What do you think of Kundera's 'The Unbearable Lightness of Being'?

Question

I was amazed by it, thinking 'this author's a philosophical genius'. Did anyone else have a similar reaction?

Answer 1

It really does give an impression of unbearable lightness. Mind you, all the characters in the book were all screwing each other senseless and endlessly analysing the emotional fallout and ramifications thereof, so that would explain the unbearable lightness.

Answer 2

I was given it as a 21st birthday present, and enjoyed it then. When i reread it years later, I thought it a pretentious waste of time. Perhaps in the intervening years my own philosophical attitudes had changed. What seems like genius when you're 21 and relatively unformed seems a bit different and less impressive after 20 years of surviving what life had to throw at me.

Answer 3

I didn't think it was his best book. But then I don't think he's very good. I think he struck it lucky with a wide audience by toning down his political edge and emphasising his second-hand philosophy (borrowed, in the case of this book, from Nietzsche) and fascination with naked girls.

Kundera has a trick, quite a dishonest one, of telling stories about real people and real events as though they were true, when they aren't, or are at any rate highly debatable. For example, in 'Immortality' he tells a story about Goethe's wife Christiane in which he represents her as having gone down in history as a 'fat sausage' who bit a young woman who fancied Goethe. I have read a fair bit about Goethe, and have never heard that story about Christiane Goethe anywhere else than in Kundera's novel, and yet he tells it as though it's the only thing anyone knows about her.

In general, I think he assumes that his readers are ignorant and a bit stupid and/or naive, and that it's up to him to tell them about the glories of western culture. I find this assumption condescending, pretentious and excessively arrogant, especially when Kundera's own cultural standards seem to me distinctly dodgy; the Christiane Goethe story comes from a book by Romain Rolland, a thoroughly bad writer.

Like many writers who grew up or came to maturity under Communist regimes, his violent anti-Communism has driven him to an extremely far-right or at any rate idiotically anti-left position. His books written in French aren't nearly as much fun as the books he wrote in Czech. He's become an old fart, harping on about Flaubert and Janacek and no longer interested in the world around him except to give out about how nobody reads Flaubert or listens to Janacek anymore, in spite of the evidence that many do.

In short, I preferred the movie.

Answer 4

Yes--try Immortality by Milan Kundera.....

Answer 5

Its one of those books that people often talk about - I've never actually read it. Or even seen the film - I'll give it a read though - Ask the same question in a week or two and I'll tell you.

Answer 6

Hi, this is canislupus on a different account. I just want you all to give me stars so I can get points. Thnx.

Answer 7

I felt the same way. My mothe rin law actually got me to read that book, I enjoyed every minute of it.

Answer 8

If I remember correctly it consists of lots of meaningless sex and pointless philosophizing.

...that's right, it was GREAT!!!