Thanks for letting us know of Raphael Patai's passing.  Actually, he was
neither 8 nor 80 when he died, but would have been 86 this coming Nov. 22.

His books are considered scholarly classics.  For those particularly
interested in Hungarian life (most of his books are scholarly studies not
dealing with Hungary), I highly recommend his memoir "Apprentice in
Budapest," talking about his growing up in a highly cultured Hungarian
Jewish family.  It's of course written very intelligently, but not so
highbrow that you need to be a scholar.  And it gives a great flavor of
life in BP at that time.  His father, incidentally, had started and edited
the greatly-respected journal of that time, "Mult es Jovo"--which "died,"
and has been presently revived by Kobanyai Janos.  Ah, if I could only
read Hungarian!

Anyway, "Apprentice in BP" was published in America in English by Univ. of
Utah  Press, so you're sure to find it at a university library if not a
public one.  And it may well be available in Hungarian, though I can't
say.

Enjoy!

Burian

P.S.--A good companion to "Apprentice" is Lukacs John's "Budapest 1900,"
available even in paperback!

Yo, greetings and salutations!

In article >, "Zoli
Fekete, keeper of hungarian-faq" > writes:

Sam wrote:
>> As far as real being real goes,
>> were you not the same person who posted a demand on this very same
>> newsgroup less than two weeks or so ago demanding that we not refer to
>> Zoltan Szekely as "Zoli" since you use "Zoli" and you didn't want
people
>> to confuse you with him?
> That was a joke, son. It was also my mistake - for I though he was
>signing with Zoltan as his name-field says. Regardless, this is all
>irrelevant to our point here.

No, I don't think it's irrelevant at all. Neither do you, apparently. You
contradict yourself on this very point a few paragraphs down.

>
>> Okay, let me get this straight: real isn't real,
>> or at least doesn't matter, when dealing with one's chosen name for net
>> postings
> No, what I am trying to get accross is this: what you think is real is
>not necesseraly any more real than what you think is not.

I thought I was arguing from the side of concreteness and you were arguing
the side of insubstantiality, vis a vis eliciting useful information from
the use of a pseudonym when someone makes controversial posts. Perhaps
we'd better call the whole thing off until you've had a chance to make up
your mind just what it is that you are arguing.

>
>> -- unless the chosen name happens to somehow conflict with that
>> of Zoli Fekete, in which case it matters a hell of a lot.
> The serious point in that matter was that people started using mere
>"Zoli" without family names for either of us...

So, were you serious or was it a joke when you demanded that all of us
refer to the other guy as Zoltan? So far in this post alone you've claimed
it was both.
>
>>[...]
>> Argue your own case, bubba. I don't need you to put words in my mouth.
Use
>> of a pseudonym in conjunction with controversial statements does offer
>> some important clues to the poster's intellectual orientation and
>> motivation.
> The JFerengi persona has been around for several months, so your
>claiming that it was merely thrown in as a shield for what you call
>controversial statements is one-upping off the wall conspiracy theories -
>haven't we got enough of those already ;-(?!
>
>> If you don't want to use that information to assess the
>> validity or veracity of what someone has posted, that's your business.
But
>> I think you're willfully ignoring important data by doing so. And if
>> someone receives challenges to their posts, that's part and parcel of
free
>> speech. It has real world effects. It is not an abstract process.
>> Unwillingness to become subject to challenges to what one has said
>> publicly is, indeed, a basis for evaluating both one's postings and
>> character. You and I have both undergone such challenges in the past.
>> Doesn't seem to have hurt either one of us either, has it?
>
> First of all, as far as I could see (or you could tell) there was
>nothing in the way of information in the post that caused you fly off the
>handle. It was an opinion by JFerengi - a totally wrongheaded one in my
>view, but one that would not be worth any different if I saw her/his/it
>driving licence and birth certificate either.
> Second of all, the challenge is supposed to go against what is said, not
>what the name of the speaker is. So far, JFerengi has shown more
>willingness to deal with the issue at hand than you have.
> Third, this is not the real world, just the Internet. Really.
> Fourth, yeah we let ourselves be subjected to personal attacks, good for
>us thick-skinned ones. I also burnt off my eyebrows in my slightly
>younger age in the quest for truth (that particular incident was due to
>studying the oxidation process when matches are watched up close ;-)). Do
>you think it's reasonable to expect everyone else to do whatever we do?

