Two books on Budapest have been published, both by publishing houses that give them an automatic advantage over all the hundred or so other books published recently on Budapest, a fashionable topic since the political system has changed. Given that books from these publishers are bought almost automatically by libraries the world over, both books will solidly influence the orientation of journalists, diplomatists, businessmen and visitors seriously interested in Budapest.

Both are written by men who know the city well and can write well. One of them left Budapest, the other came to visit. One did not leave altogether, the other may not have come often enough. One did not get a tailor-made commission, the other let his own opinions run away with him. In short, basically sound books containing errors. An academic friend of mine says you can and should judge a manuscript in two ways. A search for mistakes and internal contradictions he calls a "minor criticism". A considerably more absorbing task is to examine what a book lacks, how it could have been structured or approached differently—and that he calls a "major criticism".

Let’s take Budapest in the The World Bibliography Series first. Matyás Sárközi, a writer and journalist who now works for the BBC Hungarian section, arrived in London when a student leaving Budapest in 1956. He keeps to the format of the series. His bibliography (of 341 items) is not confined to books: longer articles (primarily from current journals) and a few particularly important articles in German, and some Hungarian books in which the illustrations play the principal part are also included. At the end of an extremely well-written historical summary, he points out that "There is not an enormous wealth of English material on Budapest." Aside from being true, this tells us right away that the relative bareness of the list is not due to lack of space or lack of research.

So a minor reviewer looking for error would not get much joy under the pretext of bibliography. A few faulty accents, a writer’s name written differently in different places. (However, it is a pity that only 22 districts are featured in the map obviously drawn specially for the book, whereas there are now 23.) Apart from that, any mistakes are the fault of the publisher rather than the author.

The major review will have to start with a statement and some praise. It is not worth passing judgment on the structure—the author has been given it (though he mentions certain "necessary amendments" without going into their nature). My praise is for the high standard of the annotations. The annotated bibliography demands just the sort of writer/journalist qualities that Sárközi has in abundance. He is capable of summarizing hundreds of pages in a few paragraphs and in such a way that content and comment are clearly distinct.

In terms of criteria for selection, it is obvious that this bibliography catalogues first and foremost the books that are easily available abroad, and less the works to be found in Hungarian libraries. Thus Sárközi does not exactly encourage the prospective reader to get hold of a book through interlibrary loan or by mail, not to mention looking it up in a Budapest library. The reason I am presuming restrictions of this kind is because, even at first glance, someone reasonably familiar with, or collecting books on Budapest may discover serious omissions.

These can be divided into several groups. In the first are books which the introduction does not even mention, written in Hungarian, yet with a summary in English or illustrative material that makes them a significant source. Let’s look at two books typical of this important group.

In the chapter on Statistics one single work is featured; this is at first sight unbelievable. After all, the Hungarian statistical service was famous throughout Europe even in the last century, and they always endeavoured to publish their results in foreign languages too. In any case the following book is available in every public library: Budapest társadalmának és gazdaságának 100 éve (100 Years of Budapest Society and Economy. Közgazdasági és Jogi/Kossuth Publishers, 1972). If you come into contact with this book you will see that it is entirely in Hungarian, on the other hand the texts of all the tables and diagrams are translated into English as well. The other example is a vividly descriptive book on the city’s history: Tamás Biczó: Budapest egykor és ma (Budapest in Former Times and Today. Panorama, 1979). On the one hand, this book goes from era to era tracing the town’s development on separate maps (indicating in different colours the buildings standing today and those that have been destroyed), projecting all this onto Budapest’s present street structure. At the end of the book you can find a chapter to chapter summary in English and in German.

It is hard to see why another group, comprising books in English published in Hungary, was omitted. Here is an example for the selection of the most thorough-seeming chapter, containing memoirs: Ferenc Zöld–Gábor Kelecsényi, eds.: What They Saw in Hungary: British and American Travellers About Our Country, Hungarian Publishers’ and Booksellers’ Association, 1988. This beautifully produced publication, provided with an incredibly party-state biased introduction, would have ensured the author adequate opportunity for irony. (After all, in 1988 this kind of lap of honour was no longer really expected from anyone.)

