Customer Reviews

The art of the novel

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"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.

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.

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.

I recall that when asked about his "Theorie Aesthetique" by a journalist, Picasso took out a pistol and shot it in the air. Evidently Picasso did not care to banalize his works into neat theories for art critics. The problem is that Picasso often did lapse into following a theoretical form...more so in his later works.

I read this book in French, "L'Art Du Roman" and while it does not attempt to reduce Kundera's works to neat theories, it does shed light on the philosphical underpinnings of many of his novels.

In fact, one of the main themes of this book is the critique of reductionism. He exalts the "Wisdom of Uncertainty" and eschews any art work that proceeds from an ideology or moral high ground as such leads to judgement rather than understanding. Somewhat in an existentialist vein, Kundera promotes the idea of "l'ambiguite" as the ideal for the novel. That is to say that given we live in a world where there is no right or wrong way to proceed, the role of the novel is to understand each character within his own constructs, not according to some extrnal morality or ideology.

Kundera's debt to Heidegger is made obvious throughout the book, and Kundera quotes him often. One is left wondering what Kundera's ideas on morality might be. However, I would not go so far as saying that he follows suit with Heidegger on this mattter. Heidegger's "Sein und Zeit" is interested in the question of being. For Da-Sein, morality is secondary, and relativistic, not primary and essential. No doubt, this indiffference towards morality led to Heidegger's nazism. However, if Kundera does not take a moralistic posture in "unbearable Lightness of Being", he defintiely implies that we suffer or thrive on a spiritual level with certain choices that we make....

-Thomas Seay

I am starting a novel this summer, and this book was recommended to me by my Creative Writing professor. Being a fan of Kundera already, I bought the book without question.

For the reviewer who said that Kundera writes pretentiously: I am actually amazed, since Kundera's lack of pretention and clarity surprised me. So much literary criticism is bloated and difficult to read, but Kundera is very simple, very concise, and yet also explanatory. Often he will make a statement, such as "All novels are concerned with the enigma of the self," which he not only explains but gives immediate examples, never letting the flash of his writing try to convey the point.

So much ground is covered in this tiny book: the difference between modernism and "establishment modernism," the craft of his own work, the history and purpose of the novel, insights into several of his great works, insights into European history, parallels between music and literature, etc, etc. Make sure to take notes, since your memory won't be able to hold everything in.

I praise Kundera also for his deep respect for the novel, not only arguing against those "established modernists" who claim the novel is dead or antiquated, but stressing the infinite possibilities of the novel and how the weaknesses of the great works show the paths future novels can take. Rather than being pretentious or snobbish, Kundera reaffirms the life of the novel as central to the question of the self, which is as infinite as the novel is.

This book is also essential for writers especially. For plotting out the structure for my work, Kundera's insights have been invaluable. Of course, Kundera doesn't suggest you write as he does, and you won't want to, but his radiant insight surely helped me find out what I myself wanted to do. Kundera's essays prompt exploration and possibility. A great read.

In these brilliant reflections Milan Kundera discusses fundamental characteristics of the novel, its history and its immorality.

The object of the novel is the enigma of the self (the subject) functioning in a world full of ambiguities, where all things human are relative.

History

Novelists, like Cervantes, examined the self through its actions, which (partly) revealed the nature of the self.

A new generation, like Flaubert, delved into the self's invisible interior life (dreams, the irrational) in order to reveal the self's secrets.

Joyce dissects painstakingly the present.

In fine, F. Kafka poses the ultimate question of what possibilities are left in a world where the external determinants become so overpowering that internal impulses no longer carry weight.

Radical autonomy

Kafka's novels are the masterful proofs of the radical autonomy of the novel. By creating an extreme and unrealized possibility of the human world, Kafka expressed things about our human condition which no social or political thought could ever tell.

Immorality

The novel is boundless freedom. It is not rational or based on verisimilitude.

Novelists should use this freedom to discover unrealized possibilities of the human world. A novelist who doesn't unveil a hitherto unknown segment of human existence is immoral.

These in depth meditations on one of the major components of human art are a must read for all lovers of world literature.

I haven't read a book this brilliant and intellectually-provoking in a long time. Milan Kundera is a first-class thinker who will be and has been pegged as elitist and pretentious by some reviewers here (and elsewhere I'm sure). Since we're living in an age of ever-diminishing education where a college diploma is equivalent to what a technical degree used to be, this is to be expected, and is indeed flattery. In the section of the book called Sixty-three Words, Kundera himself addresses the issue under "Elitism": The word "elitism" only appeared in France in 1967 [note: it appeared elsewhere in Europe as much as ten years earlier]. For the first time in history, the very language threw a glare of negativity, even mistrust, on the notion of elite. Official propaganda in the Communist countries began to pummel elitism and elitists at the same time. It used the terms to designate not captains of industry or famous athletes or politicians but only the cultural elite: philosophers, writers, professors, historians, figures in film and theater....It seems that in the whole of Europe the cultural elite is yielding to other elites. Over there, to the elite of the police apparatus. Here, to the elite of the mass media apparatus. No one will ever accuse these new elites of elitism...

In this dense but slim work, Kundera discusses the essence of the novel, which is in his view the exploration of uncharted territory through structure, insight, ideas and themes. Which is the idea of art in general, really, be it painting, music or anything else. In a revealing section, he talks about the tyranny of kitsch, which is the beautification (and in the process simplification) of everything, to make it palatable to the reader/viewer. Kitsch is prettified lies, in other words, and he points out how most of us live all of our lives this way, never looking below the surface, never grasping the complete and true meaning of most anything. With the mechanism of unfettered, unquestioned capitalism the reigning societal model in the 20th (and even more so now in the 21st) century, this uniformity is fast becoming the only acceptable model, in his (and my) view. Thus the very impetus that drives the novel--and all art--is, in his view (and my view) dying, if not dead.

