Ummagumma

My 1984 paperback purchased in India (in 1986) on my return flight. As with Moby-Dick , it has been awhile since I last read Milan Kundera's most famous work. When I finished Blood Meridian , I knew that Moby-Dick would be next and The Unbearable Lightness of Being would come after that. Reading it again gave me cause to revisit my last review. I don't have much to add to the perspective I present in that post. It all still rings true to me. My last review highlighted Sabina as the primary representative of lightness. The other three main characters are all weight. But, this time I realized that Tomas, even though he ultimately and contentedly chooses the weight of Tereza, is the only character of the four that experiences both weight and lightness. When he is with Sabina he shares her lightness. So he is a traveler, of sorts. Experiencing moments of erotic lightness but consistently returning to weight of marriage (along with a lot of infidelities, which seem ...

In early 1986, I was landing in Dubai on an Air India passenger flight.  The sun had come up an hour or so before and I remember looking out the window at a sea of white rolling sand.  I had spent the last couple of hours since take-off from Bombay (now known as Mumbai ) reading a book I picked up at a small store there.  The novel was The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera .  I was attracted to the title but knew nothing else about the book or the writer, who would go on to become my favorite living author today. I read the book during my return trip from India , finishing up after our stop in Dubai on the way to London and then on to New York.  I reread it immediately as I adjusted to life after India.  Kundera writes in short sentences and breaks his ideas into small chucks of wisdom.  This gives the illusion that he is simplistic or easier to read than is actually the case.  When you take his books apart they often ...

My first edition hardback from 1991. Something remarkable happens at the beginning of Milan Kundera's novel, Immortality . The narrator (who is Kundera himself, omnipotent yet personified at this moment) is watching an older woman take swimming lessons at a health club. He is sitting distantly in some bleachers. The woman turns and waves to her instructor as she walks away at the end of her session. That wave immediately transfixes Kundera. It is a gesture made by an older woman but it makes her seem decades younger. This almost mediocre observation brings the novel's primary protagonist, Agnes, to life in the author's mind. From there, she inhabits the primary story within the novel's paralleling narratives. The gesture by some random middle-aged woman that he did not know inspires Kundera's entire story. I don't know of another novel that begins this way. It is probably not an original approach. Someone else is bound to have pulled it off. Nevert...

Ramon wants to see a Chagall exhibit but the line is too long and he doesn't want to deal with all the people so instead he decides to take a walk in the park.  Simultaneously, Ramon's friend, D'Ardelo, has just come from a doctor visit where he learned the results of tests as to whether he has cancer, but D'Ardelo received good news.  No cancer.  He is walking happily along, thinking about his upcoming birthday, when he encounters Ramon in the park. So begins Milan Kundera's 2013 novelette, The Festival Of Insignificance .  This is his first novel-like work since Ignorance (2000).  Long-time readers know that Kundera is a special writer to me .  I was excited a couple of years ago to learn that he had written a new "short work."  When the English translation from the French became available in late June I bought it immediately.  I read it very quickly over the course of two nights. It is only 115 pages.  I savored the overall feel of t...

Sabina, Tomas, the mirror, and the bowler hat.  One erotic moment among many in the film. Shortly after I married Jennifer, we watched Philip Kaufman's adaptation of Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being .  I remember watching it alone at first and then encouraging Jennifer to see it with me on a repeat viewing.  I thought it was an excellent film , a sleeper of a 9, which means that it was a truly great movie but one that almost no one is likely to automatically recall 10-15 years afterwards.  This is not because it is not a memorable film, it has to do with getting lost in the passage of time with so many other good and great movies coming along.  The lack of friends who have probably seen it means it doesn't come up in conversations as the years pass, so it can easily slip from memory.  Kundera actually wrote another excellent novel that approaches this mechanic of memory, in part. But, like the (more famous and discussed) novel upo...