Customer Reviews

Slowness

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

There is no one else quite like kundera. Indeed, even the president of iran, Khatami, is of this opinion. I concur. No other author can turn a perfectly ordinary phrase or event into a philospical discourse, and yet, keep it light, make it sprightly, and bring it to an open-ended conclusion. An oxy-moron? Not in Kundera's case. Its a study of speed and slowness, and the process of forgetting and remembering. a touch of sex (invariably with a dose of S&M), and mundane events. But what i find fascinating (more so than anything else) is that he doesnt tie up all the loose ends - stories go on, just as life does. there is no neat little ribon at the end, people are ordinary with limited views, mortal thoughts, and always, display a strong weakness of the flesh. The pathetic remain so: the inglorious acquire no immortality. His eye censors nothing in its translation to the written word.

After reading "Immortality", "The unbearable lightness of being", and the "The farewell party", I must agree that this novel, "Slowness" was the lightest of all of them. Still, it's interesting and entertaining, maintains Kundera's style of finding profound observations in the behavior of their characters. This time the plot takes place in a medieval castle in France, and in two different time periods: in an entomologist congress in our days (most of the novel), and also with flashbacks of sex intrigues that took place in the same castle centuries ago. The key to enjoy this book is in not giving too much importance to it. Just read it and have fun. If you have read just before a book by Grisham, Wolfe, Clancy, Archer or one of that kind of best-selling authors, you will found "slowness" profound; if you have read Dostoievski, you will not. The characters are all well built, and all of them are interesting. The author shows us their thoughts and feelings, their pride, guilt, excitement; their different personalities and the interaction between them. We enjoy the book as we identify with all of this, relating these characteristics to us, or with somebody we know. It's quite simple but very entertaining. In fact, this characterizes all of Kundera's titles. However, I believe that this is not a good book to start reading Kundera, it might give a wrong impression of the author. It's better to start with "Immortality" or "The unbearable lightness of being".

Good book, I gave four stars to it because there are better titles by the same author. If you want to read something good, but light, "Slowness" is a perfect choice.

Ironically, Slowness is a brisk read. The book is 156 pages long, and it could easily be read in one or two sittings. I, however, took my time, impelled, in part, by the theme of the book-slowwwnesss. And yes, the book can be enjoyed at a slow pace-that is until you hit the latter 100 pages, when the plot turns into a farce, and the prose reads so easily, so joyfully really, that you cannot help but finish quickly.

As always with Kundera novels many specific lines struck me, and I commemorated them with dog-eared pages. One quote seemed to be lifted from another Kundera novel, Immortality. In Slowness Kundera writes, "...beyond their practical function, all gestures have a meaning that exceeds the intention of those who make them. When people in bathing suits fling themselves into the water, it is joy itself that shows in the gesture, notwithstanding any sadness the divers may actually feel."

Kundera is talking abut Immaculata, a character who has just jumped into a pool fully clothed, but he could just as easily be talking about Agnes, the heroine of Immortality: "the essence of her charm, revealed itself for a second in that gesture and dazzled me."

Reading Immortality, you sense Kundera's compassion for Agnes; reading Slowness, with Immaculata, and the various other characters, you sense Kundera's contempt (although this may be too strong a word: in Kundera's terms, most of the characters here aren't even deserving of contempt.)

But Kundera does show compassion for several characters from an 18th century novel, characters who seem to embody the ancient idea of slowness-an idea all but lost to the modern characters of Slowness, all of who seem to be caught up in various fiascos. (These fiascos culminate in a ridiculous scene at the side of a swimming pool in a château.)

I read the book during the course of several mornings, and then I finished the last 100 pages in one sitting, in the evening. It is a good book for Kundera fans, although I am not sure I can agree with the critics line, quoted on the front cover of the book: "audacity, wit, and sheer brilliance." What does Kundera have to do to earn some mediocre praise?

As an adolescent I was fascinated with Milan Kundera's work. Life is Elsewhere was one of my favourite books for a long time. Teenage lust, brooding and inadequacy are contemplated there, transformed into art. The Joke's main character - a confused youth, a citizen of totalitarian state also left a trace.

In the following years I read the later books, enjoyed some of them, but there was a definite impression that the author is running out of things to say, the placid French life does not provide him with the necessary stimulation. But still they were worth reading.

Now I feel that Slowness is going to make me discontinue reading Kundera. The degradation is too evident here.

In his earlier books the author was taking something not very meaningful, some banality, an item of everyday life - and supplied an insightful commentary, "looked closer". Now he comments banality with banality. Take that blubbering about the speeding motorcyclists, thinking only about the next moment. What is that? Is it a self-parody or just filling the page?

