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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Writing Against Poetry (and Socialism, Too),
By
This review is from: Life Is Elsewhere (Paperback)
This is Kundera's most harrowing book because his hero is a monster. He doesn't mean to be a monster, of course. He is Jaromil, a dreamy young man who only wants to write lyric poetry. But this is Czechoslovakia, 1948 and the Communists are about to seize power. And they know how to make use of a well-meaning young naif like Jaromil who will end up writing propaganda and betraying his friends to the secret police. Kundera is ruthlessly funny about the kind of sentimentality that ends up serving totalitarian ends. A French critic wrote that "Life is Elsewhere" is "the strongest work ever written against poetry." I would amend that to say it's the one of the strongest books ever written against *Romanticism*. Kundera is completely unenthralled by Utopia. He's seen too many people sent to the gulag in the name of the perfect society. A thrilling, essential novel.
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Nerdy Wordsmith Rats On Flame, Conks Out Young,
By Robert S. Newman "Bob Newman" (Marblehead, Massachusetts USA) - See all my reviews (VINE VOICE) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: Life Is Elsewhere (Paperback)
Fidel Castro and his bearded men charged down out of the Sierra Maestra and paraded victorious through the streets of Havana to delirious cheers of adoring crowds. Mao Tsetung arrived with his vast armies at Beijing and declared that "China had stood up". The `Internationale' played and a brave new world began. We dreamed we would change the world as youths, we might die for a great cause, we yelled at barricades (of whatever material-or perhaps they were intangible) and loved with the passions of the times. Repression of anybody (except "the exploiters") never appeared on the cards, no, it was freedom in the air. Hasn't this atmosphere repeated itself time and time again, across the globe ? And there's always a poet or two to inscribe glorious verses on the stones of History. Byron, Mayakovsky, Rimbaud, Marti, Rizal. But what if `the Revolution' ushers in a period of less freedom, greater oppression, and wider stupidity that leads to mass fatalities ? Then what kind of poet would you need ? Well, what kind do you get ? Artists who paint girl + tractor. Novelists who write books called "Cement". And poets like Jaromil, the subject of this great novel. Fidel called the people who fled the new Cuba "gusanos" or worms. Reading Kundera's novel about Czechoslovakia, you feel strongly that the gusanos remained and cooperated, wrote poetry in praise of the unpraise-able. Or, maybe there's a global glut of gusanos. Maybe a gusano poet is about as necessary as wings on a turtle.OK, this novel is a fictional biography of a very weedy mama's boy who remains naïve, protected and innocent despite everything that happens around him, even the death of his father in a concentration camp. The world around the main characters, the society at large, remain pale and nearly invisible. He (and we) really see nobody except his mother---his loves are extensions of his ego, his poetry or paintings the same. Dreams and fantasy are his stock in trade, his alter-ego jumps in and out of beds, while Jaromil stews. All is self-absorption. In modern America, the poet would be called a "dweeb". We have to laugh at Jaromil or scorn him. LIFE IS ELSEWHERE is a satire that concentrates on unpleasant aspects of the human condition so well that you cringe time and time again. Kundera spares no one, not his main character and certainly not his readers. Jaromil is surrounded, as the author says, with a wall of mirrors, and cannot see beyond. We look into our own mirrors as we read. It's doubtful that we admire the reflections. The basic themes are human nature, art and literature in society, and the sad tribulations of a small nation. Kundera, like Brazil's Machado de Assis, cuts his books up into extremely small chapters, which is an effective tool in expert hands. Each one makes a point, introduces an irony, or engages in new soul-searching. The plot of LIFE IS ELSEWHERE is minor; it is the process of writing and thinking about the issues that counts. Ah, well, readers, I'm not giving anything away to say that the message here is that people who fail to live life to the fullest always pine for some far away paradise where great deeds would be accomplished effortlessly, and imagine that "life is elsewhere". These deluded ones are capable of the dirtiest deeds. Oh, yeah, this is a good book.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good Kundera, not my favorite,
This review is from: Life Is Elsewhere (Paperback)
"Life is Elsewhere" is a fun, humorous, scathing criticism of youth, lyricism, and poetry. Unlike some of Kundera's other work, "Life is Elsewhere" has very few subplots, and focuses mainly on the story of Jaromil (and briefly on his bizarre alter-ego, Xavier) and his mother. Jarmoil is a poet, growing up in Czechoslovakia just as that country becomes Communist. Idealistic, overprotected, obsessive at times, and ideologically misguided, Jaromil lives and dies according to rapidly changing principles and goals which are often patently ridiculous.I found "Life is Elsewhere" enjoyable, but not as much so as Kundera's more complex and multifacted novels, such as "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" and "Immortality". I personally find Kundera's usual overt cynicism, philosophising, and self-analysis refreshing and fun to read, but there's little of that in this book. To me, the book seems to violate Kundera's assertion that he writes books that cannot be described in a sentence or two - it is a novel in the conventional sense of the word. That doesn't make it unenjoyable -- it's just different.
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