Another piece of interesting "applied local history work": Márta Sz. Gyapay—Elizabeth Szász: Budapest for Guides. Belkereskedelmi Továbbképző Intézet, 1986, which is not only in English, but also contains a great many very interesting illustrations which bring out the salient points.

The writer/journalist author clearly sought out the travel books with great enthusiasm. Though there are major omissions here too, especially in the more recent material. As if the author depended too much on existing lists and neglected to do some collecting of his own. Here are a few examples of books which can be found in any bigger library anywhere: Stephen Brook: Vanished Empire: Vienna/Budapest/ Prague: The Three Capital Cities of the Habsburg Empire as Seen Today, New York, William Morrow, 1988; Brian Hall: Stealing from a Deep Place. (Travels in Southeastern Europe) New York, Hill and Wang, 1988; Eva Hoffman: Exit into History: A Journey Through Eastern Europe, London, Heinemann, 1993; Andrew Riemer: Inside Outside: Life Between Two Worlds, London, Angus and Robertson, Pymble, 1992.

The chapter headed "Literature" seems somewhat sketchy. The author of the book, who is the grandson of the playwright Ferenc Molnár, is so well-informed in literary matters, and is reputed to be more or less personally acquainted with the more important writers, that I am compelled to suspect this is intentional. Maybe he was attempting to be consistent in only putting on the list those books that have Budapest as their definite theme (for example Péter Lengyel’s novel Macskakő (Cobblestone) published in English as well, which is featured, though in my opinion with an undeservedly brief annotation). If this is so, then it’s a great pity. In this chapter I again had the awkward feeling that the author had probably gone right through an available list, which in this case would be Corvina Publishers’, which does not include, for instance, the bilingual volumes of poetry and the poetry anthologies in English published by Maecenas Publishers. But basic works such as the Géza Csáth anthology published by Penguin is also not on the list: Géza Csáth: Opium and Other Stories. Penguin Books, 1983. (Series Editor: Philip Roth).

The theme of Budapest and Hungarian literature are difficult to separate. For this reason perhaps it would have been better to go for a wider range, starting from regional anthologies: Michael March ed: Description of a Struggle (The Vintage Book of Contemporary Eastern European Writing, 1994.)

Finally, should the above works have been omitted on account of the author’s rigorous principles, it is hard to explain why the political daily Esti Hírlap is listed in the chapter "Newspapers, Journals", considering it is published in Hungarian and the name Budapest does not even feature in its title.

In spite of the above list of omissions, my opinion still holds: this is a useful book, though it could not come quite as close to the comprehension demanded by the series as one would expect from a work which is meant to last for some years.

The author of Budapest: A Cultural Guide is an "applied cultural historian" who often disguises his books as guide books. He is at home primarily in Spanish-speaking countries. He first came to Hungary, as we learn from the blurb, in 1980 when he was collecting material for a book on art colonies in Europe. Although he spent longer periods in Budapest and elsewhere in the country on about half a dozen occasions, made deep friendships here and read a tremendous amount in many languages, he has never learnt Hungarian. His book is a centaur: it opens with a connected string of essays, the second half being a catalogue of things to see, in the guise of a guide book. The centaur combination is surely Michael Jacobs’s invention. The preface, which is interspersed with quotations from the passionate travel writers of old, shows how deep an impression Budapest made on Jacobs on his first arrival here from Vienna: "I was instantly enthralled by Budapest’s gaiety and energy, and by the way it exuded the excitement of a major capital." He indicates a number of reasons which encouraged him to write the book: "…Budapest has as much to offer the tourist as any of its city rivals, and that a fuller understanding of the place is dependent on a knowledge of Hungary’s rich, idiosynchratic but undeservedly little-known culture."

