the unbearable lightness of being. milan kundera. (292)

i picked up the unbearable lightness of being to reread it before i read kundera's latest book.  he hasn't written a book in about 15 years, so it's a bit of a big deal. i put in a request for his latest work, but felt like i should revisit this first.

i read the unbearable lightness of being about 13 years or so ago.  at the time i was obsessed with nick hornby's high fidelty and in the movie version (i don't recall if it's in the book), rob says:

i’m not the smartest guy in the world, but i’m certainly not the dumbest. i mean, i’ve read books like "the unbearable lightness of being" and "love in the time of cholera", and i think i’ve understood them. they’re about girls, right? just kidding. but i have to say my all-time favorite book is johnny cash’s autobiography "cash" by johnny cash.

since rob namechecked it, i decided i'd read it.  so young late teens/early twenties me read it.  i remember having the feeling that i had read something profound.  i also recalled the bowler hat (mainly because of the cover.) but as i reread it, i doubt younger me truly got it, especially all the parts about sex and also because even now some of this went over my head.

before i sound dumb, all the communist stuff went over my head.  i mean i get  communism, what went over my head (like a true american) was the geography and the link to communism.  like all the czech stuff. i know, i know, how ignorant can me? apparently, very.

also nietzsche was mentioned but in relationship to mental illness and an apology to animal for humans (specifically, descartes) not acknowledging their souls, but this book is about nihilism, right? (i just opened the novel to get a quote and it looks like nietzsche opens the novel, so this is nihilistic.) i mean, we read about these people's lives, but in the end they all die and all that we read, doesn't really matter.  i mean i have nihilistic tendencies, so i am all for this being the point of the novel.  it felt like every time, someone found "enlightenment" about life, when they finally got it all figured out, they died, proving that life is ironic, if you use alanis morrisette's definition.

franz realized that what really brought him happiness was his student-mistress. tomas explained to tereza that she did not ruin his life (i will have more on this in a second) because he was happy just to be with her.  i mean it's a beautiful idea, but maybe this what we humans do to justify the unbearable lightness of being. (i feel like i am being deep but this might be the whole point of this work, so just let me go with it. you might be reading this and thinking, duh, krisha).  we take any situation we are in and justify it by using the all encompassing adjective "happy" to help us cope with the decisions we have made in life. we are lying to ourselves to stop ourselves from spending our entire lives regretting.  who can truly say whether or not tomas would not have been happy if he didn't follow tereza? he would still be a surgeon, and would be able to sleep with anyone without guilt, and without tereza probably would have justified his life by saying he was happy to live with the regret of not chasing her.  we would probably be "happy" in whatever path our lives take, because we can never know the way the other options would have played out.  as explained in the beginning, we only have one life.  there is no way for us to truly know if we made the best decisions in life:

we can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can not compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come.

we can not undo the past and so to deal with the decisions we have made, good or bad, we say that we are "happy" so that we can live with ourselves.  i mean i have made some poor decisions in life, but am happy on a day to day basis when i am not regretting the would have, could have, should haves, but in the end i think when i die there is nothing, so i am not that stressed out about my choices.  we just have to accept what we have done and this acceptance is the unbearable lightness of being.

the definition of the unbearable lightness of being came via sabine.  when she moved to paris, there was no drama to explain her move.  instead of a heavy burden to bear, she had the unbearable lightness of being, existence without a struggle.  its easier to explain life decisions by having trigger versus just doing or being. to exist is not enough, we have to explain all action.  our need to do so has resulted in the creation of religions, psychology, sociology, biology, any ology or field of study in fact, even art. it's our ability to reason that results in the need for this justification of our being.  life is tough cos we constantly have to justify it, as i explained above.

sorry i feel like i am talking in circles.  but this book is deep.  i should read it every 5 years to get perspective on life.  and should also do some czech history research to really get it.

i mean i could go into storylines but it's all pointless and i mean that is the point right?  we can see the detailed background of individuals and can see this reasoning behind their actions, but in the end, we all die so what does it matter?  it just one life, we don't get an do over.

with that being said, i do need to discuss tereza, cos i thought she was one crazy bitch and that she did ruin tomas' life! first of all, really? with the showing up and just moving in?  girl showed up casually, but had her suitcase at the station, ready to move in.  and i thought she was manipulative from the beginning (see: how she moved it).  also the whole hand holding in her sleep was crazy too! i would be frightened if my partner did that.  i would not see it as love.  i mean she admitted how manipulative she was in the end, but it was too late.

