The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera, 29.10-7.11 (Sunniva)

So, how will I write about this book?

Will I mention the autobiographical and non-fictional blended with the fictional and slightly fantastical? Will I mention the history and factual and political inbetween the sexual and sensual and philosophical? Or will I most of all mention the disturbing parts that creep up on you without you really noticing?

I really don’t know where to start. All right. I started reading the book on the plane the morning I left for Tenerife with my cousins and aunt, to celebrate my mum’s 50^th on a restaurant in Spain. I read a lot of it, then listened to music, looked out the window, talked with my cousins, and saved the last hundred pages or so for the last bit of the trip when all electronic devices must be switched off. Then we were landing, and I still had eighty pages to go. It was impossible for me to pick it up again while on holiday, for nine whole days the book stood in my room, went in my backpack and waited to be read. I couldn’t read this book, which had captured me, while lying on the beach in a bikini, or slouching on the sofa in our rented flat drinking Fanta limón (the most important drink of my childhood vacations in Spain, when Norway only had Fanta orange).

On the plane back, however, I did read it. So, you see, I didn’t read it between October 29^th and November 7^th, I read it on October 29^th and on November 7^th. But I am stalling.

How does Kundera make this perfect (although imperfect, but still perfect in its own way) mix of stories that become a book that makes sense, even if I can’t say what sense? I enjoyed the separate stories. I realise that together, they make a book about Prague, and history, and memories, maybe people in general but more about Czechs.

What disturbed me was the SPOILERS YES THEY’RE HERE amount of mentions of rape, while now that I’m thinking back,  I couldn’t tell you that there was any explicit rape mentioned in the book. Let’s see. There is the one time Kundera – because we must suppose the I, who is, I think, named Milan or Kundera  is the author himself – there is the one time he gets an inexplicable urge to rape his friend. He is confused himself as to why. And I wonder what the author is trying to say with this scene. Do all men have this dormant urge inside them? Or is he trying to comment on our ideas of rape, and saying that we should call it by its right name more often? Then there is the scene with Tamina on the island of children, which I thought was a strange scene, but still it seems to happen with her consent, even if Kundera calls it rape a few pages later. Finally, the discussion between Jan and Edwige had me enraged at the author, until Edwige got more of her say and I remembered that I often project main characters’ views on the author themselves, and probably without reason. It also brought up an issue I was thinking about while reading Murakami. Even though Murakami can write some strong women into his stories, as far as I can remember, the weaker women far outnumber the strong ones, and the strong ones (example: May Kasahara) often become weak, or dependent on the man. I remember hearing  that in Japan, or perhaps in some Japanese subcultures, there is a fetishization of rape. It goes back to the idea that Jan is talking about, that women are supposed to be chaste, fleeing from sexual encounters, while men attack and are very manly for doing so. Apparently, there is an idea that a woman should say “no” several times when a man propositions her, even while they are having sex, even to the point of saying “stop, stop, this is rape” or something similar. It is completely ridiculous and undermines our free will, and also blurs the lines between regular intercourse and a sexual assault. This comment partly belongs with the Murakami review as well, because while his books and texts never go as far as that, they have a milder version of the idea that the men want to have sex, the women resist, or they accept the act but can’t say that this is what they actually want. Toru Okada says something like “Then we had sex for the first time, in Kumiko’s apartment. I think that is what she wanted, because even though she was just lying there [so and so]”. This is a man who’s been married to this woman for how long? Six or eight years? And he still doesn’t know.

What am I trying to say? That there is a dark streak throughout the book, lying underneath the funny and serious and poignant stories about everything and nothing? I’m not sure. This is a book to be read again, and probably one that will change in my mind as I get older.

I did enjoy the book very very much, and I am already looking forward to reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being, which I have in Norwegian and have owned for two years without getting as far as reading it yet.