I don't know how others cope with heavy workloads and heartbreaking realizations, but I like to lounge around the house in my grungy attire and read favourite passages from my favourite books. I do this while drinking a lot of scotch, by the way.
I could go on all day and night about books. I wish I had someone to gush about literary obsessions with. Sadly, I am a lonesome bookworm. A one woman book club.
So, I have a hard time picking favourites, but Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being sticks out because it has truly shaped the person I am today. I've never identified with so many fictional characters in one book before. It just spoke volumes to me as I read it for the first time on a lonely train ride in Prague. I've read it three times now and whenever I need a hit, I flip through my favourite pages (Sometimes I bend the page's corner or I underline words with a pen). I guess in a way, Kundera is my cocaine.
"When we want to give expression to a dramatic situation in our lives, we tend to use metaphors of heaviness. We say that something has become a great burden to us. We either bear the burden or fail and go down with it, we struggle with it, win or lose. And Sabina, what had come over her? Nothing. She had left a man because she felt like leaving him. Had he persecuted her? Had he tried to take revenge on her? No. Her drama was a drama not of heaviness but of lightness. What fell to her lot was not the burden but the unbearable lightness of being."
Does anyone else feel so passionate about a single book or am I just crazy?
Monday, April 27, 2009
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
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As lame as it sounds, Georgia Nicholson books ALWAYS make me feel better when I'm down.
ReplyDeleteI am her.
I am Georgia Nicholson.
Heartache, by Chekov
ReplyDeleteBefore the Law, by Kafka
A Bolt of White Cloth, by Leon Rooke
I have a hard on for Kafka. Not a literal one, but a literary one. Whoa!
Also seriously, read those. All short, all mind bogglingly good.
Aw. I love youre nlonely nerdiness. And the cover of the book. You make me want to read it again.
ReplyDeleteSeems you have a thing or two in common with Milan: an east European heritage, bi-lingual mind, and a love of stronger liquor.
ReplyDeleteI am compelled by the first part of your quote. Seems that everyone I talk to has a tendency to greatly exaggerate their 'burden with metaphors of heaviness'. Is it human nature? Perhaps. But it may be deeper still:
I think we all want to believe that our own struggle is, in particular, the most trying, most arduous of all. We want there to seem a special significance to our lives, and if we think of our problems as 'worse' or more difficult than average, well...it makes us seem more noble, our existence more necessary. And there is a certain truth to that: your problems are most important to you because they are YOUR problems. And that is usually a good reason to make them take priority.
Which makes the character in this book seem more unique: left a guy because she could. "Lightness". I'd like that kind of lightness. Is the character free of conscience, or just unhindered by the bonds people form that normally make such a decision more taxing?
Hahahha, and the scotch! Can't say I drink THAT when I read, but I enjoy Smirnoff Ice or an Egg Nog (Christmas time!) when I am settled in with a book.
Is it your Eastern Europe/Post-Communist-Oppression literature that makes your heart flutter, or is it the subject matter itself? Are metaphors huge to you too Natalia? I CRAVE style in my reading. I hate dry cliches and played out imagery! Hate it! I'm part of the George Orwell school. His "Politics of the English Language" essay is a must read for aspiring writers. I read it ;)
And, if style is what you seek, I have to know if you like hip-hop at all. It is easily 90% of what I listen to: the word-play and energy is tres empowering!
You seem to adore full-length novels, but I think there is much to be said about short stories too, so long as they make you think. I hate mentioning Science Fiction, cuz people think it's all ray-guns and space sex, but that's not the case at all for the Golden Age stuff. I love it when I'm made to think, actually CONSIDER things. No doubt this occurs in Unbearable Likeness, but I'd wager it is more of a sociological way, no?
Man this guy wrote you another novel.
ReplyDeletehaha, yes. you get used to it and just ignore it.
ReplyDeletesame for me!
ReplyDeleteOne Hundred Years of Solitude
You know what? I hated reading because as I went through school, I was forced to talk about books with other people, and write essays on them. Once I learned that you can read a book, and think about it whatever you want without ever having to explain your thoughts to someone else (and be graded on them), that's when I started to like reading.
ReplyDeleteThe weird thing (and the reason I'm bothering to comment) is that it was The Unbearable Lightness Of Being that convinced me reading was a good thing, after all those years of high school that convinced me otherwise. A great book to read and absorb by yourself. Book club members not required.
Aw, Pete. That sure is a touching story. Oh, the power Kundera has on others!
ReplyDeleteGreat excerpt from the book. The lightness and the Nin reference, even, it is definitely a relevant excerpt to post in teh spring time, may day, when i feel things feel so unbearably light, too. i feel heavy in the winter, i think.
ReplyDelete