Monday, February 13, 2006

 

Book Review: The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera

Writing Style-8.5
Originality-8.6
Plot-7.1
Merit(whatever that means)-8.3
Overall-8.4

Alright, that does it, I LOVE Milan Kundera. I’m not sure I can overstate this fact. I’ve now read The Unbearable Lightness of Being, then Immortality, and now The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. Good God, this dude is brilliant, I mean really effin’ BRILLIANT. Go read him right now. Walk, don’t run. Disregard the rest of this post. I’m serious. Git. Scram. Be off with ye.

Ok, now that you are back from the bookstore or library having obtained one of Kundera’s literary treasures, let me impart a few thoughts about him and this book.

This might actually be my favorite of his at this point. I’m not sure that it’s better than Unbearable Lightness as a novel, but having now read 3 of his books I think I’m starting to figure this Kundera character out a little bit.

Laughter and Forgetting is very similar to Immortality in structure. It has a central theme, Communist totalitarianism as it relates to Kundera’s native Chzechoslovakia being invaded by Russia in 1968—then with this central theme always in mind, Kundera proceeds to attack it from several different angles. These different angles are in the form of seven loosely related stories with loosely related characters in which he attacks the theme from a philosophical standpoint, an autobiographical standpoint, a metaphorical standpoint, a personal fictional account, an allegorical standpoint, etc. This was the exact same modus operandi as Immortality. Now that I’m catching on to his MO, I’d really like to go back and reread Unbearable Lightness to see if I get more out of it.

I’ve been pimping Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon on here lately. This is another great anti-communist manifesto to go along with that one. Both are from authors who actually lived under communist rule. In fact, as I understand, were both Communists of a sort, and became disillusioned, as tends to be the case.

I’m not gonna belabor the point anymore, but I strongly encourage all serious readers to try one of these books out.

There are so many things to discuss with the book, but part of the fun of reading it is trying to follow his logic and make connections on your own. So, I’d love to hear from anyone who has or chooses to give one of these books a go. Amy loves the guy too. So two enthusiastic thumbs up from our household.

Comments:
I am interested in a particular quote that comes from Kundera's novel, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. It goes something like this, "the easiest way to destroy a people is to erase its memory". Could someone tell me which page that quote is on?

GB
 
Yeah, I remember this. It was in the context of the communists coming in and destroying all the monuments and classic Czech architecture, in effect, erasing the cultural memory of the nation and replacing it with their own propaganda. I'll try to flip through my copy tonight and see if I can find that section.
 
Post a Comment

<< Home

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?