Those stuck in the tyranny of kitsch may object: there are plenty of novels out there--Anne Rice and JK Rowlings and Ken Follett and Tom Clancey. Those are the purveyers of kitsch Kundera was talking about. To wit, jazz, another art form, is dead. Sure we have Wynton Marsalis et al, but they haven't advanced the art one iota. Lennie Tristano did and the world is still almost completely unfamiliar with his work, because jazz listeners aren't ready for real advances in the art; they'd prefer prepackaged familiarity being offered as advances. *That* Kundera would define as kitsch. Occasionally a true iconoclast breaks through the mold--Thelonious Monk--but they are usually celebrated long after they make their mark or for superficialities and eccentricities. Of course there *are* definitely exceptions to this grim scenario, but they tend to just prove the rule.

This will be a tough one for most people to accept or perhaps even really understand. To do so you have to look at *everything* differently and not accept anything at face value. People who do that are usually labeled "elite" and "pretentious." And as "market democracy," of workers who must expend most of their intellectual capital in pursuit and maintenance of their livelihoods, but with increasing disposable incomes, continue to grow (China, India, S. Korea, Brazil, Taiwan), look for kitsch, and the "received wisdom" contained in it, to increase.

Furthermore, Kundera's despair, if I may call it that (for he doesn't, but I get that feeling from him) is that most people don't understand the difference, cannot distinguish kitsch, insincerity, even if you explain it to them, distinguish it for them. They are too lost in the realm of emotions, defending themselves from what they perceive as a personal intellectual attack, a "pissing contest" of the minds. It is supremely ironic, then, that it is they who call others who make this distinction "pretentious," when the very meaning of the word reflects more upon them. By just fitting in with everyone else they are the ones harboring pretense, because they are just aping the behavior of everyone around them, or at the very least endorsing the superficial reality that Kundera discusses, and that he believes it's the novel's duty to overcome. This is a rather cerebral argument, however, and I don't expect it to resonate widely. If economics is the dismal science, art is the equivalent in the world of the aesthetic.

And so it goes. Kundera has cogently summed up the dilemma of his, and our, age. The Sixth part alone is worth the price of the book, and the summation of his philosophy of art in the Seventh is brilliant, with a perfect finishing observation that puts everything he has previously said into perspective--in one sentence he smashes to bits the modern wisdom of the premise of cultural-relativism. After closing this book I felt like I had spent an afternoon with an extremely thoughtful person who had seen a great deal and thought deeply about it. One can see how the forces of Communism shaped his values and concerns--our market-driven ones of today are alien to him, and we are the poorer for it. Too bad there are so few, if any, Kunderas anymore. Yes, he's still alive, but at 79, he's hardly a new voice or fresh mind, and to whom he'll leave his intellectual legacy is anyone's guess. And many would consider such concerns to be pretentious anyway.

Someone who previewed this review said it reads more like a philosophical discussion than a book review. That makes sense, since a philosophical discussion is precisely what Kunder'a book is. Perhaps a better title might have been "The Philosophy of the Novel"?

In this critical examination of the "art of the novel", Kundera meditates upon the existence or non-existence of "art" in novel-writing. It is a combination of narrative and philosophical ponderings highlighted by Kundera's famed lyricism. However, therein lies the the book's weakness. The dense language could lose your "average" reader and some issues, such as the meaning of art, begin to lean far more towards the philosophical rather than in analytical technique. Kundera tends to wander off on tangents.

A highly interesting and introspective piece into the art of novel writing from one of Europe's finest contemporary authors, Mulan Kundera. His philosophical background is particularly impressive has he attempts to relate back the meaning of his work to existential and phenomenological origins in Husserl, Heidegger, and Nietzsche. I also particularly enjoyed Kundera's comparisons of literature to music in which he describes the forms of multiple Beethoven compositions as well as the basic structures of his own novels. This is an enormously stimulating read, though not necessarily helpful for the blossoming writer.

This book has the property of timelessness, much like the "writing on writing" that is seen in Eric Auerbach and Kenneth Burke. However, it is in no way literary theory, nor is it, contrary to what some of the other reviewers seem to believe, "philosophical." It is a careful explication of the author's principles, not a grand theoretical schema. The instantiation of real human circumstances, ones deeply concerned with the problems entailed by Heidegger's in-der-Welt-sein, is what differentiates the novel from philosophy. It is nothing less and nothing more than a series of seven disquisitions on the historical development of the European novel.

"The Depreciated Legacy of Cervantes," serves to offer the substance for latter explication, meditation, and the occasional tangent. Its subject is the history and development of the European novel that is deeply rooted in existential concern. As Kundera says, "A novel that does not discover a hitherto unknown segment of existence is immoral." He is careful to delineate the novel's uniqueness as a historical artifact, and sees modernity as closely tied to the regnant existential themes as those explored by Joyce, Kafka, Sterne, Gombrowitz, and Broch (a somewhat epigrammatic essay on The Sleepwalkers is contained herein). But Kundera sees the inaugural journey into modernity as one that is essentially Cervantes'. Don Quixote enters a world that has seen the weakening influence of religious dogmatism. His experience contains none of the certitude of categorical absolutes that were so indicative of earlier existence (again, that desideratum for novelists).