{A Writing Career?}[26th October 1988]

[Redbook6:15-17][19881026:1617]{A Writing Career?}[26th October 1988]

19881026.1617

‘Increasingly the term “postmodern” is being used by Hungarian critics to describe Esterházy’s* work. Whatever one’s reservations concerning the usefulness of this term, there are fairly obvious reasons for associating aspects of Esterházy’s work with the self-proclaimed postmodernism of much contemporary American, French and German fiction –

the fusion of high and low culture,

the incorporation of quotations and cultural “ready-mades”,

the subversion of subjectivity,

and the loss of any representative sense of the “real”.’**

This, and Anthony Burgess’ article on J.B.Priestley*** a fortnight later, gave me the happy thought that I might have classified myself at last: as a middle-brow postmodernist whose time has been and gone and might just be coming back again.

I was, therefore, disconcerted, switching on the television accidentally to the pre-Booker Prize T.V. panel yesterday, to hear one of the panel say that he hoped not to read any more books about angels (among other things). I think that was what he said: it is terrible to think that my time may not only have come and gone earlier in the Century, before I was born, but have come again during my writing lifetime and gone so fast that I was not even aware of it: between books, as it were. You certainly have to have your wits about you nowadays, if you want to make a career out of writing.

*{Who he?}

[Presumably: ‘Péter Esterházy (14 April 1950 – 14 July 2016) was a Hungarian writer. He was one of the best known Hungarian and Central European writers of his era. He has been called a "leading figure of 20th century Hungarian literature", his books being considered to be significant contributions to postwar literature…. He wrote in a style that can be characterised as postmodernist.’ (Wikipedia)]

**Richard Aczal, T[imes] L[iterary] S[upplement] Oct[ober] 7-13, 1988 p1122.

***T[imes] L[iterary] S[upplement] Oct[ober] 21-27 1988, p1163.

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