Hatchet Jobs of the Month | 2 December 2011

Eurozone crisis, what eurozone crisis? According to Spanish newspaper El País, the real global emergency is the state of literary criticism. British book pages, however, won’t need bailing out any time soon — at least if these splenetic offerings are anything to go by.

Tibor Fischer on Parallel Stories by Peter Nadas, Guardian

It’s a great historical soup, with bits of this and that bobbing around, seemingly thrown in randomly by the chef — or, more succinctly, a mess. Hungary’s literature had a puritanical 1950s, a sober 1960s, and they largely missed out on all the Henry Miller, Lady Chatterley, Jean Genet, William Burroughs jazz. It’s almost as if Nádas is trying to catch up in one bound. Every time a new male character appears you fear he’s going to be wanking or investigating his foreskin in a line or two (and he will be). The only relief from cocks is the occasional intervention of some labia or a clitoris.