No Stopping Train--For Serious Readers, for Romantics
A brilliant book is being published this October, the final work of the Hungarian-American author Les Plesko, the ultimate literary craftsman. If you want to see beautiful writing from an author absolutely committed to his art, read his magnum opus.
No Stopping Train
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About this short, exquisite novel, Library journal said "Plesko's long-awaited novel is a powerful meditation on his own country's history and the expansiveness of humanity... serious readers of literary fiction will rejoice.,"--Library Journal
Set in Hungary, beginning in World War II and ending with the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, No Stopping Train shares certain stylistic and thematic elements with the great Eastern European authors Herta Muller (whose work Les introduced me to back when Land of Green Plums was first published in English,) Imre Kertez and Milan Kundera. His romanticism is flavored by his gentle pessimism, his lyricism by literary rigor.
In my introduction to the book, I said: "One cannot read quickly through a Les Plesko book--don't even try. It's not meant for speed-reading... Les wrote for those of us who can hear a confession, who know how to hear behind halting words to the depths of soul revealing itslef. Reading Les Plesko is like listening to a broadcast late at night, an urgent communication textured by distance and static. It's a lover's reception of an intimate call in the middle of the night. You hold your breath for the cadence, wait for the meaning to unfold."
I never wearied of his vision of writing, never stopped admiring his dedication to the art. He could throw out 100 pages and save only a single sentence. When you read No Stopping Train , you’ll see the greatness of this prose—not merely the taut, suspenseful dialogue, the emotion in the landscape, but the music of the sentence. There's an unmistakable poetry in the language in a Les Plesko line which is simply irresistible--it's a book to be savored rather than swilled.
The Nervous Breakdown has just published the opening of the book, if you want to taste a bit of its prose: http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/tn...
And if you’d like to know more about Les Plesko, his ideas, his philosophy and writing prompts (he taught writing for 20 years at UCLA, guiding more than 1000 writing students on their literary journeys), memories and pages with his edits, colleagues and students have set up a collaborative website in his honor, “Pleskoism: Don’t Have Ideas” at www.pleskoism.wordpress.com. His amazing reading list can be found there—and how better to know a man than through his books.
And if you're in Los Angeles on October 19, please join us for the launch party at UCLA: https://www.facebook.com/events/36529...
About this short, exquisite novel, Library journal said "Plesko's long-awaited novel is a powerful meditation on his own country's history and the expansiveness of humanity... serious readers of literary fiction will rejoice.,"--Library Journal
Set in Hungary, beginning in World War II and ending with the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, No Stopping Train shares certain stylistic and thematic elements with the great Eastern European authors Herta Muller (whose work Les introduced me to back when Land of Green Plums was first published in English,) Imre Kertez and Milan Kundera. His romanticism is flavored by his gentle pessimism, his lyricism by literary rigor.
In my introduction to the book, I said: "One cannot read quickly through a Les Plesko book--don't even try. It's not meant for speed-reading... Les wrote for those of us who can hear a confession, who know how to hear behind halting words to the depths of soul revealing itslef. Reading Les Plesko is like listening to a broadcast late at night, an urgent communication textured by distance and static. It's a lover's reception of an intimate call in the middle of the night. You hold your breath for the cadence, wait for the meaning to unfold."
I never wearied of his vision of writing, never stopped admiring his dedication to the art. He could throw out 100 pages and save only a single sentence. When you read No Stopping Train , you’ll see the greatness of this prose—not merely the taut, suspenseful dialogue, the emotion in the landscape, but the music of the sentence. There's an unmistakable poetry in the language in a Les Plesko line which is simply irresistible--it's a book to be savored rather than swilled.
The Nervous Breakdown has just published the opening of the book, if you want to taste a bit of its prose: http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/tn...
And if you’d like to know more about Les Plesko, his ideas, his philosophy and writing prompts (he taught writing for 20 years at UCLA, guiding more than 1000 writing students on their literary journeys), memories and pages with his edits, colleagues and students have set up a collaborative website in his honor, “Pleskoism: Don’t Have Ideas” at www.pleskoism.wordpress.com. His amazing reading list can be found there—and how better to know a man than through his books.
And if you're in Los Angeles on October 19, please join us for the launch party at UCLA: https://www.facebook.com/events/36529...
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