Unbearable Lightness of Being - Q2-Q4

Continuing from where I left off, the book is quite on a different level than the others which I read. My friend had said, 'it is not a quite a fiction, it has so many explanations that it tends to get a wee boring', which is not quite unacceptable, but then I didn't feel the same way when I read it. Maybe it appealed to me in a very different way. It was like i didn't want to imagine with the writer while reading the book,i wanted explanations as and when I was in that situation and that is why I was reading the book. I didn't want to imagine, as my friend wanted to do in a novel, in a fiction.

And so, the explanations which he gives, are so apt, so logically sound and rational, He redefines the whole base of reason and certainty. The sexual fears, its relations to everyday life and the relation ship fears and the various phases a person goes through, are written down well. philosophically, it is a wonderful book. it might not appeal to someone who would assume to be in a culture shock on reading a book with so many infidelities, passages and metaphors about shit, being in a toilet and vomiting compared with sex. It might get too much. But the whole description of it all is very nicely done.

Hey Milan

So Am in the middle of Unbearable Lightness Of Being. Milan Kundera. Czech Setting. Till now, it has revolved around infidelity, and meaning of decision making. It has tinges of some revolution (I have little idea of Czech History, which leads to my ignorance in regards to the setting), some music detours, usage and explanations of colloquial phrases and a deeper and personal understanding of them in context of the story. The Consciousness is taken in a very binary fashion, the concept of lightness and heaviness, both becoming burdens eventually, is tackled very delicately. As in, it has been revisited at regular intervals of time, but the author doesn't force his thoughts, he recreates the perplex his mind abodes in.

I had read the Laughable Loves by the same author, and had found it to be pretty interesting, wierd but interesting.

Sexuality is handled very intricately, on the verge of wierdness. The politics involved, and the various insecurities. The lead character assumes a certain superiority, which is difficult for me to accept. The whole Czech society is difficult to understand. Maybe its because of the history, the revolution, the whole situation that the people behave this way.

There are peculiar interpretatons of the love he develops, at a very deep level of consciousness.
He doesn't try to justify it. He tries to find its meaning. The possibilities, the biases, the whole clarity he develops is believable.

It has other peculiar paragraphs.
For Example, a particular paragraph I liked:

'She shot roll after roll and gave them to foriegn Journalists (). Many of her photographs turned up in the Western Press. They were pictures of tanks, of threatening fists, of houses destroyed, of corpses covered with bloodstained red white and blue Czech flags, of young men on motorcycles racing full speed around the tanks and waving Czech flags on long staffs, of young girls in unbelievably short skirts provoking the miserably sexually famished Russian Soldiers by kissing random passersby before their eyes. As I have said before, the Russian Invasion was not only a tragedy; it was a carnival of hate filled with a curious and no longer explicable euphoria. '

It sums up so much in so less words.

Anyways, I think I will add to this as I proceed along. I really like the book till now.