On the Road to Prague, in Budapest (Part II)

In last week's column we took a brief stroll through Budapest's English-language literary scene, stopping by to meet three local novelists, Olen Steinhauer, Adam LeBor, and Robin Hunt. In case anyone is wondering why these three made the first cut, the answer is that they are the most conspicuous flowers in the garden: Steinhauer because he is in near-full bloom as a published author of literary mysteries; LeBor because he is the hardiest of the current crop of English-language non-fiction writers resident in Hungary, and Hunt because his writing and personal life are as florid as a field of overripe opium poppies. Next to these three, most of the others fail to stand out from the underbrush.

Actually, some of Budapest's would-be English-language novelists seem to be doing their best to hide in the underbrush.

Having decided to do a column on our local authors, I assumed tracking down and profiling our local hopefuls would be as difficult as giving away a Hawaiian vacation. After all, for the average novelist, press is everything. Just look at Prague, the novel that put Budapest on the map two years ago; it became a best-seller not because its reviews were so great - Steinhauer's are better - but simply because it got a ton of press.

Now, I know that a call from Stink is not the same thing as an inquiry from the Times Literary Supplement - it's more like a message from your local health department asking for a list of everyone you've slept with in the past six months - but I was still a bit surprised to find some of our local scribblers horrified at the notion that their names might actually appear in print.

"Where did you get my name and email? Who gave it to you, and what did they tell you?" was how poetess-writer Alison Boston responded to my offer of a plug for her prose writing.

I'm willing to cut Boston a bit of slack, as she only writes and publishes fiction under pseudonyms, meaning it is probably porn, and no doubt strong stuff at that. She also gets credit for being game enough to mount the occasional stage and read poetry, which takes a fair bit of gumption, especially if people in the audience think you write smut under assumed names.

But what to make of C.B. Alexander, another Budapest-based poet who is reportedly working on a novel, or Robert Smyth, the Budapest Business Journal's technology correspondent and (hopefully) part-time fictionalizer? Getting a word out of either about their works-in-progress was like trying to find out what goes into those tubes of meat cream you sometimes see in the grocery store. I can only assume they don't want to jinx something that isn't yet completed.

Ellis: pensive

Even some of those with finished novels are hard to pin down. It took a three-hour lunch chez Stink to get Matt Ellis to cough up details of the satirical novel he jokingly says is "currently being rejected by agents in the U.S."

Ellis may be humbled by his experience as an assistant editor at a major New York publisher, in addition to being naturally self-effacing. But the manuscript also sounds like a bit of a tough sell, unfortunately. Currently entitled Lumpen - a wonderful title, if you ask me - it is actually about expats in Prague, where Ellis lived and tended bar for two years in the early 1990s. To New York publishing types, Prague in the early '90s probably seems hopelessly clichéd, while Arthur Phillips' Prague has filled the quota for books about Americans adrift in post-Communist Central Europe, even if it took place in Budapest. (Just for the record, Ellis gives Prague a cautious thumbs-up, calling it "a good book about people I would never want to hang out with.")

There may also be certain other hurdles posed by the current zeitgeist in the U.S.

"The last guy who rejected it said it wasn't patriotic enough for the American market, which I found pretty humorous," says Ellis, who just returned to Budapest from a five-month stay in Chicago, and who describes his lifestyle here as "pretty degenerate."

Of course, some others are more forthcoming about their fabulizing.

Victoria Northrop, who mixes journalism with diplomacy - she is married to U.S. Embassy public affairs chief Cesar Beltran - is slogging away on a long-awaited page-turner filled with "loads of sex and booze and half-hearted espionage in August Coup-era Moscow."

Taylor: expansive

Meanwhile, Jeff Taylor has finished two chapters of a prose adaptation of his play "Artifice," a multimedia send-up of the art business which was put up both in Budapest and the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland. In addition to art, Taylor knows a thing or two about the real-life life of the novelist in Central Europe, having devoted at least two of his almost 14 years in Hungary on an historical epic set in Pécs.

"It was called something dumb like the Personal History of Palms," he recently told me over a pizza at Okay Italia, explaining that the book alternated between the present and the period 1943-1956.

"It was very serious, as I had no sense of humor when I wrote it," Taylor deadpanned, proving he found one during the long weeks of writing, re-writing, pitching and rejection.

But even the biggest self-promoters among Budapest's fictionalists have something to learn from their compatriots in the local poetry scene. Like more than a few Anglophone expats, I occasionally find myself in the audience at the "Bardroom," Budapest's semi-regular celebration of poetry and spoken word, even though I generally find poetry and poets insufferable. Put it this way: if Bardroom co-organizer David Hill wrote novels instead of poems, he would have already sold enough books to retire to the French Riviera.

As with everything, though, there is a point of diminishing returns. In this case it was discovered by one Zach Lebeau, who self-published a novel a few years ago called Monkey Me, had it translated into Hungarian, and promoted it with billboards in the Budapest metro, no doubt hoping to turn himself into a name-brand author, but making a bit of a monkey of himself in the process.

Which leaves us with Stink, who is happy to report that he is about to embark on another round of revisions to his comic adventure novel The Golden Stool, a first draft of which was completed early last year. A genuine original, the book features a devilishly clever plot involving politics, porn, voodoo, slavery, rap music and international finance, page after page of action-packed action, an unforgettable cast of characters, countless belly laughs, and a surprise ending so shocking your head will spin like the little girl in "The Exorcist."

But that's just one critic's view. When it comes out, make sure to buy it and find out for yourself.