Dear Mr. Eszterhas:
I just finished reading your book, Hollywood Animal. I enjoyed it immensely: I also have a Hungarian background, and found many hilarious connections with your book.
Generally speaking, I have yet to meet a Hungarian that I liked. For various reasons, they are variously arrogant, provincial, or rude. In short, typical European immigrant refugee types. That includes my parents (Lilo and Janos) of course, who were two of the most bizarre people I have ever known, even among other kinds of Central Europeans. I am convinced now that they were deranged, with a sort of a genetic cultural madness that all these Central Europeans carry around with them. They were always unbelievably quick to take offense (the kind of paranoia that is a common affliction among Hungarians). When confronted with facts, they resolutely denied them. God forbid they should be wrong about anything. I hate to say it, I found my folks to be unbelievably ignorant (of the most elementary things, or skills, or ideas), almost willfully so. Like: “You can’t possibly believe that!” But they did.
Our journey to the United States was perhaps a little more roundabout than yours.
I was born in Budapest in 1947 (yes, I just got my Hungarian passport, mostly for fun and, as it turns out, my children can be Hungarian citizens too. Whoopee!) We (my parents and my older half-sister) left Hungary in late 1947, and headed for Sao Paulo, Brasil, via Holland and England, I believe. Why Brasil?
Because Janos had a brother Emil who was a Benedictine priest who had gone to Brasil in the thirties to establish a school for rich boys. It seems the Hungarian Benedictines did that a lot. I tested for the school they had in Woodside, California, later in our peregrinations. They rejected me!
I did attend their rich boys school in Brasil. I loved Brasil, for its tropical mayhem, corruption and flaunting of all rules. You couldn’t rely on them for anything. The Brazilian boys at this school (Colégio Santo Americo) had one peculiarity: they were perpetually mimicking anal intercourse with other boys. God knows what that could possibly mean about that school or that society. It wasn’t a gay thing, just an expression that macho boys fucked ass or something. Or maybe girls were so totally off limits. Who knows? But, of course, they were great bullies too, as you know, if one didn’t talk right or look right with one’s thrift store clothes. What’s funny is that I love going to thrift stores now. Of course, we don’t NEED to.
But the real pricks were the Hungarian Benedictine priests. I wish I could say they were screwing boys, or beating them up. Alas, I never witnessed anything of that. They were just mean, nasty bastards. Your book’s references to Hungarian priests reminded me of them. The recollection only made me sad. I stopped going to confession quite early on; too much hypocrisy and bad breath.
The Hungarians in Brasil always seemed to hang out together. Few spoke Portuguese well, rather with heady accents and tortured grammar. You know what I mean. When they got together, they were loud and boisterous; I don’t think they drank much (no money, no wine in Brasil then). They each had ridiculous nicknames; I had one too: Bumbi (go figure). They had a common but corrosive characteristic: they were always referring to how well or how badly others of their refugee friends were doing in their diaspora. They envied others their successes, and gloated over their failures (the schadenfreude endemic in the Central European mind). That was sad too.
I always felt sorry for all of them at the time; today I despise them for the time and energy I wasted on them. As with you in your book, there were always constant references to the Zsidos (Jews). Took me a while to figure out what they were talking about. But then, my father always referred to us as disznos (pigs); or to my mother as a budos kurva (stinking whore) ; or to my older sister as taknos (snot); or things like fene edye meg (I don’t remember that one). These are transliterated from memory. What is funny to me now is that my mom really was a budos kurva, as she was fucking the szidos from the Hungarian crowd, hiding it behind her diszno children! What’s funnier is that I married a Russian Jew from Brooklyn, and my three kids are Jews (by Hitler’s definitions anyway). Never mind that we are all a bunch of atheists! And no, my sons are not circumcised.
God, you’re making me laugh. What a world. Thank you.
Brasil turned out to be a dead end. From Brasil we went to the States, to California via Peoria, Illinois. My father got a job on a production line at Caterpillar Tractor. Don’t ask me how he pulled that off. I have to hand it to him. Later he went to Bechtel Engineering in San Francisco. There, I ended up at a Jesuit high school where it was American Irish Catholic priests who were the bastards (recent news would seem to confirm that). What is it with priests? Ande the same bullshit with the bullies, gringo bullies this time, with Italian or Irish names, because I didn’t have the accent or the clothes right. What is one to do?
I am getting to the place where one gets the last laugh eventually: at eighteen, I got lucky and got a scholarship to Yale (first in my class, Hah!). That changed my life, of course. There I met one or two of your friends from Cleveland’s West Side. But that’s another story…
So I’m grateful, to this country, and to Yale (For God, for country, and for Yale), but (Istenem! ) what a bizarre and contradictory place this is, with evangelical presidents and crusaders for our right to drive gas-guzzling SUV’s. I don’t know where home is, but I think I found it in my family, in my version of your Bainbridge Township.
Good luck.
Cordially, J.P.
The name, yes, that’s another story too. I’ll be happy to tell it if you would like to start a dialogue.
