Author of In Praise of Older Women
Hungarianborn writer worked for NFB, CBC
Stephen Vizinczey, who drew on his war-torn youth in Hungary in writing an international bestseller chronicling a young man's romantic experiences with older women, which he wrote in English a decade after fleeing his homeland, died Aug. 18 at his home in London. He was 88.
The cause was heart and kidney ailments, said his stepdaughter, Mary Harron.
Vizinczey was taught by Benedictine monks early in his life. By the time he was 12, young Stephen — then Istvan — was helping to procure female companions for U.S. soldiers in Europe and was embarking on the first steps of an erotic education that formed the background of his 1965 novel, In Praise of Older Women. He published the book on his own while living in Canada, and it has appeared in multiple languages over the years, selling at least five million copies.
Before his surprising literary success in an adopted language, Vizinczey wrote several plays and was part of the Hungarian Revolution of the 1950s, when a student-led uprising nearly toppled the country's communist regime. Ultimately, the Soviet Union sent troops and tanks to crush the rebellion, and Vizinczey barely escaped with his life. He ended up in Canada knowing only a few words of English.
He found work with Canada's national film board and later for the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. (CBC). In 1960 he edited a short-lived literary magazine that published the poetry of his Montreal neighbour, singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen. Vizinczey began to weave the experiences of his early years into a novel focused on what he — or rather a literary alter ego named Andras Vajda — had learned about life and love.
The novel's subject matter and its frank treatment of sex proved too explosive for mainstream publishers. Vizinczey decided to publish it on his own. “I borrowed the money,” he told the Toronto Star in 2004, “quit my job at the CBC and worked for three months on the launching, driving around in my car delivering the books. Everyone said I was crazy.”
The book became a bestseller in Canada and Europe, but Vizinczey turned down an offer from the U.S. publisher Random House, which he came to regret.