The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

By Milan Kundera

This novel is far too difficult to write about. It is a book with seven very loosely related narrative strands that, as the title suggests, center on the themes of laughter and forgetting. It's a damned good book. Far too good to have me hack away at the keyboard trying to dissect it for you.

See, I write my blogs on the same day I finish my books, so I'm not your best source for literary criticism. I'm really all about specific feeling of a reading. That's why I write what I write so quickly following the read. I don't want to get too far into my next book without chronicling what may have been on my mind during the previous book. If you're looking for literary criticism on the web, go to Publisher's Weekly.

Anyway, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting is a very textured narrative. Of course it is. It was written by Milan Kundera. It would be the acme of arrogance to assume that I can deconstruct (or even retell) a novel such as this in a forum such as this. I am simply not equipped, either chronologically or academically, to deal with this sort of book but I can say this: I thought it was The best book I've ever read by Milan Kundera. Immeasurably better than The Unbearable Lightness of Being. It's much more personal, more human, more evocative. It strikes a deeper chord within and resonates. It echoes off of every fiber of your being an forces you to remember what you thought you had forgotten. It's a novel that could shatter your soul, or stitch it back together, depending on who you are, where you are and what you had for lunch. If there were a pop music equivalent it would be Daydream Nation by Sonic Youth. If it were a film it would be Donnie Darko. The Book of Laugher and Forgetting is a gift. One that is well left alone by the likes of me.

But there did exist a single sentence from this novel that struck me particularly hard and I wanted to share it with fellow bloggers and blog readers and lurkers alike. It a startling premonition of a world that Kundera had yet to behold in 1979.

One morning (and it will be soon), when everyone wakes up as a writer, the age of universal deafness and incomprehension will have arrived.

Welcome to the blogosphere! Is anyone listening? Does anyone understand?

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

By Milan Kundera

This blog is about brutal honesty.

I could write something long and philosophical about this book. Lord knows it delves into some pretty weighty issues and philosophical arguments about life. I mean, the title alone suggests to the reader that you are not simply sitting down for a light afternoon of reading. This novel explores the relationship between love, sex, violent, domination and hatred. The fact that the book is set in Prague during the 1960s and you have a recipe for a very bleak tale (which it is by the way). One should expect something equally serious from a blog post on the subject of such a weighty (pun intended) literary piece.

I could write something like that, but the purpose of this blog is not so much to review the books I read but rather apply them to my life in some manner. So if you were looking for something about life, love and sex as philosophical topics, go away now.

So how does The Unbearable Lightness of Being relate to me as a reader?

It's one of the few books I have read after having seen the movie.

I should probably fess up a little here. I have sat through the entire 1988 film starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Juliette Binoche and Lena Olin. I was probably 15 or 16 at the time I watched it. No, I wasn't a coffee-drinking art-house film nerd in high school. I didn't understand a single moment of the movie. I had a vague idea that is was something pretty deep and often dark, but that didn't really concern me. I sat through the entire running time (including the credits) not because I had a keen interest in insignificance and eternal recurrence but rather this movie had copious amounts of full frontal nudity (I told you this blog is hell bent on brutal honesty).

For a 16 year old boy staying up late on a Friday night to watch Late, Great Movies on CityTV in Toronto, this was the godsend of films. It also was the beginning of a lifelong crush on Juliette Binoche. I spent another three years scouring the TV guide for a replay. It never happened, to my knowledge. Shame.

Sixteen years later, I still recall the film (or parts of it, anyway) but certainly not the plot. I usually have a rule about reading a book if I have already seen the movie, but this hardly felt like cheating. And if it is cheating, certainly this is the book in which one would be excused for it. Only once while reading did I recall a scene from the movie (the scene where Juliette Binoche photographs Lena Olin in the nude and then they are both nude... these sorts of cinimatic memories stay with you). Otherwise, it was an entirely unread novel to me.

The book, of course, is more satisfying than the film because Kundera takes more time to get to the heart of what he is trying to say. Kundera seems to have a very negative view on relationships in general, often bordering on misoginistic. But the book is what it is and one cannot fault an author simply because you disagree with him or her. The death of Karenin was a particularly poignant episode in the novel both as a plot device and metaphor for Thomas and Teresa's "lightness" becoming less "unbearable." But I couldn't have read this book at the age of 16 (or 26 for that matter). It would have bored me to tears like Wuthering Heights. I think reading it now, at the age of 35, was probably perfect timing. I'm probably just old enough to understand what Kundera is getting at (assuming I understand, that is... but I think I do).

In the end, reading this book was like coming full circle. It was the same as reading Catcher in the Rye for the second (or fifth) time and realizing that Holden Caufield isn't a misunderstood teenage genius but rather a boy hopelessly in danger of irrelevance. I'm obviously a more layered onion than I was at the age of 16. At the age of 35, The Unbearable Lightness of Being amounts to a bit more than just Juliette Binoche's naked body.

Although, it did add a nice touch to the overall package, don't you think?