In other words, the book aims to serve as a first introduction for anyone considering whether to come here. For this Jacobs’s qualifications are first rate: he exists somewhere at the junction between writing, journalism and history. He is ob-viously extremely good at making contacts, bearing in mind that people like Árpád Szabados, Péter Esterházy, Mihály Szegedy-Maszák, Imre Makovecz, Gyula Illyés’s (unnamed) grandchild and others took him straight into their confidence. He has a portion of refreshing British eccentricity and irreverence about him which makes the book good reading. His aims are ambitious and the question is how close he has come to accomplishing them. I would say a great deal, despite the following disappointing list of errors.

Even the minor review finds a large number of impermissible mistakes in the book. Some examples, in order of appearance, not importance. The Mongols attacked Hungary in 1241, not 1246; in the family name of Ferenc Széchényi the second "e" has an accent, too; Kossuth wasn’t a "landless aristocrat", he was born into the lesser nobility and became a lawyer and journalist, and it is not true that he spent his exile "first in Turkey, then in France and England", when, for the most part, he lived in Turin. The last part (in the chronology of writing) of János Arany’s epic poem the Toldi Trilogy was not Toldi’s Evening, it was Toldi’s Love; in 1896 only the idea of the Museum of Fine Arts existed, the building came in 1906; the name Pál Szinyei Merse has never been abbreviated to "Merse"; it was not Admiral Miklós Horthy who was kidnapped by the Germans, but his son of the same name. Imre Nagy did not take Rákosi’s place in 1953, because he became prime minister, not party first secretary. The demonstration on 23 October 1956 crossed over Margaret Bridge, not Elizabeth Bridge; at the statue of General Bem "Pilski" should be read as "Piski"; the Grand Hotel on Margaret Island was not built on the location of the hotel where the poet Arany had stayed. The Neo-Classical houses in Óbuda were not demolished because of the widening of the Árpád Bridge. The name of the former Török Bank in Szervita tér cannot be translated as "Turkish Bank", and conclusions as to the style of the building cannot be drawn from this. (Török is a fairly common Hungarian surname.) Városház utca should not be confused with Városmajor utca; Manó Mai was never "a Viennese society photographer"; the scaffolding on the New York Palace has nothing to do with 1956 tanks, it has been there since about 1989; the name is István Angyal, not Angyvál—just to mention the most characteristic factual mistakes. And I have not even mentioned the sloppy editorial work, the contradictions. What on page 7 is described as a "theatrical late-nineteenth century Matthias fountain" becomes "Alajos Stróbl’s superb and enormous Matthias fountain" though this sort of thing is fortunately rare. There are some debatable statements that come close to being mistakes. If there is a sentence about Gyula Illyés (in one place), he cannot be called a "populist poet", because the word populist in English means something different, and does not convey that complex concept which the author is perhaps aiming at. The political party Fidesz, which happens to be leading the present coalition government, should not be described as "a liberal party that reputedly attracted the children of former high-ranking Communists", (p. 107 and a similar sentence on p. 176). This could get by in the tabloids, but not in a publication of the Oxford University Press. In the same way, one cannot claim in a serious work that the poet Petőfi recited the "National Song" on the steps of the National Museum on March 15, 1848; this has been denied by historians a thousand times. To describe the poet Endre Ady’s definition of Art Nouveau in one sentence as ridiculous and make schoolboy fun of his alcoholism and venereal disease is to completely misunderstand his importance and his style. So much for the "minor review". Part of the criticisms are directed at the famous publishing house: after all, the majority of the mistakes mentioned above could have been weeded out by anybody who has so much as matriculated in Hungarian. (No mention is made of a copy editor in the colophon.)

