I am itching to discuss this book with someone! - Some questions.

[Beth]

Oh my gosh! Same here. Favorite character is by far Sabina.

Aside from the fact that her character was the one with which I most identified, I just love the idea of the jaded idealist because it is a territory that is often unexplored by writers.

Also, how often is the artist the grounded one in the story? I'm so over the artistic characters in the book being the crazy, bewitching yet unstable ones. She was just so refreshing to read and so real.

And the scene where she gets screwed out of her inheritance and just takes her grandfather's bowler hat without arguing was so hauntingly beautiful.

Who was yours?

[aPriL does feral sometimes]

favorite character: Sabina

hated character: Tomas

To me, kitsch stuff is sometimes silly, sometimes a shameful indulgence, but its awful when someone doesn't recognize it and loves it. A person who is kisch? Intolerable.

As a whole, even as I highly admired sentences, ideas, the density of material, I found this book incredibly ugly and disgusting. A schizophrenic reaction, I know, and I'll never read this again. I felt slimed by some of the obsessions, particularly the author's anal fascinations about sexy bowel movements and a**holes.

I understood the meaning and definitions of lightness and lack of it as reflected by the characters and their choices, but many of the actual representations (bowler hat?) had me scratching my head.

I can't figure out if my lack of accepting or admiring comprehension about the actual situations and thoughts described by characters, which I COULD pick up as symbols or layered ideas, used by the author are because I'm not European, not a Ph.D. lit major or not a 1950's adult, especially male. To me, the book was sick and weird about representing women, and the men were horrendously fixated on themselves. It wasn't a question of political correctness for me, rather it was people who were completely alien on almost every level. After awhile, I began to feel these people had been hatched by eggs in another universe.

It was beyond my comprehension and belief that ANYONE would willingly return to a Communist dictatorship, giving up lifestyle, freedoms, money, work in exchange for poverty, prison, beatings, fear of murder by a police state, no job or work or hobby allowed, except the most unfulfilling, because of an opinion said out loud, etc. I kept running up against complete disbelief and incomprehension of such choices. I cannot fathom experiencing an orgasm over watching someone defecate in a toilet. Or finding their own bowel movements sexy and looking to rape someone after.

The exploration of motivations and philosophies enchanted me up to certain points. Then he would take his characters off into crazy, bizarre and ick lands of raw sewage and self-destruction.

p.s. I have no horrors of eternity, or become drunk on betrayal. The angst experienced by the characters is not unknown to me, but the situational causes in the book would NEVEr 'effect' those reactions.

[E.M.]

I actually just read this book for the second time, and I have to say I think my favorite character is Tomas. At first I found him appallingly selfish -- justifying his endless womanizing as "his nature" even while he sees how much he is hurting Tereza. But I changed my mind at the part where he dreams about the woman he imagines is his soul mate, his Platonic other half:

"The woman in the dream, he thought, was unlike any he had ever met. The woman he felt he knew most intimately of all had turned out to be a woman he did not even know. And yet she was the one he had always longed for. If a personal paradise were ever to exist for him, then in that paradise he would have to live by her side. The woman from his dream was the 'Es muss sein' of his love...

He tried to picture himself living in an ideal world with the young woman from the dream. He sees Tereza walking past the open windows of their ideal house. She is alone and stops to look in at him with an infinitely sad expression in her eyes. He cannot withstand her glance. Again, he feels her pain in his own heart. Again, he falls prey to compassion and sinks deep into her soul. He leaps out of the window, but she tells him bitterly to stay where he feels happy, making those abrupt, angular movements that so annoyed and displeased him. He grabs her nervous hands and presses them between his own to calm them. And he knows that time and again he will abandon the house of his happiness, time and again abandon his paradise and the woman from his dream and betray the 'Es muss sein!' of his love to go off with Tereza, the woman born of six laughable fortuities."

I think this is one of the most beautiful passages in the book. For me it's the thing that makes the novel more than just philosophy, or political-cultural commentary, or a story about people doing illogical things -- but a wonderful love story, and one of my favorites.

[Beth]

Seriously, one of the most beautiful things about this book is the profoundly evident and believable flaws of each character!

[E.M.]

I agree! I think that's what I like about Tomas: on the one hand he's a complete sleezebag and terrible husband. On the other, he gives up his profession, his freedom, his cosmopolitan life for the woman he loves. Pretty much despicable, and also weirdly sort of noble at the same time.

