(no subject)

[lapsedmodernist]

thank you for the link, cataptromancer!

This is beyond brilliant, and the first paragraph is, by far, the best opening to an essay I have ever had the pleasure to read in my life.

One of the terrors of dating is Milan Kundera, and specifically, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, the sexually-transmitted book that this Czech-born author has inflicted on a generation of American youth.

I like my idea of poison books, but "sexually transmitted book" is even better. Nyah-nyah-nyah Kundera, no gravitas for you!

And this sentence just made me howl with gutteral pleasure like a little demon, and thrilled me into the remembrance of how my father teaches the unit on Kundera to his fiction writing classes: "Dramatic Literature as Soap Opera":

Milan Kundera is the Dave Matthews of Slavic letters

not to mention the fact that all the "instead" book recommendations at the end are impeccable.

NB: Pnts, you MUST read it. (Which reminds me, did I ever tell you how on my first date with Millenium he inexplicably brought a copy of Camus' "The Stranger" to the Teahouse and kept it prominently displayed on the table the entire time?)

Comments

[congogirl.livejournal.com]

1. I am glad to know that I'm not the only person who doesn't think this book is the best piece of literature ever written. I now use it as a litmus test sometimes with new acquaintances/potential friends.
2. An icky guy who wanted to sleep with me at Oberlin brought a Camus book to coffee with him and wanted me to borrow it, but it was The First Man.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

2. Who, WHO? (looks like we've got an owl in here!) (sorry!)

Are you still in Toronto?

[budulay.livejournal.com]

и все таки девчонки любят етих себе-на-уме-херургов-жизни болще всех остальних типов

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

ну да, а потом мы из этого вырастаем.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

i dunno. while pieces like this one are amusing, they aren't very useful to me as criticisms of the book, or of kundera.

Dude, it's not criticism, it's punditry, but one that I think happens to be right on in this case.

I, personally, have a problem with things that range from "mediocre" to "interesting as novelty" that think of THEMSELVES as, like, brilliant art, and have a whole social context, in which they are the currency that signifies a particular type of belonging, or emotional status, or something. I also happen to think that certain books are like viruses that are very succesful at creating this platform of exchange based on the lowest common denominator. Everything Paulo Coelho (ugh) ever penned belongs in that category, and while Kundera is a much more interesting writer, the social "Kundera phenomenon" is not all that different. I also think that article points out really obvious flaws in Kundera's work, which piss me off, becasue instead of being acknowledged as flaws, they are the ones being touted as emperor's new suits. He is didactic, he does interrupt his narratives to, like, step outside for a cigarette and some wanking, he wants to create this illusion of offering a complex and insightful analysis of love, but he offers up the most reductionist, binary stereotypes, all grown in some Freudian homunculus tube of horror. I happen to think that that line about autopsy on mannequens or real dolls is very true. On a personal level, I think the books are manipulative, and of course, I am angry about being manipulated by them once upon a time. The fact that I, at 16, was taken in by them, in a way that was pretty harmful to me at the time, is to be expected, I suppose. But the fact that someone who is supposedly a grown intellectual continues to, essentually, pen the same book over and over, and be so self-congratulatory about it that he obviously continued to lack the awareness that I lacked at 16 but thankfully acquired by, like, 20, is just...icky.

I can see people making an argument for Kurt Vonnegut being a one-trick pony in a way, too, but I think his writing is more of a particular genre, that he cultivated over the course of his writing career, and although he does have a little bit of "if you've read a couple of his books, you pretty much know what he is about" (same as Murakami), he doesn't have the same disconnect between what he purports to do (as Intellectual Service to Gentle Reader, no less) and what he actually does.

[budulay.livejournal.com]

сжигать надо бы не книги, книгосжигателей

[redcord.livejournal.com]

And the beautiful suggestion list! Thank you for this.

"an autopsy on a mannequin" (so good)

[blainerunner.livejournal.com]

catpatromancer, thank you.

i hate that book. as ceglowski says, it's utterly simplistic (kundera refines nietzsche as the makers of wonderbread refine wheat). ceglowski's excoriation is, in my opinion, accurate and justified. however, he (she?) doesn't try to explain the novel's immense popularity. it's a totally anti-feminist novel. tereza says that she lives for her husband (see the conversation between tereza and the "woman photographer" in chapt 25). tereza is "feminine" docility/submission itself. kundera suggests, with the polarity of sabina and tereza, that a woman cannot be an integrated entity. also, to me, the novel suggests that love is no more than conquest. i don't think tererza *loves* tomas as much as she yearns to (for lack of a better word) tame him.

in my opinion, 'the u l of b' isn't just ersatz philosophy; it's regressive ideology.

i hope that ceglowski addresses 'amelie' and 'lost in translation' as well.

Omigod Yes!

[fengi.livejournal.com]

I thought I was the only one who thought this way. We may have discussed UbLOB-1 (as I will now call this book virus) in our one coffeehouse conversation, but if not, I loathe it for three reasons.

First, as the essay points out, it's a very bad book.

Second, UbLOB-1 is sort of like Catcher In The Rye for romantic assassins who thrive on frustrating lovers. The dimestore philosophy validates selfish behavior with quasi-slavic weariness. "We can't know what words truly mean for each other, so I did snog your best friend and lie about it. Such is life's sweet pain." Dates which contract UbLOB-1 are sure to manifest passive/agressive drama up to outbreaks of intentionally painful cheating.