Now let us take the book as a whole. As I mentioned, the first part of the book comprises cultural historical essays. These have all got their own focus, yet they progress in time. "In the Court of King Matthias" is about the Hungarian Middle Ages and within that it describes the golden age of the Renaissance with a well-drawn portrait of King Matthias. In the chapter "Turkish Baths" Jacobs talks about the baths, and indirectly about Budapest manners in a highly entertaining way, with excellent quotes. "The Ghost of Gyula Krúdy" is naturally about Hungarian eating habits, and goes back to the Middle Ages, even though the focus is on the 19th century and even though he relates the story of the Gundels with its far from happy ending. The reader only gradually realizes that the chapters progress in time too, the author carries out a kind of "chronological swing of the pendulum" in Hungarian history in such a way that the pendulum itself progresses. This method (disregarding the already mentioned annoying factual mistakes) is reliable too. In the fourth chapter, Sinful City, the better informed reader feels for the first time that there is a problem. Instead of relating the things seen, heard or read in an entertaining fashion, spiced with his own amusing, eccentric remarks and personal experiences, he is after more than that: his own original discoveries. At this point Jacobs was overcome by hubris, and there was no editor in Oxford or friend in Budapest to tug him back from that dangerous path. Apart from dealing with an enormous period of time in one chunk—from the Age of Reform at the beginning of the 19th century to Attila József’s suicide (1937), he has the nerve to state among other things that Hungarian writers and poets traditionally did not concern themselves with urban topics, they have always only written about the country. Anyone who has not heard of Kassák, Lajos Nagy, Gelléri, Kosztolányi and Déry, to list but a few, should not set out on a voyage of discovery, and should not say in the last chapter of the first part, "Moving World", that Mándy and Örkény were the first writers to emphatically deal with urban life.

About half way through the first section, the problems with this structure multiply. After all, everyone knows much more about the recent past, so that the 20th century should have been divided into shorter periods. And the writer should not have thrown in every name he ever heard. He disposes of Ady, Attila József and Karinthy with one or two clumsy sentences. There is certain complex information (especially in connection with the writers’ characters and oeuvre) which can be mentioned, but it is not possible and not worth trying to summarize it in less than a page. (Even then it is quite a task.) Something that works in one page in the case of King Matthias is no good for great modern writers like Kosztolányi or Attila József. Either the book should be longer or more homogeneous.

I am not saying this to make excuses for the author, but the same text would make an excellent upper layer for a home page "Budapest: A Cultural Guide", or a CD-ROM where, at a click, we could dig ourselves deeper into the knowledge and browse through wider surveys and original texts, by means of hyperlinks.

The fifth chapter, the focus of which is on the problems suffered by the magazine Mozgó Világ, is interesting and comes close to be successful. One of Jacob’s visits to Hungary coincided with the action against the monthly, and at that time he spent a lot of time with the edi- torial staff. It is a pity he just mentions but does not explain the whole business, just as he skims over one of the key questions of Hungarian cultural history, the anti-Communist link-up of the various intellectual traditions, followed by their conflicts with each other. Perhaps he still does not understand the whole thing, or perhaps noncomphrension is a writer’s device.

The title of the second part is Walks; he himself admits that these are not really possible on foot, only by tram. The truth is that it is not only transport you need, but a guide too. The brief remarks are not sufficient for a foreign traveller to identify the sights in question. The black and white sketch maps do not help either.

The six routes are really just a charming excuse for the author to hop about freely in the city, in an ascending numerical order of districts—as he proudly mentions, lumping together Districts VII, VIII and IX because he did not have enough to say about them separately. Meanwhile, he recalls his experiences, sometimes interesting, sometimes touching, but never in a boring way. In the second part he cleverly tries to repeat the things learnt in the first part. (This is known as "recycling" in teaching.) Here too Jacobs occasionally tricks his readers. Who on earth would think of Attila József on hearing the name Ferencváros? Though it is true that he was born there.

Why do I like this book in spite of everything? Why do I recommend it to anybody seriously interested? Because it is a book that sweeps you along with it, emanating enthusiasm for Hungarian culture. Michael Jacobs writes well, whether he is describing the Mozgó Világ staff football match, his visits to old people, the friends he knew, or an operation carried out on an over-active kangaroo in the Veterinary School. What’s more, he has constructed it well too, not the slightest bit artificially, almost stealthily, unnoticed.

Two well-written handbooks to help even more people to understand Budapest. Possibly to help even better books than these to come into being.