saxonb's review of The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera
Our existence is constantly marred by the uncontrollable action of forgetting. Memory is fragile and constantly at risk of being changed, altered or questioned. Memory is also subjective and the details of our past that we retain are often coupled with our emotions; thus forgetting can sometimes be voluntary. However, the loss of our memory will always relentlessly plague our minds without our control and affect us, others and the world in a variety of different ways.
It is these varying degrees of forgetting and how it interacts with memory and our lives that Kundera examines in “The Book of Laughter and Forgetting”.
If there is one single situation that Kundera is constantly driving towards in this novel it is that point where memory and forgetting coincide and all reason and truth becomes a blur.
By conclusion, Kundera seems to ask how do we live upon this conclusion that our memories are ours, so intimate, yet so unimportant; that their value is often only held by us. I...more
It is these varying degrees of forgetting and how it interacts with memory and our lives that Kundera examines in “The Book of Laughter and Forgetting”.
If there is one single situation that Kundera is constantly driving towards in this novel it is that point where memory and forgetting coincide and all reason and truth becomes a blur.
By conclusion, Kundera seems to ask how do we live upon this conclusion that our memories are ours, so intimate, yet so unimportant; that their value is often only held by us. I...more
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I enjoyed this book as well... it's been some time since I thought of it. I also like reading about memory- from the interior workings of our mysterious minds to the blurry legal implications of memory in court for actions ranging from who held me up at gunpoint or raped me etc. to the whole false memory phenomenon... and of course, my own wildly imaginative and sometimes sadly ineradicable relationships with "events" of the past. Emotion and history are pretty incredible... My problem, or question with your review- and it's a language problem I have in general with the use of this particular word, so often followed by a dash- is the flippancy of the term 'pseudo- philosopher'. I think 'pseudo-' anything is sort of a meaningless descriptor. It's a hazy term, and I don't always get what the implications are: is Kundera faking being a philosopher? Who gets to be a legitimate philosopher? Are there lines drawn in the intellectual sand that I am unaware of, as I spent my time reading literature and fiction and essays as an undergrad? I think maybe he is armchair philosophizing, but is that really "pseudo"? Susan Sontag is an incredible critic- is she "pseudo- philosophizing"? Must one be dead and pasty and taught in the "learned ream of the academy" to earn legitimacy? Ech oh legitimacy- such a plague at times.
To sum up this excesively long- winded, pre-caffeinated morning comment: I think linguistically the term "pseduo" is rubbish, mainly because there are better, more adept and descriptive ways to describe what one means to say, in this case of Kundera, than simply saying what you believe he is not, and throwing a little salt at him for trying. Seems cheap, and relatively unthoughtful. Not meant to be a dis, I think I've just heard or read the word 'pseudo-' too often lately and it's beginning to make my fingers curl into fists...
