Stephen Vizinczey (1933–2021,) originally István Vizinczey, was a Hungarian-Canadian writer. His best-known works, the novels In Praise of Older Women (1965) and An Innocent Millionaire (1983,) were informed by his background in occupied Hungary.
Born in Káloz, Vizinczey first published poems at age 16 in George Lukacs’s Budapest magazine Forum in 1949. He joined the Academy of Theatre and Film Arts and wrote two plays, The Last Word and Mama—they were both banned. He joined the University of Budapest to study under Lukacs and graduated from the Academy of Theatre and Film Arts in 1956.
Vizinczey took part in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. After a brief stay in Italy, he immigrated to Canada, learning English and writing scripts for Canada’s National Film Board and the CBC. He edited Canada’s short-lived literary magazine, Exchange. In 1966, he moved to London.
Vizinczey’s Praise of Older Women drew vivid sketches of a Hungarian family, country, and urban life under German and Soviet occupation. It became a vital book of the 60s, a bestseller in France, and a Penguin Modern Classic in 2010. It was filmed unsuccessfully in 1978 and 1997. The Rules of Chaos (1969) and Truth and Lies in Literature (1986) are collections of reviews and essays for the Times and the Sunday Telegraph.
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When you close your eyes to tragedy, you close your eyes to greatness.
—Stephen Vizinczey
Topics: Tragedy
Like all wage slaves, he had two crosses to bear: the people he worked for and the people he worked with.
—Stephen Vizinczey
Topics: Money
Strange as it may seem, no amount of learning can cure stupidity, and formal education positively fortifies it.
—Stephen Vizinczey
Topics: Stupidity, Peculiarity, Oddity
Most bad books get that way because their authors are engaged in trying to justify themselves. If a vain author is an alcoholic, then the most sympathetically portrayed character in his book will be an alcoholic. This sort of thing is very boring for outsiders.
—Stephen Vizinczey
Topics: Writing, Authors & Writing, Writers
Powerful men in particular suffer from the delusion that human beings have no memories. I would go so far as to say that the distinguishing trait of powerful men is the psychotic certainty that people forget acts of infamy as easily as their parent’s birth.
—Stephen Vizinczey
Topics: Power
The only virtue a character needs to possess between hardcovers, even if he bears a real person’s name, is vitality: if he comes to life in our imaginations, he passes the test.
—Stephen Vizinczey
Topics: Virtue
We now have a whole culture based on the assumption that people know nothing and so anything can be said to them.
—Stephen Vizinczey
Topics: Society
Consistency is a virtue for trains: what we want from a philosopher is insights, whether he comes by them consistently or not.
—Stephen Vizinczey
Topics: Consistency
Is it possible that I am not alone in believing that in the dispute between Galileo and the Church, the Church was right and the center of man’s universe is the earth?
—Stephen Vizinczey
Topics: World
Perhaps in a book review it is not out of place to note that the safety of the state depends on cultivating the imagination.
—Stephen Vizinczey
Topics: Imagination
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