The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera (Group Fiction Read April 2017)

[Phil]

I finished this book this morning and gave the thread a thorough read-through. I have a number of thoughts, many of them in response to April. Here are some ideas that might help readers get a little more out of the book:

1. Beethoven seems to be a key, and I think that the structure is based on classical music. Chapter titles repeat. Motifs recur. Scenarios are repeated, but with different emphasis. I think we are meant to experience this as a symphony of ideas rather than as a conventionally plotted work.

2. At about the 2/3 mark, Kundera breaks the fourth wall to explain that while he has similarities with Tomas, he is not Tomas. Rather, Tomas is a hypothetical version of Kundera. In fact all the characters and relationships in the book are hypothetical. They exist not to be real, but to serve as thought experiments on the meaning of life. "What if a man rejected permanent attachments? What would that look like?" I think the question of whether these characters seem like real people is beside Kundera's point; in fact, it may defeat Kundera's point.

3. Kundera is clearly interested in contrasts. Lightness vs. heaviness. Attachment vs. freedom. Public vs. private. Sex vs. love. Free love vs. monogamy. Integrity vs. survival. Earthly vs. divine. The characters and situations are meant to point these out. (The anal stuff ties back to his sh*t vs. kitsch comparison, in which sh*t represents mortality and the denial of God's presence.)

Here are some questions that I have:

1. To what extent are we meant to admire Tomas? Does he have the answer at the end of the book? During the window-washing portion, he has clearly lost his way, as the episode with the tall woman and his memory issues with the sex in a storm point out. Has he found his way by the end?

2. Is the book truly sexist? All the characters are unrealistic abstractions, but are the female characters more degraded than the male characters?

I think a complaint that I share with April is that I'm too old for some of this intellectualizing. My life course is pretty thoroughly set, and I've come to my own answers to the questions Kundera poses. I might have been more impressed if I'd read this in my late teens, but there were portions of the book in which Kundera is playing around with ideas that seemed fairly obvious to me. I will say that I had a similar reaction to The Alchemist, but enjoyed Coelho's book more because it moved more fluidly and maintained better tension.

[aPriL does feral sometimes]

Phil wrote: "aPriL does feral sometimes wrote: [insert lots of things here]"

April, I love reading your comments on this thread and others. I admire your ability to dislike a book while still engaging the peop..."

: D

Going off-topic, for fun: Middle-school was a place of cliques, actually.

I was a tall middle-school girl who always had my nose in a book, I thought middle-school boys were stupid and sweaty and coarse (my opinion didn't change much in high school, but I dated anyway), I never wore makeup because I had coke-bottle glasses, and I was in lust over Illya Kuryakin in the TV shows 'The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and James West in 'The Wild Wild West' (I belonged to both of their fan clubs by mail), I had massive posters of John Lennon up on my walls, I listened avidly to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones on vinyl records, I was on the school newspaper writing about school events and issues, I struggled in my Spanish language classes, and I wrote for myself stories about a secret agent cat called 'Kitty'. Secretly, a group of us nerdy girls, all of us with thick glasses and straight A's and no boyfriends, passed furtively around between us hidden in notebooks and purses, purchased from a local drugstore, filthy XXX adult-sex bodice rippers. I planned to go to college and be a manager somewhere.

But we nerds sneered and jeered (quietly, we all were also crippled by fear of reprisals), at the airhead 'C' and 'D' grades middle-school girls who flounced and bounced and flirted with boys we honestly thought were too stupid for us to stand being around for very long (all their boyfriends talked about was sports, other girls, going out for fast food or cigarettes or booze, driving and cars, and made jokes about girls' tits and legs, and they mostly wanted to go to movies to kiss instead of watching). These girls wore clothes too tight and too short and push-up bras, lots of makeup and perfume. They never carried books around and they did not seem to read at all. They planned on marriage.

[aPriL does feral sometimes]

Phil wrote: "I finished this book this morning and gave the thread a thorough read-through. I have a number of thoughts, many of them in response to April. Here are some ideas that might help readers get a litt..."

To me, the book is truly sexist.

I agree with most of your comments, otherwise, except I think Kundera was emphasizing absurdity most of all.

I think Kundera had a real-life passion for women' anuses; but he used the concept of shit not just for kitsch, but to express his overall despair and disgust for all of Mankind and his works. Kindera seems a very depressed person, who believes anything that people have thought of or have invented is all tainted by corruption and rot.

I thought the window-washing was symbolic for seeing things clearly. Tomas was wiped away the philosophical delusions clouding his vision, or wiping away the delusions people devise to cloud their self-awareness or political lives or how they love.

I never thought of music! I played a guitar for two years very poorly. I have tried to forget it.

[Phil]

April, I distinctly remember getting shot down by girls like you in middle school. Maybe they found me sweaty and coarse?

I like your take on the window washing, except I got the impression that Tomas didn't actually wash that many windows. Maybe it's a metaphor for the clearing away he could have done if he wasn't having sex with half of Prague?

[aPriL does feral sometimes]

Phil wrote: "April, I distinctly remember getting shot down by girls like you in middle school. Maybe they found me sweaty and coarse?

I like your take on the window washing, except I got the impression that T..."

: D

As an older woman, I quite enjoyed the men young enough to be my grandsons sweating and shirtless on my roof replacing tiles in the hot sun two years ago. Furtively.

You are right - Tomas was a sex machine first. Kundera may have had his tongue tucked in his cheek while writing, but I suspect he was remembering other places he preferred.