My fingers have learned to write Krasznahorkai's name by now; they do not hesitate around all those consonants in the unknown rhythm of Hungarian. After reading Krasznahorkai for several weeks I am at one with the Europa abyss, the total stalling of communication even as the lava of language flows: the more you try to catch chaos the worse it gets. The Irish abyss, par contre, is more scenic, just as much language but light and quirky, even in the blackness, like Flann O'Brien. None of this Europa violence and melancholy.
Krasznahorkai grew up in a small town in southeastern Hungary, at the heart of the Europa melting pot. To the island stance of the Paddy or the Brit, whose language tends towards the heroic and identifying, this is as dense, as landlocked as it gets; in Gyula, Békécs County, next to Romania and not far from Serbia, heroics are a pile of rubble, identification a lost cause, language a necessary obfuscation, poignant and ridiculous: womb, tomb and sole conceivable kin.
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