[aPriL does feral sometimes]

"I am curious as to why they seem so strange to you. To me, they are ordinary people in often novel situations. Kundera totally dissects them, which means we get a great insight into their psyche, but the characters aren't necessarily aware of their innermost feelings, and I think most people in real life don't have linguistic ways to express their introversions. That's why Kundera talks at length about faecal matter, as it is central to psychoanalysts like Freud and Rank."

Um. Don't want to accidentally hurt feelings or sound as if I were judging anyone personally, but to answer your implied question about the text and the characters: I did not find almost anything in my brain similar to the single-focused lazer intensity of most of the characters' self scrutiny and their over-the-top, self-dramatizing, self-centered black-or-white thoughts, conclusions or decisions these people have and do. Not only did they take on commonly experienced, insignificantly minor or unsolvable problems (which should be abandoned or walked away from) most every Western citizen deals with at some point in the decades of their lives, but they seemed to continuously assume a position of making a mountain out of molehills, or they picked the most self-harming path as a solution, or they obsessively continued the difficulty, like picking on a pimple until it becomes infected, and still picking, until it leads to blood poisoning and death.

Most of these characters were so self-involved, making clear how living 'the examined life' can go wrong, they could not make lemonade out of lemons to save their lives.

I was completely disgusted by this book on so many levels. I kept thinking this was the author's intent, and I hope that is true (that it's a tale of How Not to Live your Life Rule One: stop thinking about your intestines and sex organs, but go out and get a fun job, eat and be merry, volunteer, get a hobby, etc.)

[aPriL does feral sometimes]

... why Tomas returns to Prague, though I agree, it would take a lot of guts to move back to the dictatorship, this was one of the things about his character that totally baffled me. I just assumed his judgement was drugged by Beethoven's quartet. "

To me, he is either the kind of fool who thought he was nobly sacrificing himself for love (Tereza was able to take care of herself, suffering emotionally or not, after all, she wanted to be with a mother who despised her and hated her, but she either loves the abuse, was blind to it, or loved her masochism - in any case, she was a grown woman choosing her psychological hell and Tomas was certainly not a big enough thing to her to matter, except as another torture device she needed in her life - mother, Tomas - the same thing) or he was flagellating himself for his perceived sins. Just an idiot, to me, making the kind of myopic decision young people make, or that religiously-infected people think, thinking of themselves as becoming Satan's kin if they aren't explaining the problems of the world and other people as something somehow they personally caused or were responsible for. (People often have the delusion they are responsible for someone or something even if they obviously have no power over the issue or person. Thankfully, most of us grow out of it.)

[aPriL does feral sometimes]

Lightness or heaviness? This is a trick question which reflects the black-white, either/or thinking in the entire book which warps the thinking of most of the characters. People are certainly contradictory, full of ego-id-superego subterranean caves (to use Freud's terms), unexplored and explored, but we are a mix of lightness/heaviness, a continuum, not a constant point. Plus, what makes me light makes someone else heavy, what fulfills me destroys another. I like some kitsch, but I hate some, too. Does that make me kitschy?

[aPriL does feral sometimes]

: D

[E.M.]

Where does he mention Fellini in the novel? I must have missed that. It's funny, it never occurred to me before, but I guess they were more or less contemporaries and they definitely have a similar sensibility.

I know Unbearable Lightness is kind of unique, but I'm curious: does anyone have similar books they would recommend? ... books with a similar style or theme?

[Karen]

Eremi wrote: "Where does he mention Fellini in the novel? I must have missed that. It's funny, it never occurred to me before, but I guess they were more or less contemporaries and they definitely have a similar..."

Read more Kundera books- I recently read The Book of Laughter and Forgetting- extremely interesting thoughts and ideas, but TULOB is my favorite.

[Karen]

Beth wrote: "Seriously, one of the most beautiful things about this book is the profoundly evident and believable flaws of each character!"

Exactly! One needs to be completely non- judgmental when reading this.

[Karen]

Eremi Wrote;
"I think this is one of the most beautiful passages in the book. For me it's the thing that makes the novel more than just philosophy, or political-cultural commentary, or a story about people doing illogical things -- but a wonderful love story, and one of my favorites"

I found it beautiful too, and I think that's because Tomas loved Tereza, and I don't think he ever felt that way before. He couldn't fight it; he wanted to choose lightness, but he couldn't. He was finally happy at the end of the book, with just Tereza and their dog. Loved it!

