Dragaera

Greetings. Regarding the Politics of Brust and his Works

Wed Jan 14 08:48:37 PST 2004

--- Steven Brust <skzb at dreamcafe.com> wrote:
> 
>  > been a "Jean Brust" of that generation, for all I know.  (His parents
> > came from Hungary, bringing Bill with them, in 1920, it says here, as
> > a result of having been on the losing side in the 1919 Hungarian
> > revoluion.)
> >
> 
> Odd...I remember being told all my life that it was '21, not 20.  But
> you're
> right about the rest of it.  My Grandfather, Zoltan Brust, was a
> delegate to
> his soviet (I think he worked in a bicycle factory) in the revolution of
> 1919, and left when Horthy came to power.  So far as I know, his wife,
> Mariska, was never political.  The attitude nagyapa (grandpa)

Have you already mentioned whether that's pronounced something like
"Noish-pa"?

> always
> presented to my father was something like, "Well, if a revolution comes
> along, of course you support it, but don't go out of your way to make
> trouble." 

Since that sounds kind of familiar.

> Dad, of course, specialized in going out of his way to make
> trouble.  The other thing nagyapa used to say whenever my father screwed
> up
> was, "From this you make a revolution?"
> 
> 
>  > You don't ask about Steven's personal life in this part that I can
> > see; the question of whether Kelly's group is anything like politics
> > on Earth being different from the question of whether it's like
> > *Steven's* politics or the politics of any other actual person.
> > Authors, as you know, often write about characters and groups that
> > they don't fully agree with.
> 
> Correct again.  In particular, if I'm going to introduce politics into a
> story, I try to make it politics that my protragonists are contemptuous
> of,
> or at least don't agree with; my hope is that this keeps me from getting
> pedantic.  I hate pedantic fiction.  Hate it.  Hate it, hate it, hate
> it.
> 
> I'll have to write something blatently pedantic one of these days.

"Protagonists" and "blatantly".  Sorry, but I had to do that.  Had to.

Jerry Friedman


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