Customer Reviews

The Glance of Countess Hahn-hahn (Down the Danube)

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The first 40-50 pages made me almost stop because I was so put off by the 'style' of the writing. But I kind of understand what reviewers mean by how the book uses its own 'language' to get a sense of the danube's 'life force' for lack of a better description. Not an easy read for a casual reader like myself. You have to be open to something different before this book can have any effect on you or else you're better off skipping it.

After reading ... Richard Teleky's essay collection, "Hungarian Rhapsodies," I had dismissed in that review his article on Esterhazy and admitted that I felt no attraction to Esterhazy's watered-down postmodernism in spite of Teleky's attempts to arouse Western readers' interest in this writer so admired by Hungarian critics. Now, knowing that translation and my own ignorance may have prejudiced me, I decided to give Esterhazy his own chance to win me over as a reader. Maybe I was wrong and Teleky was right?

I vowed to approach this book optimistically. I thought this imaginary travelogue could appeal; I figured it'd serve as an appetizer for the main course, the meatier and even denser non-fictional account of a second journey down the same river that Claudio Magris serves up as "Danube." Two books on journeys down the river through Central Europe, both emerging post-1989. I started with what seemed the easier one, the fictional journey.

Outside of the account of his native Budapest in the middle of the narrative, related with a heavy debt to Italo Calvino's "Invisible Cities," this novel meanders when it should flow in a linear direction, like the river itself. Vienna barely registers, Romania's blurred, and the comlplicate meta-fictional structures and intricate levels of intertextuality left me with no aftertaste. Nothing to savor. Doldrums. Sargasso-ish sea.

I know it's au courant to borrow Borges' imaginary books to cite, Joyce's nightmare dialogues, the whole 20c of European Lit when it comes to experimenting with Traveller vs. Tourist and truth vs. fiction, but Esterhazy here fails to reward my efforts.

From about pp. 130-190, yes, the Budapest section does satisfy a bit, but despite the book's paltry footnotes, there is much that left me empty and I couldn't have cared less to track down the erudition Esterhazy possesses and I lack. Unlike Magris (who the former author mentions very late in the book--written a few years after Magris' magisterial survey), the Hungarian author appears to not much care about the story, the characters, or the plot. The book's clumsily conveyed (at least in English) and the reader's given no context from which (unlike Joyce or Borges) some meaning can be extracted given diligence and attention.

What the plot builds up to is anyone's guess; he seems to have tired of the whole enterprise after the Budapest section. Only bare fleeting bits of emotion felt by people who have suffered in the mitteleuropean landscapes he rushes past remain to move you as a reader. Rarely have I read such an ambitious book by a purportedly renowned novelist that fails to rise to even a basic level of engaging my attention--and I've read my share of such post-modern efforts, and I'm familiar with the effort often expected from readers before the pay-off accrues. Here, no jackpot.

Maybe again this post-1989 cynicism and detachment is the proper pose to assume, but Esterhazy through this book comes off looking like a fop, and the fictional fashions he dons look secondhand and no more trendy or even retro this time around. Stick to Magris for a far more nourishing assortment of Danubian delights. Esterhazy whips up a souffle that sounds intriguing on the menu, but when delivered looks flimsy and tastes flat. This entree leaves you feeling you've spent too much (time) for too little (value).

This is the last time that I'm going to try to read a book that the critics describe as brilliant. I might have known that it would go over my head. It did give me a sense of traveling down the Danube River and of the rich culteral background of the aria. I wish I had copied down every name that the writer dropped ,to look up later. Then I would have learned something. This is clearly an aria of the world of which my knowledge is sourly dificient. About 80% of the book, though, didn't make any sense to me. I am herewith sending out a plea to all book reviews. Please use reviewers with average intelligence, not eggheads.

This is the last time that I'm going to try to read a book that the critics describe as brilliant. I might have known that it would go over my head. It did give me a sense of traveling down the Danube River and of the rich culteral background of the aria. I wish I had copied down every name that the writer dropped ,to look up later. Then I would have learned something. This is clearly an aria of the world of which my knowledge is sourly dificient. About 80% of the book, though, didn't make any sense to me. I am herewith sending out a plea to all book reviews. Please use reviewers with average intelligence, not eggheads.