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Rich in its stories, characters, and imaginative range, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting is the novel that brought Milan Kundera his first big international success in the late 1970s. Like all his work, it is valuable for far more than its historical implications. In seven wonderfully integrated parts, different aspects of human existence are magnified and reduced, reordered and emphasized, newly examined, analyzed, and experienced.… (more)
“Living is being happy: seeing, hearing, touching, drinking, eating, urinating, defecating, diving into the water and gazing at the sky, laughing and crying.”
"The Book of Laughter and Forgetting" isn't really a novel but rather a series of seven short stories linked by the eponymous emotions.
Part One: Lost Letters The first section is the story of Mirek who travels to the home of his ex-lover Zdena in the hope of retrieving some old love letters that he had sent her in the past with the intention of destroying them, thus enabling him to forget that he had loved this ugly woman. While he travels to her home and back, he is followed by two men and on his return to his home is arrested. Mirek is sentenced to jail for six years, his son to two years, and ten or so of his friends to terms of from one to six years.
Part Two: Mama Marketa invites her mother-in-law to visit her and Karel's home for a week contending that she must leave Saturday because they had somewhere to be on Sunday . The mother manages to extend her stay until Monday and on the Sunday morning, Eva, a friend of Karel and Marketa, arrives and is introduced to the mother as Marketa's cousin. In truth the three have conducted a sexual relationship over the years. Mother almost catches the three in the act, but instead of deterring them makes Karel even more attracted to Eva, and they continue with renewed vigour.
Part Three: The Angels This section concerns events after the Russians occupied Czechoslovakia in 1968, especially Kundera's attempts to write a horoscope under an assumed name. It also talks about the power of being in a circle and how difficult it is to break back into one once you have been excluded.
Part Four: Lost Letters Tamina, a widow who works in a café on the Riviera, wants to retrieve her love letters and diaries in Prague through her customer, Bibi, who will be visiting the city. Another customer, Hugo, who lusts for Tamina, offers to help her if Bibi cannot. One day, Hugo takes Tamina on a visit to the zoo together. Once there a group of ostriches move their mute mouths vigorously at Hugo and Tamina as if to warn them of something. Bibi eventually cancels her trip to Prague and Hugo offers to help instead. Tamina has sex with Hugo, but cannot keep her mind off her deceased husband and ultimately throws up in the toilet. Hugo gets annoyed and refuses to help her. In the end, the letters and diaries remain in Prague.
Part Five: Litost In this part Kundra tries to explain the Czech word litost, which the author says cannot be accurately translated into any other language but is "a state of torment created by the sudden sight of one's own misery." He uses an affair between Kristyna, a butcher's wife and a student to try and explain his meaning.
Part Six: The Angels Returning to Tamina, the author parallels her struggles with the death of his father. She travels on a mysterious boat ride to an island where she is stranded with many children. Eventually she tries to escape and drowns.
Part Seven: The Border Describing an orgy scene and the author _targets the progressivism.
As with all collections of short stories some work better than others and whilst I can admire Kundera's writing skill these generally failed to really grab me, (I enjoyed Part 3 the most). I found the points that that Kundera was trying to make often confusing and he just couldn't resist inserting his musical background into these stories which seemed to muddy the waters rather than enhance them. Not really for me I fear. ( )
A classic (there’s that word again) piece of literature related to the 1968 Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia. All of Kundera’s works are great, and being a big fan of Czech authors, I recommend everything related to this author and topic. That being said, it’s dangerous to label a genre according to the nationality of its authors or the historical events it encompasses. Kundera writes about the nature of freedom and responsibility, of loyalty, of action, and the interaction of individuals with their society. These themes are relevant to all eras of history, including the present. ( )
There is a shimmering brilliance in this book by Milan Kundera. The opening paragraph of the first story hooks you, and I don't want to spoil the book. From a story about life in a dictatorship to the second story detailing the strange sexual and emotional lives of people, and from there on to other stories, you are in for a treat. That is a long sentence. You enter the world of the characters in each story, and they spring to life. The writing style is deceptively simple. Don't let that fool you. There are depths, which you sense only if you are acutely aware of the people who surround you. Their language, their hypocrisy, their clothing, their society, their anxieties. The stories are short, and each is complete in itself. ( )
In February 1948, the Communist leader Klement Gottwald stepped out on the balcony of a Baroque palace in Prague to harangue hundreds of thousands of citizens massed in Old Town Square.
Quotations
"The invention of printing formerly enabled people to understand one another. In the era of universal graphomania, the writing of books has an opposite meaning: everyone surrounded by his own words as by a wall of mirrors, which allow no voice to filter through from outside."
The first time an angel heard the devil’s laughter, he was dumbfounded. That happened at a feast in a crowded room, where the devil’s laughter, which is terribly contagious, spread from one person to another. The angel clearly understood that such laughter was directed against God and against the dignity of His works. He knew that he must react swiftly somehow, but felt weak and defenseless. Unable to come up with anything of his own, he aped adversary. Opening his mouth, he emitted broken, spasmodic sounds in the higher reaches of his vocal range (a bit like the sound made on the street of a seaside town by Michelle and Gabrielle), but giving them an opposite meaning: whereas the devil’s laughter denoted the absurdity of things, the angel on the contrary meant to rejoice over how well ordered, wisely conceived, good and meaningful everything here below was.
