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Der große Bagarozy.
In German. Die Psychiaterin Cora steckt in einer beruflichen Krise, zwei ihrer Patienten haben sich kurz hintereinander umgebracht. Da taucht in ihrer Praxis Stanislaus Nagy auf, ein merkwrdiger junger Mann, der von Maria Callas besessen ist. Doch Cora hat alles andere als einen harmlosen Callas-Verehrer vor sich. Der Mann behauptet pltzlich, der leibhaftige Teufel zu sein und - verborgen im Innern ihres Pudels - das Leben der Operndiva gelenkt zu haben. Auch ber Coras Schicksal gewinnt Nagy eine merkwrdige Macht.
183 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1997
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
January 31, 2019
I liked this short book for its imaginative plot and its cynical humor. It’s a bit of a wild ride. One of the two main characters is the devil. He’s in the form of a good-looking 30-year old guy called Nagy who holds jobs like a security guard in a department store and as a magician. (His magician stage name gives us the title of the book.)
The devil is bored. He’s tired of evil. “Every day you can hear in the news about torturers who are much more imaginative than me.” He wants to be affectionate toward someone for a change. “…I had the feeling the human race didn’t really need me any more, they could manage quite well on their own.”
Of all people, he falls in love with singer Maria Callas. But in whatever male human form he approaches her, she senses his evil and rejects him. So – ready for this? – he assumes the form of her pet poodle and receives her affection that way. Eventually she dies. (He unsuccessfully tried to stop her affair with Onassis.) Now Maria is dead but he’s still in love with her – listening to her music, surrounding himself with her photos, talking of her constantly. So we learn a lot about Maria Callas’ life in mini-biographical passages.
Since he has human feelings, he’s so depressed he feels he must talk with someone. Enter main character #2. A woman psychoanalyst. She’s 37; not a beauty, but there’s something about her that attracts men who “had at one time wanted to sleep with one of their teachers.” She’s married to a tax consultant; a hypochondriac and the world’s most boring husband. He loves to talk to friends about his physical problems. It’s “a marriage of mutual inconvenience.”
The woman is a textbook example of a bad psychoanalyst. As her patients ramble, she makes her shopping lists. She thinks “I’m being paid for this.” Having had two recent suicides among her patients, she’s worried about her professional reputation. And yet, if she thought her practice could survive it, “…she would have strongly recommended it to [another patient] as a way out of his suffering.” She thinks “Perhaps I only chose this profession to surround myself with sick people as a way of acquiring a bogus sense of superiority.” Even her receptionist dislikes her references to her sessions as “chat shows.”
The psychologist falls in love with her patient, Nagy, the devil. They go out to eat and take long walks but never have sex. He doesn’t reciprocate her feelings because he’s still in love with Maria. She’s furious at him for the love he wastes on a dead woman. He uses her feelings to let her debase herself – after all, he’s the devil. We know this is not going to end well. And in the end, she shows herself to be as evil as he is.
Her husband has one weird hobby that we read about in snippets throughout the book. He collects news clippings of bizarre deaths such as a man’s body found near the top of a mountain in full scuba gear. (Scooped up by a plane fighting forest fires.) A dead woman who traveled for hours by bus and everyone thought she was sleeping. A son who cruelly set up a device to electrocute himself when his mother came home and turned on the lights.
There’s some good writing:
She longs for and fears the weekend. “Two Saturdays would be nice. Instead the Saturday is followed by a Sunday which, since you’ve already done your resting, always turns out to be a bit too long.”
“Once you pass thirty-five you discover, to your surprise, that the world has produced a new generation behind your back.”
“Will I be born again?”
“You? What for?”
[I like the lines above as a nice accompaniment to these from Maugham’s The Painted Veil:
She: “Do you think that the soul is immortal?”
He: ”How should I know?”]
The book I structured like a diary progressing through days of the week. Some sections are her notes that she took of their counseling sessions. An ‘interesting’ and, dare I say, a ‘fun’ read?
Top image from thecocowitch.com
Photo of Maria Callas and Aristoteles Onassis from auction.catawiki.com
Photo of the author from deutschlandfunk.de
The devil is bored. He’s tired of evil. “Every day you can hear in the news about torturers who are much more imaginative than me.” He wants to be affectionate toward someone for a change. “…I had the feeling the human race didn’t really need me any more, they could manage quite well on their own.”
