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Strictly from Hungary
“Rich in humor, confidence men, and charm."— New York Times
Known for his best-selling military histories, Ladislas Farago also wrote a witty tribute to his homeland, Strictly from Hungary . Noting that Hungary has produced some of the world's most renowned artists, scientists, and financiers as well as its share of world-class con-artists, charlatans, and rakes, Farago sets out to explain just how one tiny country can be responsible for so much talent, both good and bad. Using stories from his days as a struggling writer in the bustling café scenes of Budapest and New York City, Farago demonstrates the Hungarian knack for remaining irrepressible and optimistic even in the face of catastrophe. Here we meet Zoltan, a fellow Bohemian who presents his astonished benefactor with a play "about nothing," a theme later made famous by another writer of Hungarian descent, Jerry Seinfeld. Farago also introduces us to "Baby Kiss," a vivacious Hungarian beauty queen, and the story of how she ended up in Fort Worth, Texas; Orkeny, a double agent for America at the height of the Cold War who "spiced up" his reports to keep everyone happy, and the author's own experience getting mustered into the supposedly non-existent Royal Hungarian Army. Farago's reminiscence validates what most Hungarians that Hungary is the center of the world and that everyone has some connection to the land of the Magyars. In that spirit, Farago learns that George Washington himself was "strictly from Hungary." This edition is introduced by the author's son, who shows that the same vibrant spirit described by his father remains the hallmark of the Hungarian temperament.
Known for his best-selling military histories, Ladislas Farago also wrote a witty tribute to his homeland, Strictly from Hungary . Noting that Hungary has produced some of the world's most renowned artists, scientists, and financiers as well as its share of world-class con-artists, charlatans, and rakes, Farago sets out to explain just how one tiny country can be responsible for so much talent, both good and bad. Using stories from his days as a struggling writer in the bustling café scenes of Budapest and New York City, Farago demonstrates the Hungarian knack for remaining irrepressible and optimistic even in the face of catastrophe. Here we meet Zoltan, a fellow Bohemian who presents his astonished benefactor with a play "about nothing," a theme later made famous by another writer of Hungarian descent, Jerry Seinfeld. Farago also introduces us to "Baby Kiss," a vivacious Hungarian beauty queen, and the story of how she ended up in Fort Worth, Texas; Orkeny, a double agent for America at the height of the Cold War who "spiced up" his reports to keep everyone happy, and the author's own experience getting mustered into the supposedly non-existent Royal Hungarian Army. Farago's reminiscence validates what most Hungarians that Hungary is the center of the world and that everyone has some connection to the land of the Magyars. In that spirit, Farago learns that George Washington himself was "strictly from Hungary." This edition is introduced by the author's son, who shows that the same vibrant spirit described by his father remains the hallmark of the Hungarian temperament.
- GenresHungary
216 pages, Paperback
First published December 6, 2004
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About the author
Ladislas Farago
45 books22 followersLadislas Farago was a military historian and journalist who published a number of best-selling books on history and espionage, especially concerning the World War II era.
He was the author of Patton: Ordeal and Triumph, the biography of General George Patton that formed the basis for the film "Patton" and wrote The Broken Seal, one of the books that formed the basis for the movie ''Tora! Tora! Tora!''.
One of his more controversial books was Aftermath: Martin Bormann and the Fourth Reich .
He was the author of Patton: Ordeal and Triumph, the biography of General George Patton that formed the basis for the film "Patton" and wrote The Broken Seal, one of the books that formed the basis for the movie ''Tora! Tora! Tora!''.
One of his more controversial books was Aftermath: Martin Bormann and the Fourth Reich .
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July 13, 2021
Strictly speaking, there has always been something different about Hungary. That small country at the heart of Europe is linguistically and culturally distinct from all of its neighbours, and its history is every bit as unique. Its charm and attraction are strong and evident, even for a new visitor to the country; a friend of mine, on a first visit to Budapest, described it as “a fairy-tale city.” And Ladislas Farago puts strong emphasis on those magical, fairy-tale qualities of Hungary in his 1962 book Strictly from Hungary.
