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Milan Kundera: The Unbearable Lightness Of Being

W

Wabbit

New Member
The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. Just browing on Amazon :D

It sounds interesting but I wanted some other opinions and/or more info. Anybody read this??

Regards
SillyWabbit
 
yep i've read it. it was a long time ago but i recall that it was full of great observations.

kskyhappy
 
I read it a couple of years ago. Kskyhappy is right. It is full of observations. A bit of a slow read, but very good. :)

Hobitten :)
 
I was hoping someone could give me some idea as to the effect Tereza has on Tomas.
I'm just looking at how female characters can effect male characters in a novel.
 
I read it about an year ago. I like the way Milan Kundera wrote it as not fully a novel but filled with incidental paragraphs. I like how he inserted notes with philosophical thoughts into the story. It relaxes the tension of plots and release readers' minds to read the characters as samples of human based on same humanity but lead different values.

For me this book is full of interesting and essential facts of lives.
 
responsibilities and smells

I read it long time ago. I remember that I did not have any patience for that book, but yet I managed to finish it. It was curious to see what happened in Chech Republic - I mean how the communism started there. I also agreed with the observations on smells in that book, and on attachement and responsibilities (towards parents who are very egoistic - I know personally such behavior, for instance between my grandma and mother - unfortunately.)

So I am kind of happy to have read it but I did not like the process of reading it. I was really relieved when it was over!
 
I;ve read it twice and was moved both times, just the portrayal of the pain, and suffering that comes with living, and to some extent an acceptance of it...
 
Kundera: The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Jim Cantor said:
I loved the movie. I haven't read the book yet. Should I?
Click to expand...

Actually that's an interesting discussion.

Usually the book is better than the film. The book of "Fingersmith" is much better than the film (TV adaptation), which didn't capture the complexity. But sometime it's the other way around. I think the film of "Tipping the Velvet" was better than the book. When does this happen and why?

Jim
 
I absolutely love that book. Some of the historical descriptions went over my head, but all the interactions between characters were so interesting. I highly recommend it.
 
Jim Cantor said:
Actually that's an interesting discussion.

Usually the book is better than the film. The book of "Fingersmith" is much better than the film (TV adaptation), which didn't capture the complexity. But sometime it's the other way around. I think the film of "Tipping the Velvet" was better than the book. When does this happen and why?

Jim
Click to expand...

I think that it would depend on what you want to capture. For example, thoughts are better explored in print, whereas series of movements will definitely look good in films.

As for Unbearable Lightness, the film captured only the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. The book is not an easy read but I believe it's worthwhile to go back and see what the title is really all about. Not even the great Daniel Day-Lewis will be able to tell us that.
 
repeated readings?

I agree... this is a great book.... but unlike other great books the more I read it the less I like it. I find some of the language and imagery doesnt hold up to multiple readings. It is perhaps not what Kundera wanted... which is therefore my bad... but I think some of his other books have more philosophical profundity to them.

that said, I can remember the first time I read Unbearable. And it will always stay with me!
 
It is a great book. once you finish it, you will also love "The book of laughter and forgetting" by the same author.:)
 
I was surprised by how light and easy the book was for me. When I first bought it, I thought was I going to be bogged down by very complex philosophical discourse that I would never understand, but although the book was very philosophical, I felt I had no trouble understanding what Milan Kundera was saying.

I saw the movie shortly after finishing the novel. It just shows the straightforward narrative and does away with Kundera’s plot device of showing the same event multiple times from different perspectives. For that reason, I prefer the book.
 
The book is not very difficult at all, and the notion of the lightness of being and the linearity of life really struck a cord with me ....

having said that, i definately dont think it is a good book for rereading. particularly - specially as this would go ironicly against the subject matter of the book and how that subject matter was set out in the book itself.
 
I was 17 when I first read this and The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, and I remember being absolutely enamoured with Kundera. However, when I revisited the books again a decade later, I found myself solely disappointed. They weren't as brilliant as I remembered them to be. The narrative and characters were flat, stark and lacked subtlety; they seemed more like archetypals than real people.

I don't think it has as much to do with Kundera's talent as it does with how much my tastes had evolved over the years. And I am still quite fond of them, but more for sentimental reasons than anything else.
 
I'm still making up my mind. For me it follows reading The Joke, and two in a row has felt like rather much. However, I have a long train ride ahead of me today, so I'm giving it another try among my other competing reading interests and maybe it will survive better this time. :confused:
 
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