Of all people, he falls in love with singer Maria Callas. But in whatever male human form he approaches her, she senses his evil and rejects him. So – ready for this? – he assumes the form of her pet poodle and receives her affection that way. Eventually she dies. (He unsuccessfully tried to stop her affair with Onassis.) Now Maria is dead but he’s still in love with her – listening to her music, surrounding himself with her photos, talking of her constantly. So we learn a lot about Maria Callas’ life in mini-biographical passages.
Since he has human feelings, he’s so depressed he feels he must talk with someone. Enter main character #2. A woman psychoanalyst. She’s 37; not a beauty, but there’s something about her that attracts men who “had at one time wanted to sleep with one of their teachers.” She’s married to a tax consultant; a hypochondriac and the world’s most boring husband. He loves to talk to friends about his physical problems. It’s “a marriage of mutual inconvenience.”
The woman is a textbook example of a bad psychoanalyst. As her patients ramble, she makes her shopping lists. She thinks “I’m being paid for this.” Having had two recent suicides among her patients, she’s worried about her professional reputation. And yet, if she thought her practice could survive it, “…she would have strongly recommended it to [another patient] as a way out of his suffering.” She thinks “Perhaps I only chose this profession to surround myself with sick people as a way of acquiring a bogus sense of superiority.” Even her receptionist dislikes her references to her sessions as “chat shows.”
The psychologist falls in love with her patient, Nagy, the devil. They go out to eat and take long walks but never have sex. He doesn’t reciprocate her feelings because he’s still in love with Maria. She’s furious at him for the love he wastes on a dead woman. He uses her feelings to let her debase herself – after all, he’s the devil. We know this is not going to end well. And in the end, she shows herself to be as evil as he is.
Her husband has one weird hobby that we read about in snippets throughout the book. He collects news clippings of bizarre deaths such as a man’s body found near the top of a mountain in full scuba gear. (Scooped up by a plane fighting forest fires.) A dead woman who traveled for hours by bus and everyone thought she was sleeping. A son who cruelly set up a device to electrocute himself when his mother came home and turned on the lights.
There’s some good writing:
She longs for and fears the weekend. “Two Saturdays would be nice. Instead the Saturday is followed by a Sunday which, since you’ve already done your resting, always turns out to be a bit too long.”
“Once you pass thirty-five you discover, to your surprise, that the world has produced a new generation behind your back.”
“Will I be born again?”
“You? What for?”
[I like the lines above as a nice accompaniment to these from Maugham’s The Painted Veil:
She: “Do you think that the soul is immortal?”
He: ”How should I know?”]
The book I structured like a diary progressing through days of the week. Some sections are her notes that she took of their counseling sessions. An ‘interesting’ and, dare I say, a ‘fun’ read?
Top image from thecocowitch.com
Photo of Maria Callas and Aristoteles Onassis from auction.catawiki.com
Photo of the author from deutschlandfunk.de
August 10, 2019
Monday
Even in the biggest of big cities there are moments of unexpected quiet. You're walking through the park at three or four in the morning and, although it's not raining nor particularly cold, there is not a single person to be seen. No junkies or courting couples, no tramps, and no Peeping Toms at the gay meat-market.
[...]
Do you have moments like that? You find yourself waking up in another world, and so close to yourself it makes you aware how far away from yourself you usually are?
[...]
It's a strange fact that almost every man thinks he could have made Maria Callas happy - or Marilyn Monroe or Dora Carrington, those women who got stuck with the wrong man. Almost every man thinks they'd had a raw deal from Life and he's the one who could have given them exactly what they needed to make up for it. But perhaps Life knew best. Perhaps these icons would never have given us so much beauty with some corny Mr Happy at their side.
Thursday
I'd like to be affectionate towards someone, just for once. Touch them with my fingertips, whisper to them softly, sweet nothings, every syllable a kiss brushing against their cheek. I'd like to caress someone, bewitch them, spoil them, fool around with them, a romantic song on my lips - I find the whole idea incredibly tempting. I've committed so many cruelties, filled the history books with so many atrocities, thought up such diabolical scenarios, just for once I'd like to be different, a lover, a poetry-writing, cloak-over-the-puddle-spreading, vow-stuttering, kitsch-peddling, love-blind something.
Monday
Her first note. It's an act of worship - only now do I realise it! - an act of divine worship, goddammit! I start to go deaf, to shrivel up. This celebration is not for me. The miracle mocks me. Beauty disdains me cruelly.
