Jamie's review
The Curtain: An Essay in Seven Parts by Milan Kundera
Oh I feel smarter for having read it, but I've got to be honest, it's much too...(sad to say) French-oriented. Not that I don't love France--I do. And not that I don't feel a certain interior pleasure for knowing what he's talking about: I love Ionesco, Balzac, Camus. Heck, even his "foreign" books are on my radar...The Metamorphosis. And it's a fun read, as essay often are--they're nice little coffee talks, dinner party conversations, etc. The problem is, he warns against this sort of behavior, and I believe him. In fact, the entire book is flares against the silliness of talking frankly and pedantically about...well, any thing. To speak too openly about anything thought provoking, it seems, is a danger, because some poorly-read or self-oriented idiot might site you and believe one set of thoughts on a body of work to be "THE" set of thoughts (ie: the way I react after I read a Salon article on something...) He also blatantly explains, without meaning to, t...more