Ladislas Farago, a native Hungarian who emigrated to America in the 1930’s, was best known for his military histories. His 1963 book Patton: Ordeal and Triumph formed the basis for the film Patton (1970). Similarly, his 1967 book The Broken Seal, a look at U.S. codebreakers’ attempts to decipher Japanese codes on the eve of the Pearl Harbor attack, was one of the sources for another epic World War II film, Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970). But in Strictly from Hungary, Farago returned, figuratively speaking, to the Hungary he knew as a young reporter; and throughout the book he revels in telling stories of an old pre-war Budapest that fairly brims over with dashing and slightly scandalous con-men and their gorgeous ladyfriends.
A good example of the kind of story that fills Strictly from Hungary is one from Farago’s days as a young reporter; he recalls how his editor, Arpad Vas (not his real name), specialized in what he called “intimate scoops.” To secure one such “intimate scoop” for his newspaper, Farago tells us, Arpad Vas
...hired a starving young actor to attempt to seduce his, Vas’s, wife. Then he hired another starving young actor to beat up the would-be seducer in the Café New York at 9:00 pm, when the place was crowded, insisting that he had first mortgage on Mrs. Vas’s affections. It made a hell of a good story for page one, and then it made a second story when Mrs. Vas eloped with one of the actors for real. And it was exclusive, too. (pp. 58-59)
Farago, while he clearly enjoyed the wild life of Budapest, was not a native Budapester; rather, he hailed from Csurgó [pronounced tchur-go], a small town in southwestern Hungary. One of Farago’s stories about life in his hometown relates to his Uncle Gyula, another of the charming scoundrels who populate this book. In a chapter named for Uncle Gyula, Farago describes a Christmastime surprise visit from Uncle Gyula, who has hired a taxicab to drive him all the way from Budapest to Csurgó – 200 kilometers.
The reason for Uncle Gyula’s visit, it turns out, is that Uncle Gyula arranged for trainloads of Hungarian turkeys to be delivered to Great Britain, to grace thousands of British tables for Christmas dinner – but “then neglected their delivery. This created an acute culinary crisis in England (where Hungarian turkeys used to be most popular) and brought Scotland Yard into the picture” (p. 105).
A recounting of Uncle Gyula’s misadventures in Csurgó, while he was hiding from detectives for Budapest’s Fraud and Forgery Squad, also gives Farago the chance to reflect upon the Hungarian language – as Uncle Gyula, who presented himself as a linguist, is one of the few Hungarians Farago has ever known who did not take care to learn more than one language. Farago, pointing out the ways in which the Hungarian language is unique within the world community, states that “Among the many problems that vex them as a nation, their language represents a perplexing dilemma to most Hungarians”, and calls Hungarian “a tongue that is tantamount to a lingua obscura”(p. 106). Having studied Hungarian, I can tell you that it is a challenging, intricate, and sometimes maddening language. I love it.
Humour, of course, can often speak to a situation that is terribly serious, and Strictly from Hungary participates in that tradition as well. A chapter titled “Mustering” begins by mentioning a peculiarity of pre-World War I Hungarian military tradition:
Under the medieval code of honor that survived intact into the twentieth century, it was not merely the privilege but the bounden duty of members of the Hungarian officers’ corps to avenge any personal insult on the spot by drawing their fearsome swords and cutting down the offender. It was left to the discretion of the offended officers to judge the situations and act upon them. (p. 159)
This look back to a time when ordinary Hungarians "lived in the shadow of instant death" (p. 159) -- death at the hands of touchy officers from their own army -- serves as a lead-in to a story of when Farago found himself drafted into an army that, officially, did not exist. Under the post-World War I Treaty of Trianon, Hungary after 1920 was banned from fielding an army that inducted recruits for compulsory service; but Farago nonetheless received a notice “from an agency called the 'Royal Hungarian Tourist Association,' instructing me in no uncertain terms to appear in the Count Hadik Barracks…with my gear, to participate in a patriotic excursion that could last for two years” (pp. 163-64).
