I started reading this book having read Kundera’s novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being a long time ago, and vaguely thinking that the writing was unusual but generally enjoyable. I didn’t do any research on Kundera prior to picking up the book - if I had, I might not have bothered. It seems that I am amongst the many contemporary reviewers who consider this novel irretrievably damaged by his portrayal of women, and his blantant sexism. This book would be useful and interesting only as a casestudy on the male gaze.
“For he was aware of the great secret of life: Women don’t look for handsome men. Women look for men who have had beautiful women. Having an ugly mistress is therefore a fatal mistake.”
Quite unlike the more complex characters I was able to lose myself in throughout The Unbearable Lightness of Being, in the first section Kundera seems unable to show the reader why Mirek thinks and acts the way he does. Instead nothing is left to the imagination, as we are force fed each characters motivations with neither grace or interesting prose.
“The car resounded with the frenzied growl of passion, and the sound proved to him that Zdena was merely an apparition he wanted to get to in order to destroy his own hated youth.”
And yet there are segments describing political history, and the way in which history has been forgotten, that are often eloquent and deeply significant. It is a shame that his views on women permeate the ‘lost letters’, and make not only Mirek unlikeable, but also Kundera. The second section ‘Mama’ starts off a little easier to swallow. The relationship between mother, son and daughter-in-law as they all grow older, has the basis for an interesting, dynamic plot line. Then, just as you think that maybe the first chapter was a blip - in comes ‘Eva’ and the narrative spirals into a chauvinistic fantasy. A space where Kundera clearly felt privileged enough to draw up utterly unrealistic women to suit his questionable erotic desires.
“Who then is Eva. In Eva’s own words? Eva is a cheerful man-chaser. But she doesn’t chase them to marry them. She chases them the way men chase women. Not love but only friendship and sensuality exist for her.”
“Your wife should understand that you love her but you’re a woman-chaser and your chasing is no threat to her. But no woman understands that. No, there isn’t a woman who understands men.” She added sadly, as if she herself were a misunderstood man. Then she offered to do everything she could to help him.”
Though unrealistic and bland, the threesome that concludes chapter two with Mirek’s mother in the next room, is laughable. Humourless laughter that is. Perhaps some would argue that I’m missing the point, but at this stage I began to feel that it was just bad writing, rather than an excellent control over the fluidity of a novel made of seven disparate parts, with suspiciously similar characters in each one./ / I tried to maintain some semblance of objectivity into the third chapter - The Angels. A bizarre combination of two girls discovering comedy, angels & devils hijacking the purpose and meaning of laughter; and what becomes so clearly an autobiographical musing upon personal banishment from communist circles (circles so light and innocent those involved literally fly away). Kundera uses his own name, leaving no room to doubt that this is book is a vehicle for a sexist, egotistical writer with no relevance in todays literary world. If I was left in any doubt that this book did not deserve a space on my shelf, the third chapter ends with Kundera’s explicit desire to rape his ‘lovely friend’.
“But I saw two anguished eyes fixed on me (anguished eyes in an intelligent face), and the more anguished these eyes, the greater my desire to rape her - and all the more absurd, idiotic, scandalous, incomprehensible, and unachievable.”
Please note that nowhere amongst his five adjectives to describe rape, does he consider it violent, unforgivable, or morally wrong. He writes grotesquely, with an unspoken authority determined by his white, heterosexual maleness - that such an explicit autobiographical desire be published and left unquestioned.
“I could think of nothing for a long while but the immense desire I had felt to rape my lovely friend. That desire has remained with me, like a captive bird in a sack, a bird that from time to time awakens and flutters its wings.”
It is a very rare occasion that I do not finish a book, but three chapters in this novel has left me cold. As I read the third chapter today, I am constantly reminded that in order to stand for the things we believe in, we have to actively do something about it - and throwing this book out of the window seems like a good start.