The Art of the Novel

Rating:
Summary: Much Needed Luminescence
Review: "Outside the novel, we're in the realm of affirmation: everyone is sure of his statements: the politician, the philosopher, the concierge. Within the universe of the novel, however, no one affirms: it is the realm of play and of hypotheses. In the novel, then, reflection is essentially inquiring, hypothetical."

Thus Milan Kundera affirms the wonder and beauty of the novel and explains the difference between how philosophers think and how novelists think. Born of the Modern Era ushered in by seventeenth century rationalism, the novel contemplates and explores existence in the Modern Era. Like the Modern Era, the novel is distinguished by its ambiguity and complexity. For Kundera, the novel's core is an inquiry, not a moral position. It makes sense, therefore, that in a world where humans long for black/white, wrong/right distinction, that the "wisdom of uncertainty" which Kundera calls the wisdom of the novel, should be so hard to accept and understand.

This remarkable short book shares the seven part form of several of Kundera's novels: each can stand alone but all are connected by vital and pervading themes. The seven parts comprise two essays, a collection of notes, two dialogues, a dictionary of sixty-three words, and an acceptance speech for a literary prize--and not in the order just mentioned. This mosaic structure works well to underscore part of Kundera's point: there are many ways to approach an understanding of the novel. Is Don Quixote a critique or a celebration of idealism? Both cases have been made often, neither is right--the novel's spirit of complexity and continuity brooks no dogmatism. In fact, the novel has its own "radical autonomy" which Kundera uses to illuminate the works of Franz Kafka. It can say and show things humans cannot achieve in any other way.

If the novel that is art--the novel that truly says something new--is to survive, novelists would do well to think more like Milan Kundera. Readers of THE ART OF THE NOVEL, meanwhile, will gain a new appreciation for the genre as well as valuable insight into the thought process of one of the world's greatest living novelists.

Rating:
Summary: Much Needed Luminescence
Review: "Outside the novel, we're in the realm of affirmation: everyone is sure of his statements: the politician, the philosopher, the concierge. Within the universe of the novel, however, no one affirms: it is the realm of play and of hypotheses. In the novel, then, reflection is essentially inquiring, hypothetical."

Thus Milan Kundera affirms the wonder and beauty of the novel and explains the difference between how philosophers think and how novelists think. Born of the Modern Era ushered in by seventeenth century rationalism, the novel contemplates and explores existence in the Modern Era. Like the Modern Era, the novel is distinguished by its ambiguity and complexity. For Kundera, the novel's core is an inquiry, not a moral position. It makes sense, therefore, that in a world where humans long for black/white, wrong/right distinction, that the "wisdom of uncertainty" which Kundera calls the wisdom of the novel, should be so hard to accept and understand.

This remarkable short book shares the seven part form of several of Kundera's novels: each can stand alone but all are connected by vital and pervading themes. The seven parts comprise two essays, a collection of notes, two dialogues, a dictionary of sixty-three words, and an acceptance speech for a literary prize--and not in the order just mentioned. This mosaic structure works well to underscore part of Kundera's point: there are many ways to approach an understanding of the novel. Is Don Quixote a critique or a celebration of idealism? Both cases have been made often, neither is right--the novel's spirit of complexity and continuity brooks no dogmatism. In fact, the novel has its own "radical autonomy" which Kundera uses to illuminate the works of Franz Kafka. It can say and show things humans cannot achieve in any other way.

If the novel that is art--the novel that truly says something new--is to survive, novelists would do well to think more like Milan Kundera. Readers of THE ART OF THE NOVEL, meanwhile, will gain a new appreciation for the genre as well as valuable insight into the thought process of one of the world's greatest living novelists.

Rating:
Summary: Devastating.
Review: A light and heavy journey with Kundera along his personal aesthetic path that also takes in the road of the European novel. This cannot be read without the readers own reading history being impacted upon.

Rating:
Summary: Kunderan Author Function
Review: Foucault posits that the authorial function is a discourse all its own. As if to say that authors, publishers, readers, marketers, etc., are part of an elaborate mechanism that gets between the reader and the text. Milan Kundera is a master of his authorial function and does not disappoint with "The Art of the Novel". In this work, Kundera goes beyond "Testaments Betrayed" (a work that examines the efforts of Max Brod on behalf of Kafka and Janacek) and addresses issues surrounding Kundera's own work. Given the forum to further discuss topics like kitsch; and no make mistake, Kundera understands his authorial function. The book contains discussions of Cervantes, Kafka, Broch, Musil, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Sterne, Falubert and Balzac, as if revealing his entire array of inspirational sources. Furthermore, the compact but dense book also deals with the Czech Republic, totalitarianism, Stalinism, Kitsch, Central European Culture, modernity, the novel. I often wonder what prompted this almost apologetic work. Conversely, the range and complexity of Kundera's ouevre is astounding as it is controversial. Loaded with sexuality, I often wonder if his commercial success is the reason the Nobel people have overlooked his profound inquiries. As the novel is the playground of possibility, can an explanation of one's own work enhance it - sure it does. A must read for Kundera scholars.

