Milan Kundera had me at The Unbearable Lightness of Being. After my son spent a post-college eighteen months in Prague, he was hooked, too. He sent me more Kundera novels. Then, on my own, I found Kundera’s nonfiction, The Art of the Novel. In it, he reminds us of the importance of theme and what a character really is.
I like his question, “So what, after three centuries, ahs happened to adventure, the first great theme of the novel?” I like adventures in novels and in life. In The Unbearable Lightness of Being there are sexual adventures, the adventure of committed love, of finding some happiness in a totalitarian state, and the adventure of starting over completely. Tomas is a doctor who, with his wife, Tereza, slips out of communist Prague for life as a farm laborer, living among trusted friends. History is in the novel, but only to reveal the characters’ existential beings. Tomas and Tereza show us human possibilities.
Most important to me, Kundera writes, “The novel’s spirit is the spirit of complexity. Every novel says to the reader: ‘things are not as simple as you think.’” Kundera influences me to dig for deeper meaning, to leave my readers a little provoked, a little shaken in the face of uncertainty. The Unbearable Lightness of Being is an example to follow. My novel, Remarkable Silence, is my attempt to question and to encourage my readers to question, too. Judging by reader reaction, Remarkable Silence has made people think twice about old assumptions.
Thanks, Milan.