Third, UbLOB-1 longstanding viral power (nearly two decades) is resultant from UbLOB-2, the movie strain, which is far more vacuous but even more contagious due to having several respected actors at the height of their youthful attractiveness.

Now if we can only get someone to do an essay on how Everything Is Illuminated is little more than a Yakoff Smirnoff routine for the NYT Review of Books set.

Re: Omigod Yes!

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

Dates which contract UbLOB-1 are sure to manifest passive/agressive drama up to outbreaks of intentionally painful cheating.


Oh my god YES. I mean, my college could have been the field site for a dissertation topic of: Bad Fantasy/Reality Distinction: How Boys Who Read Che Hurt Girls Who Want To Be Anais Nin.

I think we did discuss it at Filter. (And by the way, I imagine I will be in Chicago for a week or so at the beginning of January, and I would love to hang out with you and I would love to meet [data_embargo] if she is available).


Also
Now if we can only get someone to do an essay on how Everything Is Illuminated is little more than a Yakoff Smirnoff routine for the NYT Review of Books set.

I can't! I refuse to read it! (I did see the movie, though, which supports yoru argument about the virology of the second strain).

HaHaHa

[akozorez.livejournal.com]

I seriously laughed my ass off.
Brilliant indeed.

The Lightness of Being--however the case may be--will always have a special place in my heart because you must be a Russian girl in your mid-teens to sleep with this book under your pillow and dream of greaty sexy adventures.

I did, however, disagree with this guy on the Russian Debutantes Handbook. Bleh. It *may* be amusing to your average American reader, but good god...
Oh, and while we are on the subject, please put Everything is Illuminated in this pile as well...

the bit about the "Stranger" in small letters gave me another laugh, but this was of quite an understanding nature. I've had a few "dates" in my life that began with a book on Dostoevsky or Camus, or, god forbid, Derrida...

Re: HaHaHa

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

I did, however, disagree with this guy on the Russian Debutantes Handbook. Bleh. It *may* be amusing to your average American reader, but good god...

Really? I actually loved it (and so did anthropapa, he called me when he was almost at the end, very concerned about what was going to happen to the hapless protagonist). I thought it was funny and weirdly sweet without being cloy at all, and whimsical, and just the right amount of a kind of neo-Chekhovian.

I just sent you an electronical mail!

[protogeek.livejournal.com]

Heh, I think The Unbearable Lightness of Being was the first book my ex-husband gave me when we first started dating. I read it and recall liking it (though I don't remember much more than that). The first book I gave him was an Italo Calvino book -- which he never read.

[sui-generis.livejournal.com]

I feel the same way about "Written On The Body".

Bleh.

[orpheusinhades.livejournal.com]

Hey, I *like* Kundera! Though I have to admit that that particular one left me kinda cold. I really liked "The Joke", though.

[profundamente.livejournal.com]

Gross. someone gave me that for valentine's day, once. i wasn't even into him. needless to say, i cannot read the book.

fieldwork question:
i was wondering what you used to record interviews? all i know is that i no longer need to be analogue.

thanks!

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

I was gonna use an mp3, but ended up being an analogue person, and used a mini-cassette recorder with a 30-lenght 360 degree mike. It cost about $80 and in the end I figured it would fare much better than a sensitive digital thingie. But, keep in mind, it was always raining and soaking wet where I was.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

erm, that would be a 3-length. As in, "dictation," "conversation" and "lecture."

[nearly-there.livejournal.com]

i was wondering what you used to record interviews? all i know is that i no longer need to be analogue.

Two things I've used successfully lately: 1. The Olympus DM-20 voice recorder, which I've adored. The sound quality is good, esp on the highest setting, and it's pretty seamless to use on a Mac or a PC (or to trade back and forth between the two). Battery life is not bad at all, but I've heard that the AC adapter is a godsend. The one downside is that it doesn't record in mp3, but you can convert pretty easily if necessary. 2. If you have an iPod, acquire an iTalk. The sound quality is a little mushy, but for one on one interviews it's totally decent. And, if you have an iPod, this option is way cheaper.

I hope that's helpful!

We now return to your scheduled conversation. Which should definitely, imo, include trashing Eggers. ^_^

[theophile.livejournal.com]

I have to say, any wag who manages to suggest Svejk as a "date book" obviously lacks the intellectual capacity to read even Kundera. either that, or he/she has never been on a date.

fucking hipsters.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

Svejk is a brilliant book, and so is Moscow to the End of the Line, which is also exteremely dark humor/absurdist satire, so I would consider it to be an excellent gift for a romantic interest based, simply, on merits. Or are you arguing that books exchanged between lovers have to be conventionally "romantic"? Because, I assure you, there is nothing less romantic than Teresa's abject misery, Tomas' self-involved existential philandering and female "character development" that's all, like, Holocaust Dreams About How Her Mother Always Left The Bathroom Door Open.

[remsaverem.livejournal.com]

Hahaha, that was a great read. On the theme of Millenium and date books, he not only lent me The Unbearable Lightness of Being prior to our first official date (along with Leonard Cohen CDs), but then took me to see The English Patient as the central activity of our first official date, which I think is the cinematic equivalent to Kundera novels.

I can only cringe.