and yes, i know tomas was not faithful to her, and i didn't agree with his whole sex doesn't equate love theory, but she forced him into a relationship!  i am not saying that if he was truly in love, he would be faithful, but he was kind of coerced into allowing tereza to move in which then lead to marriage.  he was an idiot, the guy forgot to wash his hair after his affairs, but i doubt he would have settled down if given the choice.  and before you say he loved her in the end, go back to the part about the justifying our actions because we only have one life.

so i feel like this blog is just a bunch of rambling (i wish i was part of a book club so that i could share my ideas with someone), so here is a list of random thoughts i had as i read:

-i liked the definitions of words the demonstrated the differences between sabine and franz.

-that one artist on bravo's "work of art" totally confused unbearable and pride and prejudice why else was their a bowler hat on her book cover.

-there is a lot of sex in this book.

-the whole section on shit was interesting.

-this is the second book this summer that has mentioned plato's theory of people being split in two and finding their other half. (reminded me also of "hedwig and the angry inch".)

-what a whole section for the dog and about animals. also i have soul though i don't like animals. also i like karenin as a name for a dog.

all in all, a great and enlightening read.  if you have any comments please post.  if i an complete off base let me know.  

  

the stranger. albert camus. (199)

the stranger has been on my to-read list forever now.  i had a third grade teacher recommend it to me once and people are always praising it.  but what persuaded me was a book i purchased for "california bookstore day" which took place may 3.  (i will have to do a post on it because my purchases were adorable.) i purchased depressed, repressed, obsessed: 3-panel book reviews by lisa brown.  after reading the review for the stranger, i decided to read it.

this is an excellent review.

and now for my review, i am not sure to make of it.  i at first read camus as a nihilist since menursault didn't care about anything.  but then i read on wikipedia that camus was like anti-nihilism, but this work was suppose to promote his philosophy of absurd, in which the wikipedia page described as "the conflict between the human tendency to seek inherent value and meaning in life and the human inability to find any." since i got this analysis from wikipedia, i will discuss my initial thoughts after i had finish reading and then my thoughts with this knowledge.

to start, i wasn't sure how to read menursault, i thought maybe he had aspergers because his social and communication skills were poor.  he was unable to articulate how he felt or what he meant, which the reader sees via his conversations and his testimony during the trial.  he had good intentions he was just unable to manifest them in his speech and actions.  for example, he did love marie, but it was as though she was asking him the wrong questions, he was answering her questions sincerely but he was too literal.  he also seemed to lack social graces as demonstrated in his behavior at maman's funeral which was later used against him at trial.

i also do not know how he got involved in the mess that he did with raymond but he did.  but i guess that is the demonstration of the absurd.  things happen and we don't know how or why but there is no need to look for deeper meaning but just take them as the way life turned out.

as horrible and indifferent, menursault sounded throughout the work, he was right.  nothing really matters, well more like everything do not matter.  i get it.  i was disappointed at first because i didn't have this profound "wow" moment like i thought i was (based on others' love of this work), but my lack of one could because my view of life has absurd tendencies.  every time i stress out about something especially regrets, i have to remind myself that in the grand spectrum of things, it doesn't matter because one day i will die and will cease to exist.  its sound horrible and makes me sound depressed but i think it's just a real outlook on life.  especially since i am an insignificant nobody in the grand spectrum of life.  i mean i have meaning to those around me but after my grandchildren die off, no one will really know me, so the decisions that i make day to day don't really matter.  i mean why do i even have this blog.  why do i even read?  i enjoy it so that should be reason enough.  but i think what camus is trying to address is this need to give significance to actions for this an idea of afterlife.  i don't believe in an afterlife, and i admired menursault for refusing to see the chaplain.  i mean he was going to die, god wouldn't be able to save him now.  and really should god be accepting last minute conversions like that?  i feel like god should be more strict about who he forgives and allowed into heaven especially since these conversion come from fear of death versus remorse of actions, but that is a whole other story.

back to the work.  so yes, i do believe in philosophy of absurd, i do have a tendency to be the opposite and also look for signs from the universe, but i recognize that it is absurd.  we shouldn't put some much value and meaning into things that do not have them but there needs to be a balance, you need to find something that makes you happy and it's okay to give that meaning and value, just not everything.  i don't know if this makes sense, but i guess i shouldn't worry because it doesn't really matter if this blog as value or not, since "existance is meaningless."