[E.M.]

Karen wrote: "...I recently read The Book of Laughter and Forgetting- extremely interesting thoughts and ideas, but TULOB is my favorite..."

Do you like his more recent books? I really liked the older ones, but less so the ones following Immortality (my favorite after Unbearable Lightness). It looks like the English version of his latest, La fête de l'insignifiance, is coming out this year -- hopefully that will be good!

[Karen]

I haven't read the early ones, I'm going backwards lol. I didn't know he was still writing, wow!

[Rose]

I totally agree with you on the obsesssion with fecal matters. To each its own, but I just don't find feces sexy-at all!

aPriL eVoLvEs (ex-Groot) wrote: "favorite character: Sabina

hated character: Tomas

To me, kitsch stuff is sometimes silly, sometimes a shameful indulgence, but its awful when someone doesn't recognize it and loves it. A person w..."

Benjamin wrote: "Beth wrote: "Oh my gosh! Same here. Favorite character is by far Sabina.

Aside from the fact that her character was the one with which I most identified, I just love the idea of the jaded idealis..."

aPriL eVoLvEs (ex-Groot) wrote: "favorite character: Sabina

hated character: Tomas

To me, kitsch stuff is sometimes silly, sometimes a shameful indulgence, but its awful when someone doesn't recognize it and loves it. A person w..."

[Rose]

I don't think they are all essentially selfish, particularly Teresa. She is completely devoted to Tom, who is the most selfish of them all, by the way. She knows about his womanizing ways & just keeps on forgiving him for every love affair he has. She only betrayed him once &, if I recall well, she did it mostly out of despair for feeling that her body failed to satisfy Tom completely (thus driving him to seek satisfaction outside his marriage). I don't agree with her, at all, but that is her sentiment about her cheating husband.

Lightness or heaviness? Well, when you are not afraid of being yourself, the way Sabina is, you will be criticized, judged, & misunderstood; therefore, it can be quite a high price to pay for not betraying who you really are & rebelling against what society expects you to be. Yes, it is quite a heavy burden you are putting on your shoulders for wanting to fly freely, light-weighed.

[Ambrogio]

I wrote a 2000 word essay about Kundera's use of linguistics to create philosophy.

This is by the far the best book i've read. Your knowledge of this world increases by every page you read. Definitely ignited my love for philosophy with the ideas of Kitsch - the denial of shit and everything bad -, dog's life vs. human's life, romance, compassion (the two kinds of it), idyllic love vs. human love, Vertigo, Light vs. heavy.

and I think that Kitsch is all around us, and unless a person calls it out it takes over and makes you think you're happy until you eventually grow old and discover you never were.

[Ian]

- Your favourite characters, and why?
None, but if i am forced to pick it would be Franz's first wife as she was the one who was "portrayed" as the strongest character.

- Kundera gives us an insight into the motivations of almost all the characters. Are they all essentially selfish?
Most of them are exemplary weak. Franz had an extreme case of Oedipus Complex, Sabina was transfixed with the idea of rebelling due to her father issues, Thomas was a chronic womanizer who had problems with commitment, Teresa... don't get me started with her.

- Are we living in the kingdom of kitsch? Do you find people you deem 'kitsch' unattractive?
Imo these are projections on how the characters perceived the world. I cannot relate with them any longer but i think this is them making projections on what is ideal or away from the reality that they are experiencing.

- A lá "Es Muss Sein" (and Plato somewhere) does art and music lead us to make irrational decisions?
It didn't affect me as much but the idea that crosses my mind is similar to Alan Watts interpretation that the world is made up of wiggly lines and the world is trying to make sense of it using straight lines.


- Are animals the last link to paradise? Do you have a longing for repetition?
No, i think the author misconstrued the point or perhaps it is just written poetically.

- Most importantly. Lightness, or heaviness?
Not important anymore, It's duality. we need to complete ourselves or at least try to understand both sides.

[Ian]

Benjamin wrote: "Ian wrote: "- Your favourite characters, and why?
None, but if i am forced to pick it would be Franz's first wife as she was the one who was "portrayed" as the strongest character.

- Kundera give..."


The problem with the idea of linking animals to paradise is simple. When you own a dog, you dont expect them to help to pay the bills or to make time for you to work on your relationship unlike with people.
The expectations and accountability is much lower so we allow them to stay to who they are without any issues.