Imre Kertész has died.
March 31, 2016 2:53 AM Subscribe
Imre Kertész, the 2002 Nobel Prize Winner For Literature has died. Kertész, a survivor of Auschwitz and Buchenwald, was Hungary's only winner of the Nobel Prize for literature. He was awarded the prize,
"for writing that upholds the fragile experience of the individual against the barbaric arbitrariness of history".
He is best know for his work Fatelessness/Sorstalanság, which explores the role of the individual within a totalitarian system, specifically the Holocaust. Kertész also wrote the screenplay for the film adaption, Fateless directed by Oscar winner Lajos Koltai, and which also included a cameo role by Daniel Craig.
Other of Kertész's works, such as Kaddish For An Unborn Child/Kaddis a meg nem született gyermekért,
Fiasco/A kudarc and Liquidation/Felszámolás also dealt with the Holocaust but within the framework of totalitarian systems, including Communist Hungary in which Kertész spent much of his working life.
His unorthodox autobiography, Dossier K. takes the form of him interviewing himself and received critical acclaim.
His life was not without controversy. When awarded the Nobel Prize, many Hungarians felt his literature was not "Hungarian" enough. In 2014 he accused the New York Times trying to say he had stigmatised Hungary by calling it a dictatorship, something which he disavowed. You can see and hear Kertész in this 11 min interview produced by the Swedish PEN (SLYT).
He is best know for his work Fatelessness/Sorstalanság, which explores the role of the individual within a totalitarian system, specifically the Holocaust. Kertész also wrote the screenplay for the film adaption, Fateless directed by Oscar winner Lajos Koltai, and which also included a cameo role by Daniel Craig.
Other of Kertész's works, such as Kaddish For An Unborn Child/Kaddis a meg nem született gyermekért,
Fiasco/A kudarc and Liquidation/Felszámolás also dealt with the Holocaust but within the framework of totalitarian systems, including Communist Hungary in which Kertész spent much of his working life.
His unorthodox autobiography, Dossier K. takes the form of him interviewing himself and received critical acclaim.
His life was not without controversy. When awarded the Nobel Prize, many Hungarians felt his literature was not "Hungarian" enough. In 2014 he accused the New York Times trying to say he had stigmatised Hungary by calling it a dictatorship, something which he disavowed. You can see and hear Kertész in this 11 min interview produced by the Swedish PEN (SLYT).
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Kaddish for an Unborn Child is the only novel of his I’ve read, which I remember as a short but nonetheless formidably weighty book.
A MeFi post from 2002 about Kertész’s Nobel acceptance speech.
posted by misteraitch at 3:48 AM on March 31, 2016
Kaddish for an Unborn Child is the only novel of his I’ve read, which I remember as a short but nonetheless formidably weighty book.
A MeFi post from 2002 about Kertész’s Nobel acceptance speech.
posted by misteraitch at 3:48 AM on March 31, 2016
Sad to hear. Great writer. RIP.
I think the Hungarian thing is interesting. I wonder if it's a Hungarian situation alone or a Hapsburgian one.
posted by parmanparman at 5:22 AM on March 31, 2016
I think the Hungarian thing is interesting. I wonder if it's a Hungarian situation alone or a Hapsburgian one.
posted by parmanparman at 5:22 AM on March 31, 2016
No one likes the bearer of bad news, eh? He was a great writer and a recipient who certainly deserved his Nobel. His subject matters weren't easy, but considering the extremist politics in a big part of Europe (including his homeland, Hungary), we should have paid greater attention.
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posted by ersatz at 6:48 AM on March 31, 2016 [1 favorite]
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posted by ersatz at 6:48 AM on March 31, 2016 [1 favorite]
I wonder if it's a Hungarian situation alone or a Hapsburgian one.
? Even assuming you're only talking about the eastern branch, when you add the ex-Hapsburg-controlled areas up, they've got perfectly respectable numbers. Austria, Hungary, and Poland all have more laureates than does Spain. Austria has more than Italy! And probably some of those listed as German in modern references were from Hapsburg-controlled territories.
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posted by praemunire at 6:55 AM on March 31, 2016
? Even assuming you're only talking about the eastern branch, when you add the ex-Hapsburg-controlled areas up, they've got perfectly respectable numbers. Austria, Hungary, and Poland all have more laureates than does Spain. Austria has more than Italy! And probably some of those listed as German in modern references were from Hapsburg-controlled territories.
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posted by praemunire at 6:55 AM on March 31, 2016
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The Paris Review has an interview with him online. Excerpt:
The Paris Review has an interview with him online. Excerpt:
INTERVIEWERposted by Kattullus at 4:56 PM on March 31, 2016 [1 favorite]
How did you combine this with working on Fatelessness?