When Farago appeals to his friend Ferenc, the head of the Press Department in Budapest, Ferenc reminds him that Hungary has no conscript army, and states that anyone who is worried about being drafted into a non-existent army is obviously delusional. Ferenc recommends psychiatric care, and Farago’s new psychiatrist, one Dr. Hansburg, quickly lets the unhappy young writer know that his choices are “either five costly years on Dr. Hansburg’s couch or two years in the army for free. After the session, the army appeared rather attractive to me” (p. 165).
It is all very much like something out of the work of another Eastern European writer, Franz Kafka – and this post-World War I story also reflects much regarding Hungarian life in the post-World War II years when Farago was writing this book. In 1956, six years before the publication of Strictly from Hungary, the Hungarian people had risen up against the oppression of Soviet rule. It was the 1956-os forradalom, the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, and initially it seemed as if Hungary might be able to become a neutral nation like Austria; but after a brief period of hope, the revolution had been brutally crushed by the Red Army.
In 1962, as at the time of Farago’s post-World War I run-in with the “Royal Hungarian Tourist Association,” a Hungarian could all too easily find him- or herself being issued nonsensical orders – and being told that an inability or unwillingness to follow said orders was obvious evidence of “mental illness.” It was a time when anyone who was Hungarian, or of Hungarian descent, could have been forgiven for wanting to look back to a time before those difficult days from Hungarian life.
Farago’s son, John Farago, writes in a foreword to this 2004 edition of Strictly from Hungary of visiting Budapest with his father in 1975. By that time, Hungary had garnered a reputation as a relatively moderate state within the Soviet bloc; Hungarians jokingly (if in secret) referred to their country as a szocialista tábor legboldogabb barakkja (“the happiest barrack in the socialist camp”). But John Farago records that his father “was crestfallen by how Budapest’s vibrancy had been flattened, its laughter shushed into whispers” (p. viii).
Against that backdrop, the somewhat scandalous quality of Strictly from Hungary actually makes a great deal of sense. The book seems intended as an exercise in deliberate nostalgia. Its humour, after a time, almost comes to seem desperate.
By the time Farago wrote Strictly from Hungary, his native land had endured World War I, World War II, the Holocaust, Soviet occupation, and the crushing of the forradalom of 1956. It must have been a comfort, when Farago was writing this book in 1962, to look back to a time before Hungary experienced all those horrors of the 20th century -- to envision a Budapest that was not a drab, joyless administrative center of the socialist era, but rather a city alive with intrigue and daring and passion.
I first read Strictly from Hungary in the summer of 2011, while preparing for a six-month residence in the country – and I thank Farago for, among other things, introducing me to the New York Café; the legendary restaurant on Budapest’s Nagykörút (Great Ring Road) has long been a haven for writers and artists, ever since the playwright Ferenc Molnár threw the front-door key into the Danube River to make sure that the restaurant would remain open 24 hours a day.
A reading of this book, in the context of Hungary’s history before and since, involves humour, colour, and a rich, sensual appreciation for the joys and pleasures of life on the one hand – and calls forth a deep and profound sense of melancholy on the other. In that way, Strictly from Hungary strikes me as being characteristically Hungarian.
Ladislas Farago, a native Hungarian who emigrated to America in the 1930’s, was best known for his military histories. His 1963 book Patton: Ordeal and Triumph formed the basis for the film Patton (1970). Similarly, his 1967 book The Broken Seal, a look at U.S. codebreakers’ attempts to decipher Japanese codes on the eve of the Pearl Harbor attack, was one of the sources for another epic World War II film, Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970). But in Strictly from Hungary, Farago returned, figuratively speaking, to the Hungary he knew as a young reporter; and throughout the book he revels in telling stories of an old pre-war Budapest that fairly brims over with dashing and slightly scandalous con-men and their gorgeous ladyfriends.
