Abstract
In Eastern Europe the shadow of suspicion invariably falls on the printed word. Censorship has become routine, a Pavlovian reflex. Typically, it operates even without orders from above. In this reflex the will of the state lives on; indeed, routinised censorship continues to function even without that centrally-guided will. This story is about the Budapest incarnation of the film-comedy gendarme, Luis de Funes, and this routinised reflex.