An Innocent Millionaire
Type
Book
Authors
ISBN 10
0552126195
ISBN 13
9780552126199
Category
NX - thriller, action, mystery, horror
[ Browse Items ]
Publication Year
1984
Description
"Brilliantly inventive, written with great flair and shows a deliciously comic and ironic sense of American realities."—Alfred Kazin
"The virtues of [Vizinczey's] style are those he finds in Hungarian poetry: the moody ferocity of a locked-up beast, and also a classic clarity and complete lack of self-indulgence."—Thomas D'Evelyn, Christian Science Monitor
"Shows where the true values lie—not in wealth or the rule of law but in that as yet inviolate sector where a man and woman make love. . . . I was entertained but also deeply moved: here is a novel set bang in the middle of our decadent, polluted, corrupt world that, in some curious way, breathes a kind of desperate hope."—Anthony Burgess, Punch (London)
"Bravo!"—Graham Greene
"The virtues of [Vizinczey's] style are those he finds in Hungarian poetry: the moody ferocity of a locked-up beast, and also a classic clarity and complete lack of self-indulgence."—Thomas D'Evelyn, Christian Science Monitor
"Shows where the true values lie—not in wealth or the rule of law but in that as yet inviolate sector where a man and woman make love. . . . I was entertained but also deeply moved: here is a novel set bang in the middle of our decadent, polluted, corrupt world that, in some curious way, breathes a kind of desperate hope."—Anthony Burgess, Punch (London)
"Bravo!"—Graham Greene
Biblio Notes
From Publishers Weekly
A young man protects the Inca treasure he found on a sunken ship from various ill-intentioned individuals. Vizinczey's writing is "clever, entertaining and sometimes very funny," remarked PW. "It's flawed both as a story and a satirical fable, however, by portentous authorial philosophizing."
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
Review
A glorious 20th century incarnation of the great social novels of the 19th century . After reading An Innocent Millionaire one has a sense of having been thoroughly exercised, intellectually and emotionally. -- Cristina Monet, The Literary Review, London
A great novel. I just finished reading it for the third time and I now consider it three times as good as I did after the first reading... It makes one feel that Balzac has come back to continue his Comedie humaine in America. If you like fiction with narrative power and rich philosophical texture, be sure to re-read it. -- Edwin Howard, Memphis, Business Journal
A very funny and serious book... The author's English is timeless, elaborate, musical... Someone urges Mark Niven to read Balzac... But Mark, with his monomaniac quest, his passion for money, his lone stand against the world, is already a character in a novel by Balzac, as are his enemies, powered by greed and anarchic individualism... A crescendo of treachery, delay and exploitation that makes Bleak House look like a tea-party... It would be salutary to discover why this book, whose messages are unremittingly deflationary, should leave one so elated.
-- Victoria Glendinning, Sunday Times, London
Powerfully persuasive fiction, filled with human insight, literary poise, high imagination and, best of all, pure comedy... Vizinczey has placed himself in a category with Conrad and Nabokov as a foreigner who handles English in a way that strikes jealousy into the heart of the native English speaker.
-- Leslie Hanscom, Newsday, New York
"To stay rich, people must be nearer to the dead than the living: they can't afford to get carried away by anything," muses the narrator of An Innocent Millionaire in a Stendhalian aside contrasting passion and calculation, letting go and holding back, romance and finance, the polarities which structure Vizinczey's splendid new novel. Vizinczey is a Hungarian emigre who has taken command of English with the authority of that other Eastern European exile, Joseph Conrad... An Innocent Millionaire has the classic plot of the great realist novels: a young hero from the provinces, dreaming of wealth, power and the love of women, makes his way to the heart of the great metropolis and succeeds beyond even his own imaginings. But his success turns to ashes... Vizinczey tells the story of his young hero with the sardonic affection the middle-aged have for their younger, better selves. Mark Niven, the expatriate American son of divorced parents... fanatically pursues his own dream: finding a sunken Spanish treasure ship. His adventures take him through Europe, America and finally to the shark-infested reefs where his Jungian fantasies come true... the aquatic sharks are mild-mannered indeed compared to the human predators who beset Mark once he hits the jackpot. He discovers that "to be rich is to be at war with the world", with a rogues' gallery of art dealers, revolutionaries, gangsters, lawyers, jealous husbands and tax collectors after his money, his life, or both. Like Stendhal, Vizinczey will take pages to describe a minute in the inner life of a character, then spend a mere sentence on a crucial external action... One of the finest jump-cuts in a narrative with the jerky, superbly unpredictable pacing of The Red and the Black takes us from Mark's moment of triumph in the sea to the office of the Bahamian tax assessor, where the government is blandly helping itself to half his hard-won treasure...