A good example of the kind of story that fills Strictly from Hungary is one from Farago’s days as a young reporter; he recalls how his editor, Arpad Vas (not his real name), specialized in what he called “intimate scoops.” To secure one such “intimate scoop” for his newspaper, Farago tells us, Arpad Vas
...hired a starving young actor to attempt to seduce his, Vas’s, wife. Then he hired another starving young actor to beat up the would-be seducer in the Café New York at 9:00 pm, when the place was crowded, insisting that he had first mortgage on Mrs. Vas’s affections. It made a hell of a good story for page one, and then it made a second story when Mrs. Vas eloped with one of the actors for real. And it was exclusive, too. (pp. 58-59)
Farago, while he clearly enjoyed the wild life of Budapest, was not a native Budapester; rather, he hailed from Csurgó [pronounced tchur-go], a small town in southwestern Hungary. One of Farago’s stories about life in his hometown relates to his Uncle Gyula, another of the charming scoundrels who populate this book. In a chapter named for Uncle Gyula, Farago describes a Christmastime surprise visit from Uncle Gyula, who has hired a taxicab to drive him all the way from Budapest to Csurgó – 200 kilometers.
The reason for Uncle Gyula’s visit, it turns out, is that Uncle Gyula arranged for trainloads of Hungarian turkeys to be delivered to Great Britain, to grace thousands of British tables for Christmas dinner – but “then neglected their delivery. This created an acute culinary crisis in England (where Hungarian turkeys used to be most popular) and brought Scotland Yard into the picture” (p. 105).
A recounting of Uncle Gyula’s misadventures in Csurgó, while he was hiding from detectives for Budapest’s Fraud and Forgery Squad, also gives Farago the chance to reflect upon the Hungarian language – as Uncle Gyula, who presented himself as a linguist, is one of the few Hungarians Farago has ever known who did not take care to learn more than one language. Farago, pointing out the ways in which the Hungarian language is unique within the world community, states that “Among the many problems that vex them as a nation, their language represents a perplexing dilemma to most Hungarians”, and calls Hungarian “a tongue that is tantamount to a lingua obscura”(p. 106). Having studied Hungarian, I can tell you that it is a challenging, intricate, and sometimes maddening language. I love it.
Humour, of course, can often speak to a situation that is terribly serious, and Strictly from Hungary participates in that tradition as well. A chapter titled “Mustering” begins by mentioning a peculiarity of pre-World War I Hungarian military tradition:
Under the medieval code of honor that survived intact into the twentieth century, it was not merely the privilege but the bounden duty of members of the Hungarian officers’ corps to avenge any personal insult on the spot by drawing their fearsome swords and cutting down the offender. It was left to the discretion of the offended officers to judge the situations and act upon them. (p. 159)
This look back to a time when ordinary Hungarians "lived in the shadow of instant death" (p. 159) -- death at the hands of touchy officers from their own army -- serves as a lead-in to a story of when Farago found himself drafted into an army that, officially, did not exist. Under the post-World War I Treaty of Trianon, Hungary after 1920 was banned from fielding an army that inducted recruits for compulsory service; but Farago nonetheless received a notice “from an agency called the 'Royal Hungarian Tourist Association,' instructing me in no uncertain terms to appear in the Count Hadik Barracks…with my gear, to participate in a patriotic excursion that could last for two years” (pp. 163-64).
When Farago appeals to his friend Ferenc, the head of the Press Department in Budapest, Ferenc reminds him that Hungary has no conscript army, and states that anyone who is worried about being drafted into a non-existent army is obviously delusional. Ferenc recommends psychiatric care, and Farago’s new psychiatrist, one Dr. Hansburg, quickly lets the unhappy young writer know that his choices are “either five costly years on Dr. Hansburg’s couch or two years in the army for free. After the session, the army appeared rather attractive to me” (p. 165).
It is all very much like something out of the work of another Eastern European writer, Franz Kafka – and this post-World War I story also reflects much regarding Hungarian life in the post-World War II years when Farago was writing this book. In 1956, six years before the publication of Strictly from Hungary, the Hungarian people had risen up against the oppression of Soviet rule. It was the 1956-os forradalom, the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, and initially it seemed as if Hungary might be able to become a neutral nation like Austria; but after a brief period of hope, the revolution had been brutally crushed by the Red Army.
