The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
Ratings39
Average rating3.7
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.
I would like to rate this in actuality zero stars. At first I thought this book could be ok. I read it for school so I tend to hold them back a ten foot pole because I simply detest school reading, but really this showed promise until the last two chapters. As I read about the island Tamina was whisked away to I was thoroughly disgusted with the behavior and sexual innuendos and out right perversity that occurred. I seriously have to wonder how deranged our society is to make this a bestseller. Absolutely repulsive and I will never read this author again even if it is required school reading.
It seems important now, as my country slides into totalitarianism, to read more Central European writers. There's a certain curious soothing element common to their voices: Havel's dignity, Sruoga's levity, Kundera's... what? Detachment? Aloofness? It's hard to know how to interpret this book. Kundera spotlights the absurd ways we try, and so catastrophically fail, to connect with others or even our own selves. I found myself wondering if I'd misread the title, if it should be Loneliness and Forgetting, except none of the characters ever seem to realize how lonely they are. As we expect from Kundera, much of the attempted connection is through sex but here, in addition to sensuality, there are elements of the grotesque: Kundera shows the physical act, bared of intimacy, as both comic and repulsive.
I loved the writing. Loved his insights into our primal need to be seen. Did not like any of the characters, but that's because I recognized parts of myself in each of them, and that's his point, isn't it?