The angel and the devil faced each other and, mouths wide open, emitted nearly the same sounds, but each one’s noises expressed the absolute opposite of the other’s. And seeing the angel laugh, the devil laughed all the more, all the harder, and all the more blatantly, because the laughing angel was infinitely comical.
Laughable laughter is disastrous. Even so, the angels have gained something from it. They have tricked us with a semantic imposture. Their imitation of laughter and (the devil’s) original laughter are both called by the same name. Nowadays, we don’t even realize that the same external display serves two absolutely opposed internal attitude. There are two laughters, and we have no word to tell one from the other.
It takes so little, so infinitely little, for a person to cross the border beyond which everything loses meaning: love, conviction, faith, history. Human life --- and herein lies its secret --- takes place in the immediate proximity of that border, even in direct contact with it; it is not miles away, but a fraction of an inch.
We are living in the great historical era when physical love will be once and for all transformed into ridiculous motions.
People fascinated by the idea of progress never suspect that every step forward is also a step on the way to the end and that behind all the joyous "onward and upward" slogans lurks the lascivious voice of death urging us to make haste.
The bloody massacre in Bangladesh quickly covered over the memory of the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia, the assassination of Allende drowned out the groans of Bangladesh, the war in the Sinai Desert made people forget Allende, the Cambodian massacre made people forget Sinai, and so on and so forth until ultimately everyone lets everything be forgotten.
Last words
The man spoke, all the others listened with interest, and their bare genitals stared stupidly and sadly at the yellow sand.
Please note: Michael Henry Heim translated the 1st English-language version (1980) from Czech; and Aaron Asher translated the 2nd English-language version (1996) from the revised French version (1985).
Rich in its stories, characters, and imaginative range, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting is the novel that brought Milan Kundera his first big international success in the late 1970s. Like all his work, it is valuable for far more than its historical implications. In seven wonderfully integrated parts, different aspects of human existence are magnified and reduced, reordered and emphasized, newly examined, analyzed, and experienced.
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"The Book of Laughter and Forgetting" isn't really a novel but rather a series of seven short stories linked by the eponymous emotions.
Part One: Lost Letters
The first section is the story of Mirek who travels to the home of his ex-lover Zdena in the hope of retrieving some old love letters that he had sent her in the past with the intention of destroying them, thus enabling him to forget that he had loved this ugly woman. While he travels to her home and back, he is followed by two men and on his return to his home is arrested. Mirek is sentenced to jail for six years, his son to two years, and ten or so of his friends to terms of from one to six years.
Part Two: Mama
Marketa invites her mother-in-law to visit her and Karel's home for a week contending that she must leave Saturday because they had somewhere to be on Sunday . The mother manages to extend her stay until Monday and on the Sunday morning, Eva, a friend of Karel and Marketa, arrives and is introduced to the mother as Marketa's cousin. In truth the three have conducted a sexual relationship over the years. Mother almost catches the three in the act, but instead of deterring them makes Karel even more attracted to Eva, and they continue with renewed vigour.
Part Three: The Angels
This section concerns events after the Russians occupied Czechoslovakia in 1968, especially Kundera's attempts to write a horoscope under an assumed name. It also talks about the power of being in a circle and how difficult it is to break back into one once you have been excluded.
Part Four: Lost Letters
Tamina, a widow who works in a café on the Riviera, wants to retrieve her love letters and diaries in Prague through her customer, Bibi, who will be visiting the city. Another customer, Hugo, who lusts for Tamina, offers to help her if Bibi cannot. One day, Hugo takes Tamina on a visit to the zoo together. Once there a group of ostriches move their mute mouths vigorously at Hugo and Tamina as if to warn them of something. Bibi eventually cancels her trip to Prague and Hugo offers to help instead. Tamina has sex with Hugo, but cannot keep her mind off her deceased husband and ultimately throws up in the toilet. Hugo gets annoyed and refuses to help her. In the end, the letters and diaries remain in Prague.
Part Five: Litost
In this part Kundra tries to explain the Czech word litost, which the author says cannot be accurately translated into any other language but is "a state of torment created by the sudden sight of one's own misery." He uses an affair between Kristyna, a butcher's wife and a student to try and explain his meaning.
Part Six: The Angels
Returning to Tamina, the author parallels her struggles with the death of his father. She travels on a mysterious boat ride to an island where she is stranded with many children. Eventually she tries to escape and drowns.
Part Seven: The Border
Describing an orgy scene and the author _targets the progressivism.
As with all collections of short stories some work better than others and whilst I can admire Kundera's writing skill these generally failed to really grab me, (I enjoyed Part 3 the most). I found the points that that Kundera was trying to make often confusing and he just couldn't resist inserting his musical background into these stories which seemed to muddy the waters rather than enhance them. Not really for me I fear. (