In 1962, as at the time of Farago’s post-World War I run-in with the “Royal Hungarian Tourist Association,” a Hungarian could all too easily find him- or herself being issued nonsensical orders – and being told that an inability or unwillingness to follow said orders was obvious evidence of “mental illness.” It was a time when anyone who was Hungarian, or of Hungarian descent, could have been forgiven for wanting to look back to a time before those difficult days from Hungarian life.
Farago’s son, John Farago, writes in a foreword to this 2004 edition of Strictly from Hungary of visiting Budapest with his father in 1975. By that time, Hungary had garnered a reputation as a relatively moderate state within the Soviet bloc; Hungarians jokingly (if in secret) referred to their country as a szocialista tábor legboldogabb barakkja (“the happiest barrack in the socialist camp”). But John Farago records that his father “was crestfallen by how Budapest’s vibrancy had been flattened, its laughter shushed into whispers” (p. viii).
Against that backdrop, the somewhat scandalous quality of Strictly from Hungary actually makes a great deal of sense. The book seems intended as an exercise in deliberate nostalgia. Its humour, after a time, almost comes to seem desperate.
By the time Farago wrote Strictly from Hungary, his native land had endured World War I, World War II, the Holocaust, Soviet occupation, and the crushing of the forradalom of 1956. It must have been a comfort, when Farago was writing this book in 1962, to look back to a time before Hungary experienced all those horrors of the 20th century -- to envision a Budapest that was not a drab, joyless administrative center of the socialist era, but rather a city alive with intrigue and daring and passion.
I first read Strictly from Hungary in the summer of 2011, while preparing for a six-month residence in the country – and I thank Farago for, among other things, introducing me to the New York Café; the legendary restaurant on Budapest’s Nagykörút (Great Ring Road) has long been a haven for writers and artists, ever since the playwright Ferenc Molnár threw the front-door key into the Danube River to make sure that the restaurant would remain open 24 hours a day.
A reading of this book, in the context of Hungary’s history before and since, involves humour, colour, and a rich, sensual appreciation for the joys and pleasures of life on the one hand – and calls forth a deep and profound sense of melancholy on the other. In that way, Strictly from Hungary strikes me as being characteristically Hungarian.
April 25, 2012
Ladislas Farago was best known for his military histories -- his book The Broken Seal, about Pearl Harbor, inspired the 1970 movie Tora! Tora! Tora!, and his biography of George S. Patton was a primary source for Franklin Schaffner's 1970 bio-pic Patton with George C. Scott -- but he was a Hungarian by birth and upbringing, and in Strictly from Hungary he revels in telling stories of an old pre-war Budapest that fairly brims over with dashing con-men and their gorgeous ladyfriends, all of them involved in a variety of scandalous but entertaining enterprises. One gets the sense, while reading this book, that Farago does not want any of us to take Strictly from Hungary as a definitive portrait of the Hungarian people; for that, one must look to a book like Paul Lendvai's The Hungarians: A Thousand Years of Victory in Defeat. Rather, the book seems intended as an exercise in deliberate nostalgia. The sepia-toned photograph on the cover of this modern reprint is appropriate to the tone of Farago's book. By the time Farago wrote Strictly from Hungary, his native land had endured World War I, World War II, the Holocaust, Soviet occupation, and the Red Army's ruthless crushing of the gallant but unsuccessful Hungarian Revolution of 1956. It must have been a comfort, when Farago was writing this book in 1962, to look back to a time before Hungary experienced all those horrors of the 20th century -- to envision a Budapest that was not a drab, joyless administrative center of the socialist era, but rather a city alive with intrigue and daring and passion. Read in those terms, Strictly from Hungary entertains and delivers.
August 3, 2007
This is the sort of self-indulgent, amorphous memoir that makes me gnash my teeth! While I'm normally pretty tolerant of gossipy, anecdote-laden books, something about this writer's tone and style really fell flat for me. I'd hoped to actually learn something about Hungary, but, alas, I didn't. Irritating.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews