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Stephen Vizinczey, originally István Vizinczey (12 May 1933 – 18 August 2021) was a Hungarian-Canadian writer.
Early career and influences
Vizinczey was born in
Káloz
Káloz is a village in Fejér county, Hungary
Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, ...
, Hungary. His first published works were poems which appeared in
George Lukacs
George may refer to:
People
* George (given name)
* George (surname)
* George (singer), American-Canadian singer George Nozuka, known by the mononym George
* George Washington, First President of the United States
* George W. Bush, 43rd President ...
's
Budapest
Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population ...
magazine ''Forum'' in 1949, when the writer was 16. He studied under Lukacs at the
University of Budapest
A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, the ...
and graduated from the city's Academy of Theatre and Film Arts in 1956. He wrote at that time two plays, ''The Last Word'' and ''Mama'', which were banned by the Hungarian
Communist
Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...
regime. He took part in the
Hungarian Revolution of 1956, and after a short stay in Italy, ended up in Canada speaking only 50 words of English, and eventually taking Canadian citizenship. He learned English writing scripts for Canada's
National Film Board
The National Film Board of Canada (NFB; french: Office national du film du Canada (ONF)) is Canada's public film and digital media producer and distributor. An agency of the Government of Canada, the NFB produces and distributes documentary fi ...
and the
CBC. He edited Canada's short-lived literary magazine, ''Exchange''. In 1966 he moved to London.
Vizinczey cited his literary heroes as
Pushkin
Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin (; rus, links=no, Александр Сергеевич ПушкинIn pre-Revolutionary script, his name was written ., r=Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin, p=ɐlʲɪkˈsandr sʲɪrˈɡʲe(j)ɪvʲɪtɕ ˈpuʂkʲɪn, ...
,
Gogol
Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol; uk, link=no, Мико́ла Васи́льович Го́голь, translit=Mykola Vasyliovych Hohol; (russian: Яновский; uk, Яновський, translit=Yanovskyi) ( – ) was a Russian novelist, ...
,
Dostoevsky
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (, ; rus, Фёдор Михайлович Достоевский, Fyódor Mikháylovich Dostoyévskiy, p=ˈfʲɵdər mʲɪˈxajləvʲɪdʑ dəstɐˈjefskʲɪj, a=ru-Dostoevsky.ogg, links=yes; 11 November 18219 ...
,
Balzac,
Stendhal
Marie-Henri Beyle (; 23 January 1783 – 23 March 1842), better known by his pen name Stendhal (, ; ), was a 19th-century French writer. Best known for the novels ''Le Rouge et le Noir'' (''The Red and the Black'', 1830) and ''La Chartreuse de P ...
and
Kleist Kleist, or von Kleist, is a surname.
von Kleist:
*August von Kleist (1818–1890), Prussian Major General
*Conrad von Kleist (1839-1900), German politician (German Conservative Party), member of Reichstag
*Ewald Georg von Kleist (ca. 1700–1748), ...
. His best-known works were the novels ''In Praise of Older Women'' (1965) and ''An Innocent Millionaire'' (1983).
''In Praise of Older Women''
''In Praise of Older Women: the amorous recollections of András Vajda'' is a ''
Bildungsroman
In literary criticism, a ''Bildungsroman'' (, plural ''Bildungsromane'', ) is a literary genre that focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from childhood to adulthood ( coming of age), in which character change is impo ...
'' whose young narrator has sexual encounters with women in their thirties and forties in Hungary, Italy, and Canada. "The book is dedicated to older women and is addressed to young men--and the connection between the two is my proposition" is the book's epigraph.
Kildare Dobbs
Kildare Robert Eric Dobbs (10 October 1923 – 1 April 2013) was a Canadian short story and travel writer.
Born in Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, India, he was educated in Ireland and later spent 5 years in the Royal Navy during the Second World Wa ...
wrote in ''
Saturday Night'', "Here is this Hungarian rebel who in 1957 could scarcely speak a word of our language and who even today speaks it with an impenetrable accent and whose name moreover we can't pronounce, and he has the gall to place himself, with his first book and in his thirty-third year, among the masters of plain English prose..."
