The Book of Laughter and Forgetting: A Novel | 
^^Thomas Mann, silence making way for beauty—just perfect.
>> “Nežene ji touha po kráse. Žene ji touha po životě. “She is not driven by a desire for beauty. She is driven by a desire for life.”
>> “…každý človek bez vyjímky si nosí v sobě spisovatele jako svou možnost, takže lidstvo by právem mohlo vtrhnout do ulic a křičet: My všichni jsme spisovatelé!”
“everyone has every right to run out in the street screaming: ‘We are all writers!‘”
^^ As Hugo drones on, Tamina brings her husband‘s face into focus. Compulsive habit of remodeling men‘s faces in her mind to resemble the face of her dead husband is pure love & pain, just a gut-punch, but so simply told.
And in horrible Hugo, Kundera makes fun of his own writerly obsessions with “milostná kniha o politice,” “love stories about politics.”
If you‘re going to be emotionally manipulated, it might as well be in his perfect prose. ?
pickI guess I felt like I had to, what with his passing, but I can only take so much, so it was this excerpt from “The Book of Laughter and Forgetting,” Tamina trying to retrieve her love letters from Communist Prague. Yes, Kundera‘s women are mostly painted cardboard, but Tamina the mourning widow in exile is drawn with such heartbreak & care. Irony as immunity. Metanarrative. Memory. Metaphor. Graphomania. Exile & longing. Power & beauty. 1979
so-soI was really digging this book and then the last two sections happened and then it tanked and I just wanted to be done...🤷🏻♀️🤷🏻♀️🤷🏻♀️ The first 5 parts, though, I would read again. 175/1,001 #1001Books
so-soWell, I need to make sure to check that the next audiobook I pick up does not include uncomfortable sex scenes. Two in a row is enough for me. This was a strange collection of interconnected stories that just wasn‘t for me.
#audiobook #1001books #ReadingEurope2020 #CzechRepublic #translated
Day 11 - #Laughter #MagicalMay
#TheBookofLaughterandForgetting #MilanKundera
I own this book but have not read it yet. It is on the #1001booksyoushouldreadbeforeyoudie list
pickA stimulating read. Vignettes connected by themes of power, memory & laughter in all its forms (it can be close to sadness; or cruel). Kundera describes it as ‘a novel in the form of variations‘. It moves from intimate stories - eg Tamina trying to remember her husband - to Kundera‘s thoughts on Czech history, music, & state power. I love his light touch, the clarity of his prose & playful satire. The poignant heart is the loss of his country.
Enjoying this - so many interesting ideas. 📖🤓
"...love is a continual interrogation."
#love #24in48 #startedearly
pickMilan Kundera is quickly becoming a favorite author for me. This was the second book of his I read and I loved them both.
In Prague, a guy is throwing up. Another guy comes up to him, pulls a long face, shakes his head, and says: 'I know just what you mean.'
I didn't do the #headlesscover challenge but came across this and think it's a fantastic image. I haven't read Milan Kundera in 20 years! Time for a few re-reads 📚❤️
The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything....The novelist teaches the reader to comprehend the world as a question. There is wisdom and tolerance in that attitude. In a world built on sacrosanct certainties the novel is dead. The totalitarian world, whether founded on Marx, Islam..is a world of answers rather than questions. There, the novel has no place.
bailedThe Unbearable Lightness of Being is one of my favourite books, so I was really disappointed when I couldn't get into this. I just didn't know where this was headed and I really struggled to stay in it a couple different sections. I gave it 100 pages but I just couldn't keep going.
pickMasterpiece. Kundera's words: "It is a novel about laughter and about forgetting, about forgetting and about Prague, about Prague and about the angels." I haven't read anything else like it.
2/3 of the book read and in awe of Kundera's ability to tell a story dancing between fictional characters and his personal life experiences.
An obsessive impulse to write #wordoftheday
