JEANS PROSE IN THE LITERATURE OF THE YUGOSLAV HUNGARIANS: MEMOIRS OF A MACRO LASLOV VEGEL

Abstract

This paper will examine László Vegel’s contribution to the modernization of literary expression of the Hungarian national minority within the framework of a broader Yugoslav literature. From this perspective, his novel Memoirs of a Pimp will be analyzed, i.e. his narrative, for which evidence will be presented that it is a true example of jeans prose. The echo of this stylistic formation can be found across Yugoslav literatures during the sixties an seventies. Aleksandar Flaker, in his formulation of the term jeans prose, united sporadic phenomena of European and global literatures centred around a young narrator, noticing a number of other similarities: ich-erzahlung, the use of jargon, rebelliousness, ”civilisation complexes”, generational ties, a general disdain of the young for everything that comprises the adult world, and a lack of biographical data or moralistic sentiments. All these characteristics are also present in the novel being analysed. By further analyzing the diegesis, i.e. the fictional world of Memoirs of a Pimp, we will attempt to prove its originality through conclusions about the innovation of Bub’s character, with which perhaps the most important contemporary novel of minority Hungarian literature in the former Yugoslavia was constructed.