In 2001 it was translated for the first time into French, and became a best-seller in France. It has twice been made into a movie: a
1978 Canadian production starring
Tom Berenger
Tom Berenger (born Thomas Michael Moore; May 31, 1949) is an American actor. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of Staff Sergeant Bob Barnes in ''Platoon'' (1986). He is also known for playing Jake ...
as Andras Vajda, and a subsequent
1997 Spanish production featuring
Faye Dunaway
Dorothy Faye Dunaway (born January 14, 1941) is an American actress. She is the recipient of List of awards and nominations received by Faye Dunaway, many accolades, including an Academy Awards, Academy Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, three Golden ...
as Condesa.
In 2010, the book was reissued as a
Penguin Modern Classic
Penguin Classics is an imprint of Penguin Books under which classic works of literature are published in English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Korean among other languages. Literary critics see books in this series as important members of the Western ...
.
Gerald Jacobs
Gerald Jacobs is a British author and the literary editor of ''The Jewish Chronicle''. His book ''Sacred Games'' is an account of a Hungarian Jew, Nicholas (Miklós) Hammer, a Holocaust survivor, was published in 1995. Hammer was a Hungarian Jew c ...
"In Praise of Older Women by Stephen Vizinczey: review"
''The Telegraph'', 16 May 2010.
''An Innocent Millionaire''
First published in 1983, ''An Innocent Millionaire'' tells the story of Mark Niven, the son of an American actor who makes an uncertain living in Europe. "Mankind, we are told, is divided into the haves and the have-nots, but there are those who both have the goods and do not, and they live the tensest lives." The boy who spends his childhood in various countries "has no emotional address" and once financial pressures led to the divorce of his parents, he becomes enchanted with the idea of finding a Spanish treasure ship. He finds both love and the treasure ship, but the fortune turns into a nightmare and his happiness with a married woman ends in tragedy.
The novel was praised by critics including
Graham Greene
Henry Graham Greene (2 October 1904 – 3 April 1991) was an English writer and journalist regarded by many as one of the leading English novelists of the 20th century. Combining literary acclaim with widespread popularity, Greene acquir ...
and
Anthony Burgess
John Anthony Burgess Wilson, (; 25 February 1917 – 22 November 1993), who published under the name Anthony Burgess, was an English writer and composer.
Although Burgess was primarily a comic writer, his Utopian and dystopian fiction, d ...
. Burgess wrote in ''
Punch
Punch commonly refers to:
* Punch (combat), a strike made using the hand closed into a fist
* Punch (drink), a wide assortment of drinks, non-alcoholic or alcoholic, generally containing fruit or fruit juice
Punch may also refer to:
Places
* Pun ...
'' that Vizinczey could "teach the English how to write English", praised the novel's "prose style and its sly apophthegms, as well as in the solidity of its characters, good and detestable alike." Burgess ended his review by saying: "I was entertained but also deeply moved: here is a novel set bang in the middle of our corrupt world that, in some curious way, breathes a kind of desperate hope." The London ''
Literary Review
''Literary Review'' is a British literary magazine founded in 1979 by Anne Smith, then head of the Department of English at the University of Edinburgh. Its offices are on Lexington Street in Soho. The magazine was edited for fourteen years by v ...
'' called the novel "an authentic social epic, which reunites, after an estrangement of nearly a century, intellectual and moral edification with exuberant entertainment."
Essays
Vizinczey wrote two books of literary, philosophical and political essays: ''The Rules of Chaos'' (1969) and ''Truth and Lies in Literature'' (1985).
Bibliography
*''In Praise of Older Women'' (1966)
*''The Rules of Chaos'' (1969)
*''An Innocent Millionaire'' (1983)
*''Truth and Lies in Literature'' (1985)
*''The Man with the Magic Touch'' (1994)
*''If Only'' (2016)
*''3 Wishes'' (2020)
References
External links
Official websiteStephen Vizinczey's BlogTruth and Lies in Literaturein
Google Book Search
Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical c ...
.
Official Facebook pageby journalist Will Robinson
{{DEFAULTSORT:Vizinczey, Stephen
1933 births
2021 deaths
People from Fejér County
Hungarian essayists
Canadian male essayists
Hungarian male novelists
Canadian male novelists
Canadian literary critics
Hungarian literary critics
Hungarian emigrants to Canada
20th-century Canadian novelists
20th-century Canadian essayists
20th-century Canadian male writers
21st-century Canadian novelists
21st-century Canadian essayists
21st-century Canadian male writers
20th-century Hungarian novelists
20th-century Hungarian male writers
21st-century Hungarian novelists
21st-century Hungarian male writers