-
You have a kind of person here on earth who can only tolerate greatness and beauty when it's dead, if at all, people who get a self-righteous pleasure out of tearing the best to pieces.
[...]
I'm attracted by the idea of being an old man sitting with other old men and saying, "Lads, I used to be the devil himself!" And they'll all have a laugh or a grin and only I'll know what really was.
Even in the biggest of big cities there are moments of unexpected quiet. You're walking through the park at three or four in the morning and, although it's not raining nor particularly cold, there is not a single person to be seen. No junkies or courting couples, no tramps, and no Peeping Toms at the gay meat-market.
[...]
Do you have moments like that? You find yourself waking up in another world, and so close to yourself it makes you aware how far away from yourself you usually are?
[...]
It's a strange fact that almost every man thinks he could have made Maria Callas happy - or Marilyn Monroe or Dora Carrington, those women who got stuck with the wrong man. Almost every man thinks they'd had a raw deal from Life and he's the one who could have given them exactly what they needed to make up for it. But perhaps Life knew best. Perhaps these icons would never have given us so much beauty with some corny Mr Happy at their side.
Thursday
I'd like to be affectionate towards someone, just for once. Touch them with my fingertips, whisper to them softly, sweet nothings, every syllable a kiss brushing against their cheek. I'd like to caress someone, bewitch them, spoil them, fool around with them, a romantic song on my lips - I find the whole idea incredibly tempting. I've committed so many cruelties, filled the history books with so many atrocities, thought up such diabolical scenarios, just for once I'd like to be different, a lover, a poetry-writing, cloak-over-the-puddle-spreading, vow-stuttering, kitsch-peddling, love-blind something.
Monday
Her first note. It's an act of worship - only now do I realise it! - an act of divine worship, goddammit! I start to go deaf, to shrivel up. This celebration is not for me. The miracle mocks me. Beauty disdains me cruelly.
-
You have a kind of person here on earth who can only tolerate greatness and beauty when it's dead, if at all, people who get a self-righteous pleasure out of tearing the best to pieces.
[...]
I'm attracted by the idea of being an old man sitting with other old men and saying, "Lads, I used to be the devil himself!" And they'll all have a laugh or a grin and only I'll know what really was.
March 9, 2008
I enjoyed this novel without being overwhelmed by it. It is clever and I must admit that my personal picture of the Devil is much enhanced by envisioning him as Maria Callas's black poodle.
As the novel is only 153 pages long, you have nothing to lose by entering the worlds of the delusions of Stanislaus Nagy and his psychiatrist Dr Cora Dulz.
Or is it reality?
As the novel is only 153 pages long, you have nothing to lose by entering the worlds of the delusions of Stanislaus Nagy and his psychiatrist Dr Cora Dulz.
Or is it reality?
November 22, 2019
Un libro scorrevole, con personaggi forti e originali, e una tematica fuori dal comune.
Ritengo il finale non all'altezza del libro. Una chiusa più sorprendente sarebbe calzata a pennello.
Ritengo il finale non all'altezza del libro. Una chiusa più sorprendente sarebbe calzata a pennello.
April 29, 2014
An immensely inviting twist of fantasy and the paranormal, mixed together in a story in which the characters are forming a love-hate-disturbed triangle. There is a certain feeling of "not-enough" in the lives of the characters, which points them all to a pretense type of action. Reasons are always found and in the end, it is the doctor who seems to be the patient, the self-deceived.
What I liked most about this unusual novel is the study of obsession, faith and love, each delusional in their own way. There is a certain existential heaviness perceived through the paradoxal lightness of the novel, the flow is somehow more natural to the real world. Nagy (the patient, the devil, the story-teller) reminds me of one of Dostoyevsky's characters, maybe that's why it made me ponder more about the human condition of the characters in this book.
What I liked most about this unusual novel is the study of obsession, faith and love, each delusional in their own way. There is a certain existential heaviness perceived through the paradoxal lightness of the novel, the flow is somehow more natural to the real world. Nagy (the patient, the devil, the story-teller) reminds me of one of Dostoyevsky's characters, maybe that's why it made me ponder more about the human condition of the characters in this book.
February 3, 2012
Een van zijn mindere boeken.
November 12, 2012
Lisenin ilk yılında okunan bir kitap...Geriye kalan bişey yok maalesef, bulunursa yeniden okunabilir, en azından sıkılmadığımı hatırlıyorum!
April 10, 2014
Meet the devil in person. Good idea, well executed. Funny.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews