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.