Satantango Paperback – December 10, 2013

Laszlo Krasznahorkai was one of my first truly unique reading experiences in many years. I'm normally prone to specific classics (Sylvia Plath; Edgar Allan Poe; JD Salinger; etc) and my favorite writers are mostly contemporary aside from those, like Stephen King and Neil Gaiman. I discovered Krasznahorkai after watching a Hungarian film from legendary director Bela Tarr, and I was interested in the writer of the movie, which was Krasznahorkai. And Satantango was my first book from him, and certainly won't be my last.One of the reviews on the back of the book describes his writing as totally original and unique, as if he's created his own form, and that there's nothing else like it in modern literature. And, to my knowledge, there really is nothing like it. Krasznahorkai's writing may take around 20 pages or so to get used to, but by then you grow accustomed to it and I found myself amazed by the flow of the prose every single page. In fact, I'm currently reading another American book and can't help but feel that the flow is far inferior to that of Satantango. It flows elegantly and keeps going, and the writing itself isn't unlike a dance, a tango, in that it jumps from here to there, from the simple to the broad-scale, from the mundane to the cosmic. In an interview Krasznahorkai himself described his lack of paragraphs and sentences as such: imagine walking into a room filled with people all having different conversations, and his writing is like a line being drawn among all of them and connecting all of them into one sentence. And it is like that: as a writer myself, it's nothing short of awesome and educational. Reading Krasznahorkai, I noticed, was like slipping into a trance, which I find similar to reading Edgar Allan Poe: it's hypnotic and it never ceases to amaze.The story is simple and never expositional: it doesn't ever give anything to the reader, it's up to you to figure out what's happening by interpreting it from what's happening. It takes place in a small Hungarian hamlet, and what's interesting is that you never really know for sure what time period it takes place in. It's a timeless place (modern only by hints like modern drinks, cars, etc), and it's dreary and depressed, filled with spiders, and with residents who always seem out to get each other, each with reasons that they are unlikeable or ugly inside. And while stretches of this book are undoubtedly depressing and incredibly bleak, it's actually a very blackly comedic read as well, to the point that I found myself grinning or laughing out loud at parts. And amid all of this bleakness, two men appear in the town who were rumored to have died previous to the book's opening, and one of whom serves as a considerably false prophet who is also frighteningly brilliant.This really is unlike anything in modern literature. It's profound, unsettling, dreary, funny, and Krasznahorkai's writing is far beyond impressive. I highly suggest discovering this writer, possibly with this book, his first. It's brilliant and it's gratifying reading something so different and so outside of typical modern literature to the point that you might find yourself questioning how certain more popular writers really are so popular.

I'll start by confessing that I have written on Krasznahorkai for years and on the basis of The Melancholy of Resistance and his other books, I consider him one of the greatest contemporary writers.Satantango was Krasznahorkai's first novel, published in 1985 but only translated now into English. I've read Satantango in French but I don't know Hungarian, so I can only say that Szirtes seems to have done as wonderful a job here as he did with Melancholy.Satantango is the story of a tiny rural Hungarian village and its miserable, static inhabitants. A drunk doctor, a barman, farmers, and a few others have affairs and go about their lives. A certain tragedy strikes, and simultaneously a (very) false prophet named Irimias appears to play havoc in the tragedy's aftermath. It is a simple story, made complex by a precise, nightmarish build-up of small, unsettling details and destabilizing loops of prose that makes you feel like the very basis of reality is falling apart, reflecting the condition of the villagers.The prose is thick and miasmic, though not as labyrinthine as Krasznahorkai's subsequent work. There is more acute cruelty in this book, in contrast to the sublime chaos that takes over in Melancholy of Resistance. Here is the doctor sitting by his window, watching the others:"He had had to amass and arrange, in the most serviceable positions possible, the objects indispensable for eating, drinking, smoking, diary-writing, reading and countless other trifling tasks, and even had to renounce allowing the occasional error to go unpunished out of self-indulgence pure and simple."Those who have a great affection for other voices of chaos and fracture, like Kleist and Kafka and Beckett, should read Krasznahorkai. I would rank him among them. His long sentences get compared to Thomas Bernhard, but Krasznahorkai is much more metaphysical, much less psychological. (Only Bernhard's Correction bears any real resemblance to Krasznahorkai's work.)The fantastic Hungarian director Bela Tarr filmed Satantango (it's 7 1/2 hours long): I would recommend reading the book first, however, because the film adaptation makes excisions and alterations that are better appreciated with knowledge of the book.

I read this after having watched Bela Tarr's adaptation of it a couple of times, hoping for a bit more insight into many points of the story. I don't know how the book would have read if I hadn't had the visuals of Tarr's film in my head while reading. It might have seemed tedious but the images in my head kept me going. The book and the film are inextricably intertwined for me now, and I still feel like I've just scratched the surface of both. I loved the film; as for the book, it was dense and slow and I was lukewarm to it until the last few pages, when the author pulled a very interesting literary trick that made me rethink the entire narrative that had preceded it. So the book, as well as the film, will merit revisitings in the future.

This novel is one of the most unique reading experiences I ever had. First of all, Krasznohorkai is a very gifted writer and artist. Satantango starts off fairly simply, and gets profoundly complex the more you go on - but not complex in the way you might think... I would say, it's like the book grows fangs going in many different directions, while staying for the most part very coherent. It is very, very, very gloomy, at times quite terrifying, thoroughly melancholic, and finishing the last chapter I felt... off. It is a seriously unsettling masterpiece and some of the methods Krasznohorkai uses in his writing are unlike anything I've encountered, and are hugely effective. The English translation is simply outstanding and seems to do justice to the original. I feel almost nauseous and quite terrified. Many will understand this book differently, but to me, it is just haunted. A haunted masterpiece.