You did that oxidation thing, too, huh? I managed to avoid burning any
hair or other bodily parts, but it did tick the chemistry teacher off.
Fun, wasn't it? Now, Point One is the one you're never gonna admit I'm
right about. Point Two, the poster in question defends an anti-semite and
does it through the agency of an alias. I, like you, think he leaped
before he bothered to look. Nevertheless, he's had ample opportunity to
admit that he fell in with some folks whose message he really didn't agree
with -- and he hasn't done it yet. Point Three, this is the real world. It
may be an intellectual luxury for you to pretend that it isn't, but some
of the shit preached on here could cost someone their life if it isn't
vigorously resisted. Point Four, if you can't run with the big dogs, stay
on the porch. Vouchsafing for a racist nut may be a clue that the poster
is a Yorkshire terrier in that regard.


>> >[...]
>> > So let's say I'm assured that you are "Sam Stowe" - what impact does
>> >that have on your motivations and our opinion on it, and how does it
>> >place you under public scrutiny?
>>
>> Because I exist under that name. I have a life and a real-world
reputation
>> under that name.
> With all due respect, I could care less about this when reading HUNGARY;
>were I to study you, or JFerengi, then I may be inclined to dig into
>respective personal tidbits from the real world. But here if I see a
>statement backed by the individual's person that leaves me colder than if
>it wasn't backed at all.
>
>> All of those are accessible to you, if you spend a minor
>> amount of time looking for them. I have made no secret about where I
live
>> and work.
> But to make the connection with the off-line entity I'd have to talk to
>you personally - just like with JFerengi to establish his identity.
>
>>[...] I pay serious attention to
>> Jeliko, even though he uses a pseudonym, because he doesn't post
>> controversial stuff attacking other religious or ethnic groups or
backing
>> up those who do.
> This only shows how you absolutize your own evaluation of things ;-(.
>Self-styled spokesmen for other ethnic groups have accused Jeliko of
doing
>just that (as Liviu or Roman may testify about soc.culture.romanian or
>SLOVAK-L). To some people anything diagreeing with them is
>"controversial" (and if one agrees no evidence is needed then).

That's their evaluation. I don't agree at all and I read what Jeliko posts
on here very carefully. He's one of the more knowledgeable, balanced
history buffs in the group. There's a little contradiction here, though,
in terms of what you've been arguing thus far. Either I'm too suspicious,
as you say I am with the Ferengi chap, or I'm too credulous, as you accuse
me of being with Jeliko. I cannot be all things to all people. I think my
habit of paying attention to more than just the surface argument must
bother you, if for no other reason because you do, too, but don't want to
admit that you do. After all, doing so would mean that you've spent this
entire discussion pushing electrons just for the heck of it.


>> (Jeliko, I'm not trying to draw you into this.
> Actually, I would be interested in what if anything Jeliko has to say...
>
>> >[...] So how was that
>> >connection between veracity and real names again ;-<?
>>
>> I get crap like that in the mail every day. And I know it's crap
because
>> there are all kinds of signs (I wish I had a better grasp of semiotics,
>> but Peirce absolutely puts me to sleep. It would come in handy here.)
in
>> it that it isn't true. The point is that I pay attention to the
totality
>> of the evidence.
> But then you insist on including things that aren't evidence at all,
too.
>
>> Using your criteria, if the stuff is simply logical and
>> footnoted, then it's true.
> Of course not. My "criteria" is merely that the person stating the stuff
>is not relevant to its truth value (unless there's some relation between
>the thing in question and the speaker - which is not the case what we're
>discussing here).
>
>> If you really have that much
>> trouble going beyond the surface of what's said to you, I'd stay away
from
>> insurance salesmen and Girl Scouts bearing cookie order forms if I were
>> you.
> Why, both use their very real names, don't they ;-)?! What you are doing
>is scrutinizing the wrapping paper covering the surface: the name and
life
>of who's talking; to me this look like mere obstraction in getting to the
>surface let alone beyond that...

