– Are you really claiming to be Debrecen?
– I can say yes. I lived here for years, got married here, and my son studied in the city. I kept my apartment in Budapest too, but I am not crawling due to the epidemic. I moved on to this painting four years ago, I can calculate by writing my new novel here, and it took me over three years.
“Interesting, do you divide your life on the basis of your books?”
This is also a reliable alignment, but there are other aspects as well. I have lived in many places my entire life, so my period comes involuntarily. Budapest is just my birthplace, and I grew up there. I graduated from the Pontifical School of Grammar in my third or fourth year, I was a college student.
After graduation, they were transferred to Urochaza as a soldier, because at that time it was possible to start the university only after a year of service. Then I went back to Budapest, and after college I started my wandering life, now in Debrecen.
The virus has squeezed it between four walls. How do you bear confinement?
– I am in the best possible place with my family. I rarely go out of our house on the fifth floor, so this is the best way to fight infection. We also bought the vacant apartment next to us, so when my wife and two kids come home from work, I grab myself and go into the “next door” where I can continue writing.
Do you need peace of mind to tell a story?
– Did not calculate in advance, the opportunity arose. But we can also consider it a study.
I see handwritten papers on my desk …
– I punched the lines with a ballpoint pen. I used to start with that, and then when I learned to use a typewriter, I wrote handwritten scripts myself, and finally, with the routine that I gained in the meantime, I ventured to the point that I wrote on the spot. Suddenly there were people who were happy to write my handwritten texts, and I happily returned to the ballpoint pen.
To what extent does your writing reflect your state of mind, your creative drive?
– The next day I can determine the quality of writing from the shape and size of the letters. Of course, my anxiety, my creative drive, leaves its mark on appearance. And it’s clear from the clean, straight lines that I was able to describe something in the final form of Round 1. Honestly, I’m a bit envious of young people for knowing how much I will never learn. However, I do not want a computer or a smartphone.
The human memory remains. How hard is it to remember your old memories while writing a novel?
It depends on whether it is a fictional or a real story. Of course, memory is strange, too. I had just called on the phone from a former college classmate who recalled some common stories I had never remembered and painted me as someone I hadn’t thought of myself. Our view of those years may be very different because I had more problems at that time than I did.
Thus, the difficulties within me were fixed, not the self-forgetting which could be remembered with so much nostalgia for old age. I guess you might have had a happy college year, but I live with the suspicion that I lived them in a way that just seemed amusing. The outrageous fate rides in man are best kept.
He writes about the places, events and personalities of his childhood in such a way that we ourselves almost live in that environment, at that age.
“What was fun and interesting for me writing was that I realized on the go what I had to say. What my specific experiences were, who the people were important to me. Once I decided that, everything came naturally. I managed to write anyone’s life – not Of necessity my life – in context. What is forgotten is forgotten. What is true about it. Just like a ghost image, that was the end result.
“Why are you suggesting in some places that your memory might fool you, or that you might not want to say anything?”
The inability to describe every moment in our life. Not to mention smothered memories or forgotten stories for unintelligible reasons. This novel was also good for me to get to know myself.
– I think that gives the key. As he notes in one place: “The first condition for writing is to accept oneself.”
– Yeah. Because we have unacceptable things too … there for sure … Now I was suddenly wondering if I had written it down … What I didn’t want to accept was a thing. Then there is the oppression that one takes away from his life because he does not want to live with him … I cannot answer that, like many others. The only difference between the writer is that he is the medium of his memories.
– It would have been a great trip!
– He explained a lot to me. I convinced myself of what was important in my life and was able to eliminate extraneous and unnecessary details. From now on, I remember what’s in my diary.
Primini Geza. Photo: Andras Peter Nemeth
– She was so chunky. There are no 640 pages?
– I don’t have any attachment. I needed a lot of space to recount the milestones in my life since I was born into the military. Anyway: They say thick books are cool these days, and short films are good.
“Listen here, Geza.” You must be a writer. You’ve read biographies of many writers before, and most of them lived their childhoods like yours. Now that you are free, try to write about whatever comes to mind, ”says Tibor, a character in his book With a Back in the Year 56. Did this advice set the stage?
No, but it didn’t happen to me by chance. I’ve never dealt with it before. My mom’s classmate, Tibor, was the first to treat me like an adult even though I was seventeen years old and talked to me anyway. I memorized what he said.
– I also like this: “Either you go by five minutes, nothing in Hungary, or you remain a“ little boy. ”Little boy: profession, genius: five minutes. Plus alcohol.”
– There is nothing to add. This is a mother’s opinion. It seemed like a drunk New Year’s Eve warning. It is definitely valid worldwide today. I’ve never been so conscious.
When the first volume of my short stories, The King of Sweden, was published in 1970, there were quite a few young junior writers, so they got awards, but I was so horrified by this young writer’s box that I stopped writing and switched to lyrics. It was one of the most important decisions of my life. I managed to convince painting teacher Tamas Chih to sing my words. Then after I showed my creativity in this, I went back to literature.
– Tamas Chih is really missing, right?
– It’s hard, it’s so difficult without him … I’m fine with his son, Andras Chih, and he sings too, and last time he asked me to write some songs. It was just a one-time event. But it indicates the duration of the effect. Tamas and I made a whole so rounder that nothing could go on. Another era came, what we did then would be different today, although the song is of the eternal kind, and reflects personal feelings.
He is currently writing a continuation for Magyar Copperfield. How far have you reached on your CV?
– Volume two on my college years, and ends at the start of our joint career with Tamás Cseh. But I don’t know the exact end. I’ve already found the basic tone and structure to it, and I’m also thinking of the title. Given my past experience, this time it is unlikely that I will be working on the manuscript for three years.
Fortunately there is no deadline when I’m ready for this and then I take it to the publisher and it will be released. I am not planning for a third part. What’s Next? It’s like sailing: I’m going where the wind takes me. By the way, my collection of short stories will be published in Seeder in January.
– A really great gift for your 75th birthday!
“The size of my group really is due to the interest of the publisher. I never really care about my bloat, and neither will I. I don’t feel the passage of time because I always have a lot to do and can’t pay attention to it.
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