The Sunday Salon: Back to short stories

Preparing for an important exam in two weeks at the university, I started this weekend to read short stories from the 19. century.

First of all Maupassant’s stories, and some others written by Gogol and Chekhov.

French literature was always more sympathetic to me than the Russian, but these two authors are among my favourites.

Reading the story The Cloak by Gogol, I was thinking about there is always about the grotesque and the sarcasm of Gogol’s stories. But for this poor man, Akaky Akakyevich the new cloak was really really everything. For the other people maybe just an average new article of clothing, but for him the whole world. That’s why I’m susceptible to see it rather as a sad story than a funny one. On the other hand the sentences about the department reminds me a bit of Kafka’s world.

Books I mentioned last Sunday:

Lust by Elfriede Jelinek. I haven’t finished it, which seems to be a bad omen, I might not like this book.

Quite different is the situation with Emma (Jane Austen), after reading 3 chapters, I have now a lot of questions thinking about them.

And that’s why I really like to read.

Happy reading!

The Sunday Salon: Giving up

Hello fellow Saloners,

in the last 2-3 TSS-posts I’ve mentioned the novel The Bridge over the Drina by Ivo Andric. I think this Sunday is the day, I give up to finish this book. At the beginning I’ve found the idea great, writing stories about the common people living in the near of this bridge over the Drina (in Bosnia and Herzegovina), from the time building this bridge in the 16. century till the early 19. century. But the single stories, I don’t know, well, there were sometimes quite long and boring, so, after two weeks hesitating, I’ve decided not to read this book more.

There is an another situation with the book Sinistra Zone by Adam Bodor. It’s a collection of short stories, about a quite severe and danger place somewhere in Rumania. The relationship between the characters are morbid and absurd, the atmosphere of the stories is very unpleasant. But still interesting, even because of the morbidity.

Because Bodor is one of the most talented short story writers in Hungary nowadays, I'll write about his work next week a bit more.

The questions of simplicity

Have you ever read a story, which’s content, the meaning of the story you couldn’t describe, but you could feel this is a great work?

Miklos Meszoly’ s Forgiveness is such a type of a story, it’s a parabola, but there isn’t any common moral in this story, everyone has his/her own one.

Every time, I’m reading this work, I meet only questions, and no answers. Is is a story about a marriage? About a tragedy of a beautiful, but lonely woman? About a life of a small town? And what is the meaning of the smoke at the beginning and at the end of the text?

It’s full with symbols and metaphors, and still has it’s own simplicity.

And I simply like it.

Short Story September: How Can One Finish Writing

How Can One Finish Writing by Matyas Dunajcsik

Matyas Dunajcsik is a very talented young writer, he writes in a very attractive classical style. As I’ve read this short story at the first time, I find it fascinating, how he re-writes a famous scene of the movie Sindbad (it based on the short stories of Gyula Krudy), the one with the meat-soup.

The protagonisst of this story are Tamas, the writer and Helena, the Woman (and Muse).

„She always received me in the kitchen, since she kept her lovers beyond the bedroom door, where I had no entry.”

, says Tamas. They talked about his works, about the differences between novel and essay. There is an allegory in this story, a simile through the whole text, writing is like loving, loving is like writing, Helena knows the art of loving, that’s why she gives advises Tamas, how to write, what to write, and the title of this story is rather about how to end an affaire, even if it’s that strange and a bit Platonic, like this. The text is avaible online, among other texts by young and talented European writers.

Short Story September: To lie or not to lie

Jobb labbal megbotlani mint nyelvvel [Its better to make a slip of the foot than of the tounge] by Gyula Krudy.

The character Sindbad in Krudys short novels is like an old Don Juan, and the stories are nostalgic, bittersweet remembering of the great loves and affairs, of womans and girls.

This story is about two women, Mrs. Rip, an educated, smart and noble woman with legendary beautiful legs, and a young phone operator girl, who listens all the conversations of Sindbad with other women, and falls in love with the man. Also Sindbad finds the situation exciting, but when he meets the girl, the magic is over.

He tells after many many years this story to Mrs. Rip, but she doesn't want to belive it happened nothing between the man and the girl, so Sindbad feels it would have been better to lie something, because women want to hear only what they find fancinating.

Adventures of Sindbad on amazon>>>

About the movie "Szindbad" on imdb>>>

The Sunday Salon: Still short stories

Hello Fellow Saloners!

After I've joined a short story challenge last Sunday, I started to plan from wich books, by wich authors I would like to read short stories this month.

Surprising I've found among my books some samples I've been never read, for exemple a collection of short stories by Thomas Mann, an original, German version, and a book by Ernest Hemingway within the story The Snows of Kilimanjaro.

(There are periods in my life, when I really like to read the novels of Hemingway, my favourite is the The Sun Also Rises/ Fiesta - as I know this book has two different titles, one for the American and an other for the European edition.)

I've got a book by Jorge Luise Borges, I've already written about the short story: Funes, the Memorious, and a lots of antologies by Hungarian writers from the early 20. century. The author of this week on this blog is Gyula Krudy,and there is one story I mentioned already written by him: Death and the Journalist

These are the books I have on my desk this Sunday afternoon. Althrough it's quite hot here in Hungary, I try to read as many as possible, and to write about them in the next couple of days.

Short Story Steptember: Death and the Journalist

Death and The Journalist by Gyula Krudy

It' s one of the most popular short storys by the famous Hungarian author Gyula Krudy (click here to read the post "author of the week")

It bases on the story of the last night of a journalist before his duel with a retired colonel of the Hussars. It's like a death sentence to the poor, pitiable journalist, Titus Finehouse.

He spends his last night (with his advance in his pocket) in a good restaurant, and he talks with people, who watch him as a sensation. He is the most interessant man in the city this evening. But nobody thinks what does it really mean, this man maybe die tomorrow, nobody cares with his feelings. I think, that's the mean of this story.

This short story is tipically a Hungarian short story, it bases on a grotesque anecdote (at the end there is a surprising - or even not surprising - turn of the story), and we can read about the tipically bohemians, the kings and queens of the nightlife at the turn of the century in Budapest.

This story is avaible in translated version among other classic Hungarian stories online at this site>>>

Enjoy it!

Short Story September: Funes

Funes the Memorious by Jorge Luis Borges

It was the first shorts story by Jorge Luis Borges I’ve ever read. Maybe not the best choice, I can hardly find out what he wanted to say with his story.

The story is about a strange young man, Imreneo Funes. We know from the first paragraph, this man has died, and the narrator want to write about it something, something like a necrology. In the first sentence we don’t know of course, why he speak about remembering so strangely. We’ll get the solving later.

The narrator tells us, that he met only three time Funes, and the main point of this short story is the description of a night Funes talks about himself to the narrator.

Remembering, it’s really an important word in this story. Funes has got an incredible good (a perfect?) memory, but he is standing at home, in his bed as a result of an accident. Maybe this story is about the possibilities and the limits of the human nature at the same time.