Once again, for those of you playing the home version of our game -- there
is instrumental value in analyzing these "intangibles" you blithely
disregard. They offer clues about the poster's ideological and
intellectual orientation, rhetorical purpose and the truthfulness or
otherwise of what he or she says. Of course, you may not give a rat's
patootie about any of that, in which case your approach that none of this
is real will probably suffice to get you through the night.
>- --
> Zoli , keeper of <http://www.hix.com/hungarian-faq/>;
>*SELLERS BEWARE: I will never buy anything from companies associated
>*with inappropriate online advertising (unsolicited commercial email,
>*excessive multiposting etc), and discourage others from doing so too!
>
>
>
>
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Sam Stowe

"Ah, it's the fellow who floats
like a lepidoptera and stings
like a hymenoptera..."
-- Dr. Niles Crane

In article >, Joe Szalai
> scrawled:

>I didn't think the Americans were interested in taking over Canada.  I
was
>told that many Americans think of Canadians as whining, dependent
>socialists.  Why would they want us?  Hell, Canadian companies still do
>business in Cuba, as they should.  And besides, the Americans didn't do
too
>well in the War of 1812.
>
>Joe Szalai

Does this mean that when Fidel finally goes, you guys will take him in?
And had it not been for British regular troops and recent emigrants from
the Great Satan, there wouldn't have been a Canada after the War of 1812.
Sam Stowe

"Ah, it's the fellow who floats
like a lepidoptera and stings
like a hymenoptera..."
-- Dr. Niles Crane

There goes Crazy Jose again....he keeps stepping on his tongue and other
dangling participles.

My one word comment was to show that Canadians ARE different from
Americans and are easily differentiated by that simple word!

It is Crazy Jose agaon!!!! Ooh Boy!
He is too involved with himself to READ what was sent. Too bad.
Besides being totally insulting and stupid, he does not understand that
messages on the internet arrive at different times. In fact his first
message arrived a day after his second. But then, it takes soemone with
intelligence to bother to keep to the point and try to reply to it.
Too bad that all Crazy Jose is capable of is being a dimwit and a jerk
instead of trying to keep on the subject. Perhaps one day he will grow
out of it???

Just a reminder:"There is so much good in the worst of us,and so much bad in
the best of us,that it hardly becomes any of us,to talk about the rest of us."
Andy.

At 02:33 PM 8/6/96 -0400, Burian wrote:

>His [Patai's] books are considered scholarly classics.  For those particularly
>interested in Hungarian life (most of his books are scholarly studies not
>dealing with Hungary), I highly recommend his memoir "Apprentice in
>Budapest," talking about his growing up in a highly cultured Hungarian
>Jewish family.  It's of course written very intelligently, but not so
>highbrow that you need to be a scholar.  And it gives a great flavor of
>life in BP at that time.  His father, incidentally, had started and edited
>the greatly-respected journal of that time, "Mult es Jovo"--which "died,"
>and has been presently revived by Kobanyai Janos.
....
>P.S.--A good companion to "Apprentice" is Lukacs John's "Budapest 1900,"
>available even in paperback!

        Thank you for the tip on Patai's autobiography. I can also recommend
John Lukacs's book, "Budapest 1900." Very, very interesting. It really gives
the favor of Budapest at that time.

Eva Balogh

>        Thank you for the tip on Patai's autobiography. I can also recommend
>John Lukacs's book, "Budapest 1900." Very, very interesting. It really gives
>the favor of Budapest at that time.
>
>Eva Balogh

        Of course, not "favor of Budapest" but "flavor of Budapest."

        Eva B.

In what can only be called a rash statement, a bold verbalization, Eva
Balogh said that the "working-class movement" was in no way influential in
twentieth century Hungarian history.  Since then, she has been dancing
around her statement with the kind of fancy footwork that would make Michael
Jackson green with envy.

