read the rest of the reviews via the link below.

https://goo.gl/rHuWI1

Having such wonderful reviews around Christmas has been a lovely xmas present and can only hope more people provide reviews on Amazon or other sites.