I finished The Book of Laughter and Forgetting a week ago. I have so much I want to say about it, and I was finding it hard to articulate how much I loved this book, and all the things I thought about.
After reading this book Kundera is now on my list of favorite writers. His writing is self-aware in a way I’ve rarely read before. He is self-aware, but he is artful rather than arrogant in this awareness. Kundera uses the upheaval in Czechoslovakia as a backdrop for brief character sketches, making this almost a short book of short stories, except for the constant insertion of his own consciousness into each story. This addition of “I” makes each story into a “Part” instead of a separate entity. Kundera is creating people to tell us about himself and his own experiences and real people he knows. I think this kind of substitute fiction is very beautiful.
The real interesting aspect of The Book of Laughter and Forgetting is the autobiography of it, and Kundera shies away from nothing. He writes about politics, politicians, sex, depression, loss, religion, joy… I think his courage is what makes this book so wonderful.
1 note |#