Miguel Llora

Rating:
Summary: How much value does a book have you don't remember?
Review: I know I read this book. I read it all. I tried to learn about the art of novel- writing from it.
I have just read the Amazon reviews posted about this novel. A couple are good. They tell me that Kundera writes here about Cervantes, Sterne, Balzac, Dostoevsky and Kafka. They tell me the book has a seven- part structure as his novels do. They tell me that Kundera contrasts the art of the novelist with the thought of the philosopher- and that for him the art of the novelist is in portraying ambiguity and complexity. They tell me that this particular book is one of his best.
Now I have read other Kundera works. I know his work plays much with chance and infidelity and philosophical reflections by the characters on whether their disloyalty or love is bringing them to the incredible lightness of being which some seem bound to living in. They tell me too that the reflections touch about politics , Czech freedom, what it means to write under tyranny and what it means to live in the West.
But the truth is I having read this work on the novel by Kundera remember not one single sentence or thought from it.
This the impatient Amazon reader perhaps thinks says more about my own empty head than it does about the value of Kundera's work.
But I now wonder if something in Kundera's world and way of seeing things, his kind of liberation, his kind of emphasis on the incidental and very secular do not repel this religious reader seeking to feel that all, even in the novel, should have some kind of deep and permanent connection with the One Source of all true meaning.
It may be I have forgotten Kundera because his themes and understanding are ones I simply do not wish to know.

Rating:
Summary: Must Read For Kundera Fans
Review: I recall that when asked about his "Theorie Aesthetique" by a journalist, Picasso took out a pistol and shot it in the air. Evidently Picasso did not care to banalize his works into neat theories for art critics. The problem is that Picasso often did lapse into following a theoretical form...more so in his later works.

I read this book in French, "L'Art Du Roman" and while it does not attempt to reduce Kundera's works to neat theories, it does shed light on the philosphical underpinnings of many of his novels.

In fact, one of the main themes of this book is the critique of reductionism. He exalts the "Wisdom of Uncertainty" and eschews any art work that proceeds from an ideology or moral high ground as such leads to judgement rather than understanding. Somewhat in an existentialist vein, Kundera promotes the idea of "l'ambiguite" as the ideal for the novel. That is to say that given we live in a world where there is no right or wrong way to proceed, the role of the novel is to understand each character within his own constructs, not according to some extrnal morality or ideology.

Kundera's debt to Heidegger is made obvious throughout the book, and Kundera quotes him often. One is left wondering what Kundera's ideas on morality might be. However, I would not go so far as saying that he follows suit with Heidegger on this mattter. Heidegger's "Sein und Zeit" is interested in the question of being. For Da-Sein, morality is secondary, and relativistic, not primary and essential. No doubt, this indiffference towards morality led to Heidegger's nazism. However, if Kundera does not take a moralistic posture in "unbearable Lightness of Being", he defintiely implies that we suffer or thrive on a spiritual level with certain choices that we make....

-Thomas Seay

Rating:
Summary: Good to read for potential writers as well as Kundera fans.
Review: In this book of essays, Kundera reveals an understanding of the progression of the European novel and his place in that progression. He reviews the paths that the development of the novel has taken and relates his own work to this literary tradition

Rating:
Summary: The unbearable being of a novel
Review: Milan Kundera is a Czechoslavakian writer who lives in France. He's written a number of novels, among the THE BOOK OF LAUGHTER AND FORGETTING and THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING. In this, his first nonfiction effort, Kundera relates the concept of the novel to his own work. The first two essays were inspired by an interview he gave to The Paris Review on his practical experiences with the art of the novel.

His focus goes beyond his own work, however. Kundera presents some rather intense and unusual analyses of his personal favorite writers: Cervantes, Rabelais, Sterne, Diderot, Flaubert, Tolstoy and Kafka, to name just a few.

This is a book for the scholarly reader; the reader who knows literature. It is one that illuminates all sorts of possibilities for writing the novel, for Kundera points out the the novel can express life in ways that can't be achieved by any other form.

He moves from the general to the specific -- from the form of the novel, to the way others have used it, to his own work. Particularly interesting is his dictionary of 63 key words which he says are essential to understanding his fiction. His observations about the state of contemporary Russian literature -- what is being published and why -- are fascinating. He also expresses his frustration, as an author, with translators of his works and how they handle language.

"The art of reading," wrote Andre Maurois, "is in great part that of acquiring a better understanding of life from one's encounter with a book." Readers will come away from this with a better understand of the novel as an expression of life as well as deeper insight into a number of classical works.

Rating:
Summary: Immensely delightful, a feast to the intellect
Review: The essays took the readers to take a stroll in Kudera's garden of intellect. One was offered the necessary path of realization that art is the door to the seemingly unreachable Garden of Eden. Paradoxically, rejoicing the fact that we were thrown from heaven for who we are, the weak and the seductible

Rating:
Summary: Kundera's Art
Review: This relatively small book (165 pages) offers an engaging peek into the mind of a brilliant novelist and scholar. Consisting of interviews, speeches, and published work, Kundera expounds on his literary beliefs about what makes a great novel. My favorite sections are the interviews because of their immediacy and accessibility, although the author's most profound insights arise from his discussion of other authors: Kafka, Cervantes, Tolstoy, Flaubert, and others.

Writers, students of literature, and Kundera's faithful readers should find much to think about in these pages. This is not a light discourse on how to write a novel; Kundera takes his art seriously, in both deeply instinctive and scholarly ways. Those looking for a how-to book would be well-served to look elsewhere.