The author
Foreword
Dear Reader!
First of all, I apologize for any occasional spelling mistakes, some inconsistencies, and repetitions. My age and health dictated the haste, and not least, the very harsh and ruthless predatory practices present in today’s Hungarian publishing industry.
I was forced to finance the entire self-publication from the sale of our wonderful house in Kötcse, and I have been living in a rented apartment ever since. Certain repetitions are due to the possibility of separate, individual readings.
STEVE I VE
STEVE I VE's writings
- Novels
- Poems (soon)
- Other writhings (soon)
Series of novels
What are the books about
The multi-volume novel series and fictional autobiography ‘Jack Quantum Mouse‘ is about the ‘Little Big Man,’ the generally anonymous but mostly typical person who, like the hero of our age, tries the impossible. As one of our significant poets, Attila József, once said:
the ‘cat both outside and inside (existential-essential) cannot catch a mouse at the same time’
Jack, the hero of the book, tries to show that sometimes there is indeed an opportunity for this. We can fight against formidable forces while still retaining ourselves! The partly autobiographical story is projected through real events, from the consciousness, emotions, and the sometimes tragicomic, often grotesque, and absurd situations experienced by the protagonist, and is placed within the context of modern Hungarian and American changes (from 1950 to the present), which are observed as impartially and keenly as possible.
Explanation for the headline
The book, the title of the whole series, is not accidental. It hints at how much the world has changed with Quantum physics, and the best is yet to come. In the old Newtonian world, everything was simple and clear—the apple fell from the tree, ‘and that’s it.’ In the new one, it has become apparent, and it’s still unclear what the absurdity really is that a particle can simply exist in multiple places at once.
Reality is multi-layered! And even more than that. And while all the ‘big’ words have already been spoken, looking around at the horror of the current world, sometimes it feels as if we are moving backward. Somehow, ‘recreating the measure and syntax of the human mind’—that wouldn’t hurt either.
Explanation for the style medley or mishmash
We could call it that, I know. There were already times when someone objected to that. Well, I gathered all this material in my free time, tired, mostly after work, over thirty years, much from memory, much from thousands of pages of my diary or scraps of notes, and finally wrote it over five years. I was never helped by anyone in any way. Some of my computers broke down, some were stolen, software changed (Office, Word), and meanwhile, I also had my family, my sick wife, and everything else that everyone else has – the complicated whirlwind of life. But for many, many years, day and night I sat in front of the computer, sometimes completely confused, mixing everything up. And in the end, these few books came out.
Topics
Fictional autobiography, marital fidelity, friendship, perseverance, appreciation, true love, determination, adaptability to other cultures, tolerance toward strangers, honesty, integrity, following universal truths.
Keywords
Migrant literature, Eastern European and American politics, social case studies, post-communist history, cultural and social differences, lifestyle studies, comprehensive family experiences, child-rearing, depth psychology analyses, and moral summaries.
Volumes of the novel cycle
The volumes can be downloaded for FREE!
Click on the cover of the selected book!
The volumes are available in printed form!
General preface to the volumes
I. The Ballad of Jack and Jill
A Chronicle of a Thirty-Year Marriage – ‘Where Does Love Scurry?’
‘To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying, day and night, to make you someone else, means to fight the hardest battle any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.’
E. E. cummings
II. Lowekening
They asked Buddha, ‘So who or what are you now?’ He replied, ‘I am an Awakened One’ (also called Enlightened).
Bird Love
‘Where is your house, tell me, bird?’
‘There stands a beautiful tree alone; there I grieve by myself. Dawn drinks my tears, evening brings no joy.’
And what kind of dwelling awaits in the evening? What kind of nest, what kind of foliage? ‘Oh, you adornment of the meadows, tell me!’
‘I desire you, The treasure-voice of summer; By day I wander through the forest, at night I sob.’
You sob for me, you desire me? You wait for me?
Then the end of my sorrow! Oh, my beloved good friend!’
‘Come, call my little arbor, Amid green leaves, high above. On wings of joy we fly, Under the flowers we pause.’
William Blake
III. pacuka
Squeezing the American dream lemon.
“It’ll be great for us in America, Cicó.”
IV. From Here and Beyond the Glass Ceiling
IV/1. Locked in the Homeland
IV/2. Thirty-five Years at Home
IV/3. Defection
“I just want a completely adventurous, passionate, extraordinary life.”
Jeff Buckley
Because then, there, before the Committee, the lines of Ginsberg, Kerouac, and Whitman came to mind:
“After God, of course, I love you America, land of freedom”,
– and how so many different kinds of people can live together there?
IV/4. The Family in America
IV/5. Kötcse
V. Homecoming
