Sátántangó is the first novel brave enough to ask the question is it really pathetic fallacy, or is that just Hungary?

The novel is structurally and symphonically similar to Selby's Last Exit to Brooklyn insofar as it surrounds a group of pretty morally bankrupt characters who go around and get themselves into more trouble. While this novel has a more central "pied piper" character than LEtB does, I'm still not all too sympathetic for most of the characters. I'm broadly sympathetic for them since, as was my experience reading this novel, LEtB, and (to a lesser extent), The Informers – I/the reader is confronted with the fact that some people truly experience this city/setting/country (one that is familiar to me but from a vastly different time & attitude ($$?)). NYC according to Selby, LA according to Ellis, Hungary according to Krasznahorkai – seem like really really really shitty places to be, with a physical sense of evil dwelling just beneath the surface.

This story consists of a few different storylines surrounding the characters who are all being conned by Irimiás.

The chapter on Estike and her cat reminded me of the first chapter from The Sound and the Fury in its depiction of the train of thought of someone with underdeveloped mental faculties, which was met with a similarly depressing end.

One of the final chapters follows two clerks who work at the police department, struggling to translate the testimony of the townspeople regarding the death of Estike (+ everything else that goes on). Hilarious discussions about how to politely adapt their vulgar testimony, and translate it properly (from ??? to Hungarian) is made doubly funny by the fact that my copy is itself an English translation of the original Hungarian, so someone else must have had identical/similar considerations

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