Recently, on Hungarian Drama Day, one of the winners, László Garaczi, said that there would be no writer who could not be alone, sit at home for too long, go deep, and fear that nothing would happen around him. But what about the café clerk then? With Ady, Karinthy, Kosztolányi, Szép Ern, the whole West? What about the dramas by Ferenc Molnar in the Japanese café? How can they write in constant noise, in a mass of smoke?
And it’s probably the kind, and the resulting kind of work is the point. Of course, one day there may be a computer program that will tell you under what conditions the work was created.
I am writing a book. Handy book to put on the spot if you bring soup. It can be picked up again and before the anchovies arrive, you can even read fifty lines from it. Maybe a hundred. Two layers before dinner. A book that doesn’t bother you when you’re looking at the beach while reading and staring at something you’ll forget the next moment. It can be lost or abandoned. It wouldn’t be worth anything in the room, at home, or in the library. Reading is not recommended. It can only be enjoyed with hot laurel air. After the best coffee, when one is lying in a chair, smokes a scented cigarette, reads a page and a half, then takes a sweet nap while seagulls circulate over the blue water…
– Bella Humvas wrote, how right he was.
There is some literature in cafes, and the legends of cafes continue to live on. For example, the fact that Attila Joseph shared bean soup with Lagos in Japan. Or that in Opatija, after a while, artists had already looked to tearing pictures from color magazines, apparently to inspire their next portraits.
On a night of cafés, the performances of café historian Sally Noemi is not to be missed, and we hope that these legends will be debunked here too.
