Vizinczey, Abrahams, and Frutkin Retell Stendhal

Abstract

In Praise of Older Women (1965) by Stephen Vizinczey, The Tutor (2002) by Peter Abrahams, and Fabrizio’s Return (2006) by Mark Frutkin are three novels based on Stendhal’s fiction. Vizinczey and Abrahams have used Le Rouge et le Noir as their hypotext, while Frutkin’s novel bears a marked resemblance to La Chartreuse de Parme. The three contemporary novels are compared to Stendhal’s two books in order to indicate their similarities, but also to locate their differences. Both the similarities and the differences help the reader not only to understand the original Stendhalian texts but also to appreciate the somewhat surprising manner in which Stendhal’s fiction lives on in important twenty-first-century fictional preoccupations with eroticism, migration, psychopathy, and a kind of magic realism.

Keywords:

• Stephen Vizinczey
• In Praise of Older Women
• Peter Abrahams
• The Tutor
• Mark Frutkin
• Fabrizio’s Return
• Le Rouge et le Noir
• La Chartreuse de Parme
• eroticism
• migration
• psychopathy
• magic