EVEN MEDIOCRITY HAS ITS MOMENT!

:-(

Review of “The Book of Laughter and Forgetting” - Book by Milan Kundera

Kundera is a brilliant surgeon. His scalpel cuts just through the upper layer and give you a sight, which you have never expected from anyone who writes with a good mix of political satire. You keep wondering that is it really so simple to understand human emotions. Do read this book, and I can not recommend it any higher. And that might be for all political satire in it or despite all political satire in it, I’m not sure. If you don’t find the book interesting, at least you will be more knowledgeable about the ways a novel can be written. For, this time, Kundera has shown that how characters keep changing their names and places, but the story doesn’t change at all.
This is the first time I am reviewing any book, and I can’t agree more with Kundera, when he says that somebody writes something like this (The book, I’m reviewing), only when one doesn’t find somebody, who will listen to him. And, that every author is nothing. When one tries to say something and finds that no body is really listening, he tries to entrap whatever he wanted to say in words, with high hopes of finding some reader, who will ‘listen’. And, that the author is nothing simply because, he wanted to be everything. He wanted to create the whole universe of his own and no one ever granted him this wish. In every book, every author preaches. It’s entirely a different matter, that some preach better than others.
Do Kundera preach? Yes, he does. But with this book, he got something important to preach – ‘Forgetting’ and ‘Laughter’. He verifies that the Greek philosopher’s perception of time was more convenient one (not correct one, mind you, after all who knows, what’s correct and what’s not). They saw themselves facing the past, while the future came from behind. Whatever we have at any moment, is our past. Even a loser exists, because he lost something in past not because he can win something in future. And at the same time, how important is it to realize that you have lived in the past. Isn’t it obvious? No, it’s not and that’s why this book.
And, how could I forget ‘Laughter’. Especially, how the angels and the demons fought over it as if it was the most important territory. And, how famous feminist, Annie Leclerc, used the same ‘Laughter’ as the most important weapon a women ever had.
Finally, don’t forget Kundera. Who’s he and where does he come from? The author is always a part of his narrative and when a reader loses this perspective, he’s no longer reading the same thing author has written. But, someone like Kundera doesn’t let this happen so easily. He’s too big a hedonist for that. It’s simply impossible to lose him in his narrative. The amount of political satire has not overpowered the more important human emotions, he has dealt with.

This piece is an anti-thesis to something I came across recently. So, I guess before reading the anti-thesis, why don’t you read the original one first. Here it is:
“And I have realized it is always easy to sit on the high fence, look serious and lay down rules about how things should be.
Each of us hides behind a façade of general cynicism and deep rooted scepticism, moaning and groaning about things that are not there, pointedly emphasizing we would have been on the greener other side had not the world had participated in a general conspiracy against us. What we do not realize in the bargain is what pathetic losers we are making of ourselves. It is great we find so many things wrong with the world – we could have done worse, we could have lived in a world of make believe thinking everything is hunky dory.
But then how much better we really are living the life of an armchair critic, poking holes in perfect surfaces, walking around with long faces and staunchly upholding our conspiracy theories.
I guess it would do us good to shift positions, climb down from our safe positions on the face and start facing the heat that we have so gallantly attributed to a number of inscrutable causes. Well I better stop here for I can feel the creepy preach taking over me.”

Ok, now that you are aware of what I am writing against, consider this quote (irrespective of who is being quoted). “The cynics were the wise ones.”
And, I also remember Sartre saying something like this: “Hell is other people”.
The point is clear. The world had really participated in a conspiracy against you. And, it certainly had been greener, otherwise. Nobody makes himself a loser, it’s only when he comes near a so-called winner, people christen him as a loser and he believes them. I refuse to believe this life is for doing stuffs that this world calls success. We should have the liberty of choosing our own definition of success. If I chose to complain about the world, then be it. Things can be interpreted in a hundred ways and every one as good as the other. People have a general tendency to stick to something that sounds nice and feels nice (We only chose to be different when we consider what others will think etc etc). Some might consider it to be too trivial to be of any importance. But, that’s how we’ve got where we’re now. We chose what we liked. But these self help books makes you believe that there is a road out there and if you are not walking on that, you are missing some thing. In fact, some of them will go as far as saying that you are not living at all.
Well, whatever I’ve written applied to me as well. And, I accept that this is preaching and nothing else. The drive to preach some one is so strong in every one of us, that we end up laying rules for the rest of the world. But, we must allow others to make the rule for rest of their world as well.
Amen!