The late Kundera has fascinating insights into how the novel has intersected with history.
Tag Archives: Milan Kundera
History’s Arc Bends Towards Kafka
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Art of the Novel, authoritarianism, Castle, Don Quixote, Franz Kafka, Gustave Flaubert, Honoré de Balzac, Jane Austen, Madame Bovary, Miguel de Cervantes, sexuality, Slowness, Trial Comments closed
Kundera Understood Authoritarianism
The late Milan Kundera understood the authoritarian mindset in a deep way. “Book of Laughter and Forgetting” and “Eternal Lightness of Being” capture the mindset.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Aeschylus, Agamemnon, Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Donald Trump, Eternal Lightness of Being, Flies, Jean Paul Sartre, MAGA Comments closed
Austen-Like Dating During Covid
Covid is disrupting our dating lives but may as a result have an up-side. Kundera, John Fowles, and Jane Austen explain.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged COVID-19, French Lieutenant's Woman, Jane Austen, John Fowles, Persuasion, Pride and Prejudice, Relationships, sexuality, Slowness Comments closed
The Unbearable Lightness of Donald Trump
Czech author Milan Kundera warned about how dictatorships thrive off of our forgetting. In a “Rolling Stone” article, Charlie Pierce argues that forgetting has led to the rise of Donald Trump.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Donald Trump, forgetting, GOP, history, politics, Presidential Primaries, remembering, Unbearable Lightness of Being Comments closed
Lit Explains Romney’s Off-Putting Laugh
Lewis Carroll, Kundera, and Dostoevsky help us understand why Mitt Romney’s laugh makes us nervous.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Alice in Wonderland, Encounter, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Idiot, Laughter, Lewis Carroll, Mitt Romney, politics Comments closed
For a Political Reality Check, Look to Dogs
What keeps cynical leaders from restructuring reality to suit their ends? Modern democracies have a number of institutions to keep us grounded in truth and principle. In times of stress, these can become the targets of extremist political movements. In America we have rightwing commentators and rightwing media (most notably Rush Limbaugh and Fox “News”) […]
Obama, Don’t Mess with My Kitsch
I have been continuously bewildered by the state of political discourse in this country over the past two years. The vituperation that normally reasonable conservative intellectuals have unleashed against President Obama has struck me as, at times, unhinged. In his novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), Czech author Milan Kundera has provided me with […]
Political Campaigns, Unbearably Light
We have heard a lot of heated rhetoric in the course of this election season. Words have soared and people have become impassioned. Now that voting has occurred, we can only hope that our newly elected representatives will make the transition from (in the famous formulation of Mario Cuomo) the poetry of campaigning to the […]
History’s Arc Bends towards Kafka
Literature provides a special way of knowing, a way different than, say, philosophy. But it’s hard to prove this because we need to use the language of rational philosophy to make literature’s case. Once we have done so, philosophy can seem more effective than literature. After all, it tells us things straight up, without resorting […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Art of the Novel, Literary Criticism, Literary History, novels Comments closed
