A lifelong bohemian and habitual drinker, Neagu had an on-and-off career in the press—in the 1960s, he was mainly an editor at Luceafărul, whereby he encouraged younger authors; with time, he specialized in covering Romanian football, with columns that were admired for their skill and greatly loved by the reading public.

[7] In old age, Neagu liked to tell highly exaggerated stories of his childhood poverty, to see if those present would believe them—for instance, he circulated the claim that his feet had been bound, so that his parents would not have to spend money on shoes.

[3] Fellow cultural journalist Gabriel Dimisianu [ro], who met and befriended Neagu in 1953, recalls that he "seemed to not fear anything at all", speaking his mind even as the communists had started imprisoning or deporting men for expressing similar opinions.

[27] One story, Zgomotul ("The Noise"), depicted a grocer-turned-counterfeiter who ran a money-making device powered by unwitting shoppers, a boy who overfeeds on stolen cakes, and a physician who steals his grandfather's gold chain, one link at a time.

[3] Other pieces have a vague narrative pretext that merely allows Neagu to display his verbal skill—in one such work, the actor Eugen Argova reunites with an old fling, then makes love to her, carefully omitting to inform her that her son has been mauled to death by dogs.

[23] A 1964 note in the "most intimate" section of Preda's diaries accuses Neagu, Velea and Stănescu of being shallow and unskilled writers, "indifferent as to the future of our literature", and pliable to the regime's commands (since they are "more obsessed [than their elders] in hierarchies, in accumulating boons and privileges").

[29] As Ștefănescu recounts, he had also perfected a special kind of self-promotion, making vague statements about the manuscripts he was preparing for print, while also reissuing his works in several new editions, which were always reviewed with the same interest by professional columnists.

[18] Dincolo de nisipuri drew attention from critics such as Al. Oprea and Ovid S. Crohmălniceanu with its depiction of social upheavals within a dream-like setting, as well as for taking direct suggestions from Romanian folklore and from the staples of neo-romanticism.

[31] In Vara buimacă, the standards are closer to those of fantasy literature, prompting critic Monica Lovinescu to suggest that Neagu, like Ștefan Bănulescu [ro], was reconnecting with the interwar trends launched by Mircea Eliade.

He focused his attention of the volume as containing several masterpieces, as well as Neagu's first alter ego; overall, he suggested that Caii albi was similar, in both themes and overall value, to Mihai Eminescu's late-romantic fairy tales.

As Lovinescu notes, Neagu seemed unaware of the dangers this posed, and participated in at least one squabble that seemed to facilitate Ceaușescu's designs for total control; in 1972, he and Adrian Păunescu were bitterly fighting each other over who would take over as Luceafărul's new editor-in-chief.

[15] Neagu had hopes of turning Îngerul a strigat and Dincolo de nisipuri into a single feature film, for which he wrote the screenplay (named after the novella, rather than the novel); it was finally used for production by filmmaker Radu Gabrea, in 1974.

[3] Much of its commercial success was attributable to Dinamo fans, who bought the book after being told that it was largely about their favorite team;[25] midfielder Cornel Dinu, who was Neagu's good friend (and, from 1977, also his godson)[70] inspired the central protagonist, Eduard Valdara.

[19] At a deeper level, the work, defined by Zaciu as one of "parodic realism",[72] was essentially intertextual and closely mirrored Mateiu Caragiale's classic, Craii de Curtea-Veche—down to striving for the exact same number of pages[3] and mentioning similar landmarks in Lipscani.

[75]The same reviewer finds that the text is excessive in its metaphors, being entertaining throughout, like a "perpetual dream"; its "allusive langue" evokes 19th-century stories by Ion Creangă, but is innovative for being adapted to a modern, urban setting, in which the heroes are "footballers, crooners, fun-seeking girls".

In December 1977, alongside Barbu, Lotreanu and Preda, he expressed solidarity with the regime, against the dissident movement launched by Goma; the list of allegiances, which was kept in the Securitate archive, also included Constantin Abăluță, Leon Kalustian, Zigu Ornea, and Dan Zamfirescu.

[92] Over those months, the two screenwriters were also working with another filmmaker, Iosif Demian, resulting in 1982's Baloane de curcubeu ("Rainbow Balloons")—with Dorel Vișan as the head of a collective farm, slowly piecing together the backstory of his estranged and cheating wife.

[3] Ioan Holban of Convorbiri Literare described it as one of the major accomplishments in Romanian short prose of the early 1980s, noting its main trait and stylistic appeal: "the elements of myth and folkloric tradition become literature.

According to such sources, he showed up inebriated for an USR meeting, and proceeded to ad-lib about the gas and light being randomly turned off in his home, and about mandatory servings of oceanic fish in restaurants that lacked other, more prestigious, dishes.

During a trip to Denmark, Neagu mocked an interviewer, telling her that, had he not been a writer, he would have fancied being a Hungarian in Romania; upon returning, he recounted his "wonders and mischief" to his Romanian colleagues at Neptun, within earshot of Ceaușescu's villa, possibly because he had "permission from above".

With time, he became "entirely cut off from current affairs, either in Romania or anywhere else", dismissing virtually all younger authors as "counter-cultural", collecting minute details about the provincial literary scene, and praising the Romanians' timeless "cultural myths" (in pages that are rated by Ciotloș as a "nadir of his writing").

[117] Neagu himself made another appearance as an actor in the 1994 period-comedy film Crucea de piatră (directed by Andrei Blaier from a screenplay by Titus Popovici);[1] in it, he was cast as a heavy-drinking Red Army general, invited in to inspect Bucharest's brothels.

"[19] He made a final return as a screenwriter[38] on Terente, regele bălților, directed by Blaier and released in September 1995 (the project, romanticizing the story of an infamous interwar bandit, had also involved Cărămăzan and Dan Pița).

[124] In February 2001, Horia Alexandrescu gave up his position as managerial director of Cronica Română daily, and Neagu took over (heading an editorial team that also included Voncu, Aristide Buhoiu, and George Cușnarencu).

[126] Controversy was stirred again in October 2001, when writer Costi Rogozanu discovered that Literatorul, which he identified as Neagu's publication, was receiving the largest subsidies afforded by the Ministry of Culture—which was being directed by Răzvan Theodorescu, a Social Democrat.

"[23] The aging writer was also impugned as a cronyist for his early-2000s activity at the National Cinema Council, since he had supported the allocation of state funds to his old friends (including Blaier, D. R. Popescu, and Saizescu), while casually ignoring projects submitted by Lucian Pintilie and by anyone associated with the Romanian New Wave.

Bădescu was alarmed that the series had received lavish public funding, despite being a mix of "kitsch, vulgarity, and aberration"; he also drew attention to the depiction of Romanies, suggesting that the text was veering into racial stereotyping.

He was involved in a lengthy litigation with two men, both of whom claimed to have been the rightful inheritors of the dispossessed owners; in June 2006, a court ruled that he had acquired the apartment in good faith, though one of the judges presented a dissenting opinion.

"[2] According to a diary entry by the Romanian Jewish poet Nina Cassian, which details her chance encounter with Neagu and Dan Claudiu Tănăsescu in September 1980, the two men pestered and terrorized her for an entire night of "screaming [and] cursing".

According to Chivu, it is an encomium written "without any sort of talent", though showing "Fănuș [as] a no-nonsense man, a sentimental womanizer and lover-boy, an all-knowing sage, slick and skillful, [...] inspired and witty, delicate, generous and altruistic".