Eva Balogh's first attempt at clarification is a total flop, a miserable
failure at academic obfuscation.  Without the slightest indication that
she's embarrassed by her 'faux pas', she tells us that "writing a history of
the interwar period from the a vantage point which placed the working-class
movement in the center of historical development was totally misplaced".

I don't wish to be seen as brazen or insensitive but I must point out that
the discussion was about the twentieth century, and not the inter-war
period.  And there was no mention of placing the movement in the centre of
historical development, then or later.

Her second attempt to skirt around the topic was to dazzle us with a fact
from the first part of this century.  In her own words, she says: "Well, it
was not very important between 1901 and 1918 either. In 1918 there were only
200,000 unionized workers in whole of Hungary."

Once again, and I don't want to be a pissant about this, but I thought we
were talking about all of the twentieth century and not just the first two
decades.

In her third attempt to show that the "working-class movement" was of no
consequence in twentieth century Hungarian history, Eva Balogh says that,
"until very recently the post-1945 period couldn't be really studied because
of the documents could not be used. Or rather, a few people could use them
only. The trusted ones. In any case, one couldn't call this period a
legitimate study of history."

Well, perhaps not.  But that doesn't seem to stop her from making legitimate
sounding pronouncements about the events between 1945 and 1989.  Her
comments always seem to have the authority of an insider.  But she wasn't!

Eva Balogh seems to be aware that, so far, her four 'explanations' went flat
because she feels the need to wallop us with the following zinger.  She
informs us that "whatever happened after 1945 was something which was forced
on Hungary from the outside."

Like Christianity?  Would that be a fair comparison?  After all, both were
forced on Hungary from the outside.  And lets not kid ourselves.  Both knew
how to use force on the people.  And what is Hungary celebrating this year
anyway, the millecentennial of the nation or of Christian domination?

In her last post to me on this topic, Eva Balogh gets rather snippy.  She
lectures me that 'history' has two meanings and that a researcher has to
wait a certain period of time before government documents are available.  By
golly, I never knew that!  I'm sure that bit of knowledge shocked and upset
some of the readers of this newsgroup.  She even wails about a Lithuanian
friend of hers who couldn't get to diplomatic documents of Catherine the
Great's era.

One just knows that Eva Balogh is losing an argument when she has to invoke
Marx's name and the working-class movements of Britain and Germany to
bolster her notion about the Hungarian "working-class" movement.  Her own
words are better than mine.  She says: "Why, because a foreign power with
the help of their native underlings in the name of the proletariat forced a
totalitarian dictatorship (which had absolutely nothing to do with the
proletarian dictatorship of Marx's ideas) on an agricultural country? Do you
call this a genuine, grassroot working-class movement a la, the British or
the German?"

No, I don't.  But once again, and I hate to go back to it, we're talking
about the relevance of the movement, and not whether or not it was genuine.
Why do you think I put quotation marks around "working-class" every time?
Those marks usually mean something, no?

Out of frustration, no doubt, Eva Balogh lobs the following salvo at me.
"Don't make the mistake of equating Marxism with Leninism. The Russian
variety of Marxism was in many ways a homegrown movement."

I wonder what the above has to do with the relevance of the "working-class"
movement in Hungarian history in this century.  At this point, I'm afraid to
ask her.  Maybe she'll agree that the "working-class" movement in Hungary
was an "icipici" bit important in this century.  But I'm not holding my
breath for even that little bit of concession from her.

Joe Szalai

"A man who can dominate a London dinner table can dominate the world. The
future belongs to the dandy. It is the exquisites who are going to rule."
          Oscar Wilde

You know what Joe Szalai, you think whatever you want to think about
the working-class movement and the history which was concocted around it.
Your opinion in no way will influence my assessment of the Hungarian
working-class movement.

        Eva Balogh

At 02:58 PM 8/7/96 -0700, Eva Balogh wrote:

>        You know what Joe Szalai, you think whatever you want to think about
>the working-class movement and the history which was concocted around it.
>Your opinion in no way will influence my assessment of the Hungarian
>working-class movement.

Life is a concoction.

Joe Szalai