And these embarassingly uninteresting comments on "the ninth portal". There is a lot of trashy, accidental thoughts flickering through our heads, but lacking something better Kundera take a hold of that one,cites Appolinaire, compares an anus to the "portal" in vicinity in terms of privateness and accessability, claims - very, very mistakingly - that even the pornography leaves it alone. Do we have to pay for these "insights"?

Any honest writer would be embarassed to publish such schlock.

Milan Kundera creates an impression that he exists in a timeless empirea, sitting on a cloud beside Mozart, Bodelaire, Voltaire, etc,etc. He is an intellectual, who crosses the borders of countries and cultures, travels in time. But Slowness makes a big gaping hole in his cloud.

His main trick these days is to pose as the erudite representative of the lost values - thoghtfulness, authentity,etc, to provide the public with an escape from the daily rush.

What is the idea of Slowness? To compare the two love affairs divided by two centuries? To tell us it was all different in the French aristocratic circles in XVIII century? More artful, more beautiful, more meaningful? And all we have these days is just a travesty?

The logic behind that is faulty. Kundera compares life to art. Vincent's fling with the secretary to the Mannerist story of amorous conquest. But I am sure that Vincent's not very meaningful encounter will be embellished in his diary beyond recognition, and the real happenings behind the aristocratic novella are less elaborate. The real life clumsiness transforms into art.

The novel's the satirical transgressions are lame. The Dance described in so many pages with such unmerited enthusiasm is just another obvious pseudo-insight.

I feel I am ready to put together "How to write a Milan Kundera's book" kit.

1) Take an intellectual who is not an expert in getting the girls. Supply him with the friend who is an expert in that art. Set them on a quest for a good lay. Sex is a natural attention magnet.

2) Watch their progress. There must be some embarassing situations, "laughable loves" that will make the guys endearing to the reader, make them care.

3) Comment! They stumble - you comment. They sneeze - you comment.-" There is a thousand ways people sneeze. Some sneeze loudly, they use their nose as a Jericho pipe, announcing the world their existense, their dominating presence. Some sneezes are a little embarassed sounds, the reminders of our imperfection - you are in the middle of a grounbreaking lecture, hundreds of eyes are focused on you - the brilliant scholar - but then you feel the spasm and something repellingly liquid is speeding to erupt from your twin portals, the catastrophy is imminent... blah - blah - blah, blah - blah - blah...". Does it sound Kunderian? I think so.

4) There are names like Mozart, Voltaire, Bodelaire, Stendahl. Put them in your book! Cite them, tell the anecdotes. The readers will appreciate that sanctification, they'll feel in touch with something meaningful - The Art, The Culture. No problem if some of the anecdotes are not relevant to the sory - the readers will think they just unable to see the connection. More credit to you.

5) You have to remind them you are Czhech, and though you live among the Western Europeans there is an exotic tradition behind you. Put in the book an Eastern European dissident - and the public will draw the parallel. More credit for your suffering.

I am not going to read Milan Kundera any more. Why bother? The components are all here, they are very evident. Do we really need them in a new, slightly different combination?

I suppose it would be a mistake to describe this slim volume as a fast read. If the book is shorter and in some ways lighter than Kundera's other novels, one imagines that Kundera expects the reader to linger that much longer with it anyway. Like his other novels, this one is heavy with ideas, often at the expense of character or plot, but like his other novels the range of those ideas is dazzling. The writing is irresistible, funny, provoking, and unexpected. A pleasure, like every bit of Kundera I've read. (And I'm coming to this after having read, and enjoyed, several of his books; it's impossible for me to say, but I can understand the argument that first-time Kundera readers are better off starting with, for example, the Unbearable Lightness of Being.) The primary elements include a Kundera-ish narrator off to a chateau getaway with his wife; a meditation on an 18th century novella about a brief affair; a low-profile Paris intellectual and his café cronies; a high-profile intellectual who is perhaps less an intellectual than a publicity hound; and a meeting of entomologists. Among the ideas explored are the need for an invisible audience, the meaning of hedonism, the politician as "dancer," the Sublime Planetary Historic News Event, and, of course, the beauty - the lost beauty, as Kundera sees it -- of slowness. A great read, fast or slow or in between.

A bit lighter than standard Kundera fare, both in word count and in tone, but in Slowness fans of Kundera's more traditional work will find much of what they expect: quirky protagonists, a blurred line between novelist-narrator-character, and Kundera's usual existentialist meditations.