The heart of An Innocent Millionaire is what happens next. Will Mark recognize the true riches of his love for the equally innocent (but conveniently wealthy) Marianne Hardwick, who is trapped in a deadly marriage to a ruthless tycoon, or will he spend his substance on the quest to recover his albatross of a treasure? The last third of An Innocent Millionaire is the harrowing story of Mark's doomed lawsuits against his tormentors, an anatomy of the ways of the world rivaling Balzac's exposé of the publishing business and credit markets in Lost Illusions... A contemporary version of Stendhal on love and Balzac on money... -- Michael Stern, San Jose Mercury News
A marvelous story, written by a master. -- Terry Coleman, The Guardian, London
A young man protects the Inca treasure he found on a sunken ship from various ill-intentioned individuals. Vizinczey's writing is "clever, entertaining and sometimes very funny," remarked PW. "It's flawed both as a story and a satirical fable, however, by portentous authorial philosophizing."
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
Review
A glorious 20th century incarnation of the great social novels of the 19th century . After reading An Innocent Millionaire one has a sense of having been thoroughly exercised, intellectually and emotionally. -- Cristina Monet, The Literary Review, London
A great novel. I just finished reading it for the third time and I now consider it three times as good as I did after the first reading... It makes one feel that Balzac has come back to continue his Comedie humaine in America. If you like fiction with narrative power and rich philosophical texture, be sure to re-read it. -- Edwin Howard, Memphis, Business Journal
A very funny and serious book... The author's English is timeless, elaborate, musical... Someone urges Mark Niven to read Balzac... But Mark, with his monomaniac quest, his passion for money, his lone stand against the world, is already a character in a novel by Balzac, as are his enemies, powered by greed and anarchic individualism... A crescendo of treachery, delay and exploitation that makes Bleak House look like a tea-party... It would be salutary to discover why this book, whose messages are unremittingly deflationary, should leave one so elated.
-- Victoria Glendinning, Sunday Times, London
Powerfully persuasive fiction, filled with human insight, literary poise, high imagination and, best of all, pure comedy... Vizinczey has placed himself in a category with Conrad and Nabokov as a foreigner who handles English in a way that strikes jealousy into the heart of the native English speaker.
-- Leslie Hanscom, Newsday, New York
"To stay rich, people must be nearer to the dead than the living: they can't afford to get carried away by anything," muses the narrator of An Innocent Millionaire in a Stendhalian aside contrasting passion and calculation, letting go and holding back, romance and finance, the polarities which structure Vizinczey's splendid new novel. Vizinczey is a Hungarian emigre who has taken command of English with the authority of that other Eastern European exile, Joseph Conrad... An Innocent Millionaire has the classic plot of the great realist novels: a young hero from the provinces, dreaming of wealth, power and the love of women, makes his way to the heart of the great metropolis and succeeds beyond even his own imaginings. But his success turns to ashes... Vizinczey tells the story of his young hero with the sardonic affection the middle-aged have for their younger, better selves. Mark Niven, the expatriate American son of divorced parents... fanatically pursues his own dream: finding a sunken Spanish treasure ship. His adventures take him through Europe, America and finally to the shark-infested reefs where his Jungian fantasies come true... the aquatic sharks are mild-mannered indeed compared to the human predators who beset Mark once he hits the jackpot. He discovers that "to be rich is to be at war with the world", with a rogues' gallery of art dealers, revolutionaries, gangsters, lawyers, jealous husbands and tax collectors after his money, his life, or both. Like Stendhal, Vizinczey will take pages to describe a minute in the inner life of a character, then spend a mere sentence on a crucial external action... One of the finest jump-cuts in a narrative with the jerky, superbly unpredictable pacing of The Red and the Black takes us from Mark's moment of triumph in the sea to the office of the Bahamian tax assessor, where the government is blandly helping itself to half his hard-won treasure...
The heart of An Innocent Millionaire is what happens next. Will Mark recognize the true riches of his love for the equally innocent (but conveniently wealthy) Marianne Hardwick, who is trapped in a deadly marriage to a ruthless tycoon, or will he spend his substance on the quest to recover his albatross of a treasure? The last third of An Innocent Millionaire is the harrowing story of Mark's doomed lawsuits against his tormentors, an anatomy of the ways of the world rivaling Balzac's exposé of the publishing business and credit markets in Lost Illusions... A contemporary version of Stendhal on love and Balzac on money... -- Michael Stern, San Jose Mercury News
A marvelous story, written by a master. -- Terry Coleman, The Guardian, London
Number of Copies
1
