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A review by buddhafish
The Art of the Novel by Milan Kundera
3.0
The beginning of this started really well with some great quotes on the "art of the novel". Notably, the quote,
'If the novel should really disappear, it will do so not because it has exhausted its powers but it exists in a world grown alien to it.'
That's just a fantastic quote. There are more but why would I write them all here? That would be like those terrible trailers that show the best bits of the movie; then you go into the cinema and come out and think, oh. Believe me though, there are some more.
The other parts, are then kinda disappointing. Kundera goes off on his Kundera-esque ramblings. He explains his fascination of music and how all (but one, at this point, I think) his novels have seven parts (even this, I noticed, The Art of the Novel).
Then there's a fairly lengthy explanation about music and types of music and speed and Beethoven. I listen to music most of the day, and listen far more than many of the people I know do, but my interest in technical music doesn't go very far.
There's a part with 'Sixty-three Words' which I was excited for and then disappointed. Instead of words he found important to the novel, and more lessons, it was more Kundera rambling, leaving me looking for the relevance at times. He tells us how he once got rid of a translator because they changed his semi-colons into full stops. Most of the words he ends up quoting from his books: Life is Elsewhere, The Joke and The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. He even uses one of the words to justify doing something in one of his novels. Parts for me did come across as being arrogant. Maybe that isn't the right word...his tone, possibly, irked me at points. In one of the conversations within the book, a question and answer, the interviewer says to Kundera that the seven parts of TBoLaF could have been written as seven different novels, if he fleshed them out. He replies by saying, 'But if I had written seven separate novels, I'd have no hope of "encompassing the complexity of existence in the modern world" in one single book.' Granted, he says, hope, not that he has indeed achieved that feat, but still. I don't know, at times I did roll my eyes a little. I was expecting more talk about the novel, how to write the novel, the struggles of writing a novel, more to do with the novel...but instead, parts just felt like reading another Kundera book, him talking about things and then connecting them to other things and himself and before you know, he's spoken for pages about music and you forget the original point was the novel.
'If the novel should really disappear, it will do so not because it has exhausted its powers but it exists in a world grown alien to it.'
That's just a fantastic quote. There are more but why would I write them all here? That would be like those terrible trailers that show the best bits of the movie; then you go into the cinema and come out and think, oh. Believe me though, there are some more.
The other parts, are then kinda disappointing. Kundera goes off on his Kundera-esque ramblings. He explains his fascination of music and how all (but one, at this point, I think) his novels have seven parts (even this, I noticed, The Art of the Novel).
Then there's a fairly lengthy explanation about music and types of music and speed and Beethoven. I listen to music most of the day, and listen far more than many of the people I know do, but my interest in technical music doesn't go very far.
There's a part with 'Sixty-three Words' which I was excited for and then disappointed. Instead of words he found important to the novel, and more lessons, it was more Kundera rambling, leaving me looking for the relevance at times. He tells us how he once got rid of a translator because they changed his semi-colons into full stops. Most of the words he ends up quoting from his books: Life is Elsewhere, The Joke and The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. He even uses one of the words to justify doing something in one of his novels. Parts for me did come across as being arrogant. Maybe that isn't the right word...his tone, possibly, irked me at points. In one of the conversations within the book, a question and answer, the interviewer says to Kundera that the seven parts of TBoLaF could have been written as seven different novels, if he fleshed them out. He replies by saying, 'But if I had written seven separate novels, I'd have no hope of "encompassing the complexity of existence in the modern world" in one single book.' Granted, he says, hope, not that he has indeed achieved that feat, but still. I don't know, at times I did roll my eyes a little. I was expecting more talk about the novel, how to write the novel, the struggles of writing a novel, more to do with the novel...but instead, parts just felt like reading another Kundera book, him talking about things and then connecting them to other things and himself and before you know, he's spoken for pages about music and you forget the original point was the novel.