KERTÉSZ
I would spend my evenings at this friend’s house, talk about operettas and all manner of things, but all of a sudden I would start thinking about my novel. A sentence would come to me. I wouldn’t talk about it and would just sit there—no one would’ve been able to tell. “I like the turnip better than the carrot,” that kind of sentence, declarative and unspectacular—I can’t reconstruct the sentence exactly, but at one point it dawned on me that this was going to be the method of my novel. Unremarkable as such a line may be, it illuminates the novel’s fundamental principle—my having to craft a new language. It’s quite funny that one sentence should bring this whole business to life.
There were three main considerations for me—language, form, and plot. This forced me to remain focused. I was aware that I was about to start writing a novel that might easily turn into a tearjerker, not least because the novel’s protagonist is a boy. But I invented the boy precisely because anyone in a dictatorship is kept in a childlike state of ignorance and helplessness. For that reason, I not only had to create a specific style and form, but I had to pay close attention to temporality.
As I was working on Fatelessness, Semprún’s The Long Voyage was published in Budapest. The book was much celebrated—yet Semprún had chosen the wrong technique, narrating only the most spectacular of events and mangling temporality in the process. It’s a spectacular method, but it’s just not true. Whereas if you tell the story of a child, you have to conceive of a temporality that is appropriate, for a child has no agency in his own life and is forced to endure all.
So as Semprún’s book was reaping so much praise, it became clear to me that if I were to be true to the story I had to tell, I would have to describe, from beginning to end, a situation—any situation—in which my protagonist finds himself, rather than opting merely for the spectacular moments. Take, for example, the famous twenty minutes it took to unload the trains at Auschwitz. That’s just how long it took, and a lot happened in these twenty minutes.
@Joe in Australia
Interesting fact: although Wikipedia says there are a very-creditable thirteen (fourteen?) Hungarian Nobel laureates, Kertész was only the second laureate to be resident in Hungary at the time of his award. In some cases the future laureates left Hungary for professional reasons, but in others it would be fair to say that they owe their survival to being of Hungarian extraction.
Well worth reading on this is "The Great Escape: Nine [Hungarian] Jews Who Fled Hitler and Changed the World" by Kati Marton. The nine were Leo Szilard, Edward Teller, Eugene Wigner (Nobel Prize for Physics, 1963) , John von Neuman, Arthur Koestler, Robert Capa, Andre Kertesz, Alexander Korda and Michael Curtiz.
posted by vac2003 at 5:31 PM on March 31, 2016 [1 favorite]
Interesting fact: although Wikipedia says there are a very-creditable thirteen (fourteen?) Hungarian Nobel laureates, Kertész was only the second laureate to be resident in Hungary at the time of his award. In some cases the future laureates left Hungary for professional reasons, but in others it would be fair to say that they owe their survival to being of Hungarian extraction.
Well worth reading on this is "The Great Escape: Nine [Hungarian] Jews Who Fled Hitler and Changed the World" by Kati Marton. The nine were Leo Szilard, Edward Teller, Eugene Wigner (Nobel Prize for Physics, 1963) , John von Neuman, Arthur Koestler, Robert Capa, Andre Kertesz, Alexander Korda and Michael Curtiz.
posted by vac2003 at 5:31 PM on March 31, 2016 [1 favorite]
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Fatelessness is certainly one of the greatest novels I've ever read. The way that the narrator drifts through the camps, his simple curiosity. The manner with which the degradation is established really strikes at the cool detachment of a child accommodating to his the new normality is a real gut punch.
posted by Tasmanian_Kris at 4:02 AM on April 1, 2016
Fatelessness is certainly one of the greatest novels I've ever read. The way that the narrator drifts through the camps, his simple curiosity. The manner with which the degradation is established really strikes at the cool detachment of a child accommodating to his the new normality is a real gut punch.
posted by Tasmanian_Kris at 4:02 AM on April 1, 2016
Thanks for the post, and the discussion, it prompted me to read Fatelessness. And wow, the very innocence of how they all thought about Auschwitz when they arrived first, it is so horrible, and yet described as though this was normal.
posted by Fence at 11:19 AM on April 12, 2016
posted by Fence at 11:19 AM on April 12, 2016
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Interesting fact: although Wikipedia says there are a very-creditable thirteen (fourteen?) Hungarian Nobel laureates, Kertész was only the second laureate to be resident in Hungary at the time of his award. In some cases the future laureates left Hungary for professional reasons, but in others it would be fair to say that they owe their survival to being of Hungarian extraction.
posted by Joe in Australia at 3:27 AM on March 31, 2016