Rating: 
Summary: doesn't deserve its reputation
Review: This book is more of a philosophical prose poem than a real novel - the characters are simply embodiments of various attitudes and have little depth. The story itself is disjointed, jumping from the sexual relationships of four main characters at the core of the plot, to unrelated essays on politics, the psychology of kitsch, and other vaguely philosophical topics. The only really redeeming moments come from the intricate and fascinating depiction of the "Prague Spring" of which Kundera was a part. But with this book Kundera is one of those intellectuals who props up his light-weight curiosities with weighty metaphors and a pompous academic tone.Kundera's intellectual meanderings leap over logical chasms with a single "therefore" or "it follows that" with little reason for us to follow him. He demands too much from an idea based on a single metaphor. For example, at the very beginning of the book he confidently asserts "In the love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighted down by the man's body. The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life's most intense fulfillment." It sounds profound until you actually think about it. Kundera exaggerates the weight of a man's body during sex into the "heaviest of burdens" - links it with a "therefore" - and makes that sexual weight into "life's most intense fulfillment." This is supposed to illustrate how weight, which is often taken to be a negative thing, can also be positive, but it's a very slipshod connection. These kinds of rhetorical games, combined with recurrent references to Nietzsche and Beethoven, create an intellectual facade that seems much weightier than it really is. Built on many false presumptions and bolstered by an epic, scholarly tone, the novel is interesting in its musings, but should not be taken too seriously as a work of philosophical or psychological depth. All in all, I feel that "Unbearable" can be an interesting diversion if you want to know Milan Kundera's opinions about sex and society, but it's ultimately rather irrelevant and not deserving of its reputation.
Rating: 
Summary: Is Love the Anchor of Uncertainty's Ship ?
Review: This is either a book of philosophy masquerading as a novel, or a novel about the lives of four or five characters with pretensions to be a book of philosophy. Either way, it's an amazing work. Since it is well-known and no doubt, well-reviewed, I might not be able to say anything new here. Kundera deals with his characters in a rather sketchy way, using them to pose a number of questions, rather than to go into great psychological depth. Yet, even there, the characters Tomas and Tereza do come through well. Their moods and motivations, even their dreams, hold a reader's attention. A couple of the others, Sabina and Franz, maybe Franz' wife, are very light indeed. Kundera is interested in sex and love, in the fact that they tie people down, in the fact that they are so fickle, so gosssamer light, yet so important. In a time when ideology and/or political oppression create craziness or stupidity and the common sense of daily life is overthrown---as in post-1968 Czechoslovakia and maybe pre-Gulf War II America---love and sex are more or less what is left for people to hang on to. Kundera also ponders the choices that people make, and the extremely haphazard way these choices come about, based perhaps on endless strings of coincidence. This is not a novel long on plot. Rather it is a vehicle for some very intelligent musings. When living under oppressive rulers "is it better to shout and thereby hasten the end, or to keep silent and gain thereby a slower death ?" What is the nature of love ? Have you ever read the philosophy of excrement or kitsch ? You can find them here. Man is a cow parasite, he tells us, (though he's probably talking about a certain percent of humanity only) and goes on to say that attitude towards animals is a fundamental moral test of Man. We've failed. As you live, you write the story of your life. You don't get the chance to "write" an alternative story; there are no comparisons for you. History is the same, he says, as light as individual human life. There is no possibility of comparison of chances either in history or life. These are only a small sample of the interesting thoughts and ideas Kundera mulls over. If that sort of book is your bag, you're going to love this one. The choice you make by reading it, may evolve into something completely different in your life, have totally different repercussions sooner or later. Will you recognize that ? After all, each book of any consequence you read leaves an imprint. THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING will definitely do so.
Rating: 
Summary: Complex and compelling
Review: This was a really beautiful and complex book. However, it took me a while to overcome the whiny and soap opera like characters. Kundera uses his contemptible characters to illustrate several profound ideas. The first two chapters lay out the basic foundation, lightness v. weightiness. They bring into question rather the nature of lightness is positive or negative. If you choose to bear no burdens you will know the unbearable lightness of being.
Some of my favorite things about the book were Kundera's use of time, and his way of leaving some parts out and repeating other parts. Kundera has a brilliant writing technique, the story mostly goes along in a linear manner, but it does not unfold in a typically linear sense. It makes short jumps in time here and there and overlaps in places. You are given different perspectives on some events, and other events Kundera chooses to leave open to readers interpretations.
Besides the brilliant technique, the thing that made this book decisively GOOD for me was the last section: Karenin's Smile. In this chapter Karenin, Tomas and Terezas (the main characters) dog, which had become the clock of their lives, becomes fatally ill. Despite Tomas and Terezas grief about Karenin, they finally find happiness in their lives. Their happiness seems to be partly due to the burdens they have taken on, in essence the antithesis of the unbearable lightness of being, the joyful heaviness of being.
There is so much more to this book than I can articulate in this short review. You definitely need to read it to fully appreciate all it has to offer.
Rating:
Summary: A great reading experience.
Review: To me the main theme of this book is responsibility, those who accept it and endure the consequences, and those who attempt to avoid it. Tomas and Sabina at the start of the novel represent the lightness of non-commitment and irresponsibilty, Tereza on the other hand is burdened by and committed to her love for Tomas. As the novel unfolds Tomas is forced to make decisions which eventually weigh him down and cost him both his postion as a doctor and his free-spirited life style. Kundera uses the theme of responsibilty to not only highlight moral issues in personal relationships but also the consequences of expressing one's opinions publicly(in this case in communist Czechoslovakia of the 1960's).
Kundera structures the novel around a Beethoven quartet, using the four characters Tomas, Tereza, Sabina and another, Franz, to represent different motifs or themes. Unlike other writers whose experiments with structure often interfere with the telling of the story, Kundera's choice of format does not. This seems odd when you consider that Kundera purposely brings attention to the structure of his book and even provides a account by the author himself during the story about his experience in putting together the novel. Thus Kundera's book like many postmodern works is both experimental and metafictional, but yet flows with a natural grace that makes the reading of the novel an enjoyable, accessible and intelligent experience in the tradition of all great storytelling. One aspect of the book I found particularly interesting was the way Kundera counterpoints the harsh rule of a communist state with the eroticism of his characters. As we follow Tomas through his life as a womanizing surgeon to a one-woman-only polictical outcast we are able to view the changes that take place in both his private and public lives and draw connections between the two. We're also able to view the affect of Sabina's life of betrayal, the burden of Tereza's steadfast love, and the complications of Franz's marraige and infidelities all through an examination of the characters' sex lives and their relationship to the state. The Unbearable Lightness of Being introduced me to the work of Milan Kundera after which I went on to read some of his other books. None, however, influenced me and entertained me as much as this one. There are many reasons why we like one particular author over another some of which are easy to articulate and some not. For me Kundera's prose, his tone, his thinking, his subjects, all of these I found attractive. This is one of the most beautiful books I've read and it provided me with many different insights into life and at the same time was a joy to read. You can't do much better than that.
|
