The Art of the Novel [Paperback]

Milan Kundera (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Grove Press (1987)
• ASIN: B000GP1Q7A
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)

More About the Author

Milan Kundera, born in Brno, Czechoslovakia, was a student when the Czech Communist regime was established in 1948, and later worked as a labourer, jazz musician and professor at the Institute for Advanced Cinematographic Studies in Prague. After the Russian invasion in August 1968, his books were proscribed. In 1975, he and his wife settled in France, and in 1981, he became a French citizen. He is the author of the novels The Joke, Life is Elsewhere, Farewell Waltz, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and Immortality, and of the short-story collection Laughable Loves - all originally in Czech. His most recent novels, Slowness, Identity and Ignorance, as well as his non-fiction works The Art of the Novel and Testaments Betrayed, were originally written in French.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

36 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Much Needed Luminescence, June 6, 2000

By 

oh_pete (Cambridge. MA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Art of the Novel (Paperback)

"Outside the novel, we're in the realm of affirmation: everyone is sure of his statements: the politician, the philosopher, the concierge. Within the universe of the novel, however, no one affirms: it is the realm of play and of hypotheses. In the novel, then, reflection is essentially inquiring, hypothetical."

Thus Milan Kundera affirms the wonder and beauty of the novel and explains the difference between how philosophers think and how novelists think. Born of the Modern Era ushered in by seventeenth century rationalism, the novel contemplates and explores existence in the Modern Era. Like the Modern Era, the novel is distinguished by its ambiguity and complexity. For Kundera, the novel's core is an inquiry, not a moral position. It makes sense, therefore, that in a world where humans long for black/white, wrong/right distinction, that the "wisdom of uncertainty" which Kundera calls the wisdom of the novel, should be so hard to accept and understand.

This remarkable short book shares the seven part form of several of Kundera's novels: each can stand alone but all are connected by vital and pervading themes. The seven parts comprise two essays, a collection of notes, two dialogues, a dictionary of sixty-three words, and an acceptance speech for a literary prize--and not in the order just mentioned. This mosaic structure works well to underscore part of Kundera's point: there are many ways to approach an understanding of the novel. Is Don Quixote a critique or a celebration of idealism? Both cases have been made often, neither is right--the novel's spirit of complexity and continuity brooks no dogmatism. In fact, the novel has its own "radical autonomy" which Kundera uses to illuminate the works of Franz Kafka. It can say and show things humans cannot achieve in any other way.

If the novel that is art--the novel that truly says something new--is to survive, novelists would do well to think more like Milan Kundera. Readers of THE ART OF THE NOVEL, meanwhile, will gain a new appreciation for the genre as well as valuable insight into the thought process of one of the world's greatest living novelists.

28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The unbearable being of a novel, July 15, 2002

By 

R. Tiedemann "Sunnye" (Bellevue, NE USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Art of the Novel (Paperback)

Milan Kundera is a Czechoslavakian writer who lives in France. He's written a number of novels, among the THE BOOK OF LAUGHTER AND FORGETTING and THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING. In this, his first nonfiction effort, Kundera relates the concept of the novel to his own work. The first two essays were inspired by an interview he gave to The Paris Review on his practical experiences with the art of the novel.

His focus goes beyond his own work, however. Kundera presents some rather intense and unusual analyses of his personal favorite writers: Cervantes, Rabelais, Sterne, Diderot, Flaubert, Tolstoy and Kafka, to name just a few.

This is a book for the scholarly reader; the reader who knows literature. It is one that illuminates all sorts of possibilities for writing the novel, for Kundera points out the the novel can express life in ways that can't be achieved by any other form.

He moves from the general to the specific -- from the form of the novel, to the way others have used it, to his own work. Particularly interesting is his dictionary of 63 key words which he says are essential to understanding his fiction. His observations about the state of contemporary Russian literature -- what is being published and why -- are fascinating. He also expresses his frustration, as an author, with translators of his works and how they handle language.

"The art of reading," wrote Andre Maurois, "is in great part that of acquiring a better understanding of life from one's encounter with a book." Readers will come away from this with a better understand of the novel as an expression of life as well as deeper insight into a number of classical works.

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Kundera's Art, October 8, 2003

By 

Debbie Lee Wesselmann (the Lehigh Valley, PA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (2008 HOLIDAY TEAM)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Art of the Novel (Perennial Classics) (Paperback)

This relatively small book (165 pages) offers an engaging peek into the mind of a brilliant novelist and scholar. Consisting of interviews, speeches, and published work, Kundera expounds on his literary beliefs about what makes a great novel. My favorite sections are the interviews because of their immediacy and accessibility, although the author's most profound insights arise from his discussion of other authors: Kafka, Cervantes, Tolstoy, Flaubert, and others.

Writers, students of literature, and Kundera's faithful readers should find much to think about in these pages. This is not a light discourse on how to write a novel; Kundera takes his art seriously, in both deeply instinctive and scholarly ways. Those looking for a how-to book would be well-served to look elsewhere.