Celestial Esterhazys
July 8th, 2004Peter Esterhazy’s book Celestial Harmonies looks really, really good.
Splicing the fine-grained nostalgia of Nabokov’s Speak, Memory with the anarchic spirit of Looney Toons, Esterházy has created a vast anti-epic. The writer, whose family name holds a place in Hungarian history equivalent to that of the Churchills in British history, takes advantage of his genealogy by making numerous references to his many distinguished ancestors–the very title refers to a Haydn piece commissioned by one of the author’s forefathers. Divided into two sections, the novel circles its mark with cunning and humor, lighting on strange outcroppings of family and national lore.
Of course, maybe one of the reasons I want to read this book is because it reminds me of one of my favorite characters, Avram Davidson’s fictional Engelbert Eszterhazy, Doctor of Jurisprudence, Doctor of Medicine, Doctor of Philosophy, Doctor of Literature, Doctor of Science, et sic cetera.” Though the name is spelled slightly differently, it was, no doubt, selected for representing Hungarian nobility.