The pace of life (slowness vs. haste) is the primary theme this time around, and to explore this idea Kundera tells the story of two seductions that are separated by two hundred years. In the present we have all the features of modern society (media, communication, technology) that keep us so focused on the destination that we forget about the journey. In the past we have the vagabonds of yesteryear who with their easy indolence symbolized the leisurely pace of their era.

Sex, as always, offers an opportunity for an interesting analogy. The present-day narrator discusses an woman who mentions the word "orgasm" forty seven times in a lecture about sex, reducing the physical act of sex to "...an obstacle to be got past a quickly as possible in order to reach an ecstatic explosion..." Several passages later, the 18th century lady who is a character in the parallel tale practices seduction as the "...art of staying as long as possible in a state of arousal."

There is lots of silly stuff too. Irreverent characters, comical situations, politics, and at one point the narrator has a discussion with a character's penis. Other reviewers have accused Kundera of laughing at us in this novel, and while I can understand how one might come to this conclusion I don't agree. I found the novel to be entertaining and, occasionally, insightful. And at 132 pages you'll get through the whole book in a sitting or two.

Let this be only the first of Kundera's books you read. It was my first, and now I've read everything of his that has been translated into English and if there's more I'm willing to learn another language to get to it. This book is humorous, but that is the least of it. I've never read an author with such perception, such a wily mind. It's impossible to get his characters or their lives out of your head. Reading Kundera makes life, other people, and the whole world make more sense--and less sense, at the same time.

Let's set the record straight. I am astonished at Angeline Goreau of the New York Times Book Review and, more specifically, at Kirkus Reviews for their failure to come to grips with Kundera's simple but masterly little novel, 'Slowness'. Goreau , whilst she clearly seems to have become caught up in the spirit of the work to some extent, complains of missing 'the expansive feel of the earlier novels'. She is well within her rights to do so - there can be no disputing the fact that novels such as 'The Joke', 'The Unbearable Lightness of Being', and 'The Book of Laughter and Forgetting' are far richer in their lingering sense of the voluptuousness of slowness. But Goreau's comment seems entirely to ignore both the need and the poetic appropriateness of the shift. 'Slowness' is a highly introspective novel - just like the characters that inhabit its pages it is continually looking inwards on itself. That it is short and sharp and inexorably entangled with its own runaway velocity is an essential reflection of the world, the author, and the narrator that produced it. Furthermore, Kundera's departure from his slower, lyrical works of magic must be understood as fully deliberate and entirely in line with his conceptions of the novel of the future - one fully endowed with what he refers to as 'architectonic clarity' (see 'The Art of the Novel'). The briefest of glances at Kundera's writings on writing also show Kirkus Reviews' assertion that 'Slowness' is a 'bleakly monitory novel' as a ridiculous oversight. Kundera has never intended for his novels to be didactic, he has merely striven to 'explore new possibilities of existence' and in this he has brilliantly and excitingly succeeded in the wonderful book that forms the subject of this review.

....on the hypocrisy of human nature. Milan Kundera has this penchant for brutally analysing the schisms of life & human behaviour - their contradictions and their fallacies - all seemingly existing beneath the public masks. In " Slowness", Milan Kundera has juxtaposed two parallel stories, separated in time and space from each other. Berck and Pontevin are the two characters in one parallel. Berck is the intellectual who is at odds with his public face, with conflicting thoughts and behaviour. Pontevin is his intellectual adversary and is considered a guru by Vincent, an impressionable friend in awe of the seemingly infallible Pontevin. Parallely, Madame de. T and Chevaliar are amourously involved in another time..... The book is funnily disjoint and disarrayed, yet brings out the ironic viscissitudes of the modern world, at times different yet at times ridiculously permanent..... a good read ... I enjoyed it

Those familiar with Kundera's "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" may find "Slowness" a bit of a leisurely letdown, and yet, like its more prominent predecessor, it is also an intriguing exploration of sexual relationships, but told this time more from those aspects of pleasure. Kundera's first novel written in his second language, French, "Slowness" pays homage to a classic like "Les Liasons Dangeureuses" in its elegant depiction of 18th Century French sexuality, but also has more than a nod or two to current Czech and French history. Miraculously, Kundera manages to keep these seemingly disparate storylines intact up to a most improbable conclusion that - for want of a better term - ends as some sort of dream-like fantasy. Much to his credit, Kundera excels in his depiction of slight details which render both tales rather realistic in their depictions of relationships, but readers may wonder whether Kundera has focused too much on such depiction while forsaking the establishment of meaningful plots. Still, I found much to behold in Kundera's translated prose, and recognize that it is still a very important book in his entire oeuvre.