Playful ... moving ... didactic ... erotic ... misleading ... satisfying ...

A couple years ago I bought four of Kunderas books at once this one, The Joke, Ignorance, and of course The Unbearable Lightness of Being never having read a word written by him.

Immortality is the first that Ive read.

I dont know much about postmodernism in literature. Ive read some novels that are called postmodernist. But there are many more (view spoiler)[Heres a list of ten that I found on line.

Sot Weed F

A couple years ago I bought four of Kunderas books at once this one, The Joke, Ignorance, and of course The Unbearable Lightness of Being never having read a word written by him.

Immortality is the first that Ive read.

I dont know much about postmodernism in literature. Ive read some novels that are called postmodernist. But there are many more (view spoiler)[Heres a list of ten that I found on line.

Sot Weed Factor I read decades ago, loved itBlood and Guts in High School never heard of it, tho looks interestingWittgensteins Mistress looks very temptingPale Fire on my Maybe list I should read itGravitys Rainbow read decades ago, liked it probably didnt understand it thoHouse of Leaves its said to be good, but this is the sort of postmodern novel I cant abide at my age no, no, noLabyrinths (Borges) have it partially read, love itSixty Stories (Barthelme) was off my radar, now its on itInfinite Jest have it, unreadThe Recognitions on my Maybe list I think Ill eventually get to it.

Ill also mention Cloud Atlas, which I read and loved.and Textermination, which I have but frankly is probably beyond my comprehension, and may never be read

Im sure there are others I have which would qualify. (hide spoiler)]

Immortality has faint traces of this sort of postmodernism. But not enough to deter me. I found it a very interesting read, to say the least.

The first character we gradually discover is Agnes. Agnes is built from a gesture that the narrator sees an older woman make at a swimming pool.

To answer the second first, no, the narrator is in fact Milan Kundera, the author. Not fictional, so far as I know.

The first question requires a couple more pages of reading. Then,

Then she gets up. Facing her is a TV set, standing on one long, storklike leg. She throws her nightgown over the tube, like a white, tasseled theater curtain. She stands close to the bed, and for the first time I see her naked. Agnes, the heroine of my novel. I cant take my eyes off this beautiful woman, and as if sensing my gaze she hurries off to the adjoining room to get dressed.

Who is Agnes? Agnes sprang from the gesture of that sixty-year-old woman at the pool whose features are already fading from my memory. At the time, that gesture aroused in me immense, inexplicable nostalgia, and this nostalgia gave birth to the woman I call Agnes.

So were off. This first section of the novel, The face, introduces the people surrounding Agnes her mother and father, her husband Paul, her daughter Brigitte, her sister Laura.

These are the remaining sections of the novel

Two. Immortality. An essay about Goethe, his longing for immortality, and a bizarre relationship he had (and/or tried not to have) with Bettina aka Bettina von Arnim. Fascinating. (view spoiler)[

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in 1828 (Wiki)

Bettina von Arnim as drawn by Ludwig Emil Grimm during the first decade of the 19th century (Wiki)(hide spoiler)]

Three. Fighting. The longest section of the novel, the story of the relationships between Agnes and the other characters, including newly introduced characters. The subparts have their own titles, such as The sisters; Dark glasses; Older woman, younger man; Imagology; A complete ass; To be a victim of ones fame; Professor Avenarius; The gesture of longing for immortality.

Four. Homo sentimentalis. Back to Goethe, including (like other sections) many comments on, and conversations with, such as Rilke, Hemingway, Rimbaud, Aristotle, Stendahl, Schnitzler.

Five. Chance. Swinging back and forth between a conversation between the narrator and Prof. Avenarius, himself (wholly or in part) a character in the novel. (view spoiler)[An amusing passage.Avenarius lapsed into a perplexed silence. After a while he asked me, in a kindly voice, And what will your novel be called?The Unbearable Lightness of Being.I think somebody has already written that.I did! But I was wrong about the title then. That title was supposed to belong to the novel Im writing right now.We stopped talking and concentrated on the taste of the wine and the duck. (hide spoiler)]

Six. The dial. A connected story about Rubens. Not the noted artist, but a contemporary man, once having had ambitions to be an artist, but instead consumed by a desire to explore the phases and ages of love. The connection to the rest of the novel is only slowly revealed. The dial variously described as the dial of a clock, then Europes dial, ultimately the dial of life

Seven. The celebration. Short. A reunion. Professor Avenarius, the narrator, the other characters (as it were, in search of an author). The celebration (perhaps a real (view spoiler)[I quickly went out into the street.

The roadway was filled with cars honking incessantly. Motorcycles drove up on the sidewalk and snaked their was between pedestrians. I thought of Agnes. It was precisely two years ago that I had first imagined her, while reclining in a deck chair upstairs in the health club, waiting for Avenarius. That was the reason why today I had ordered a bottle of wine. I had finished the novel and I wanted to celebrate it in the place where the first idea for it had been born.

The cars were honking their horns, and I heard the shouts of angry people. It was in such circumstances that Agnes longed to buy a forget-me-not, a single forget-me-not stem; she longed to hold it before her eyes as a last, scarcely visible trace of beauty. (and as) (hide spoiler)] a longing for immortality, the unbearable longing to not be forgotten.

Playful ... moving ... didactic ... erotic ... misleading ... satisfying ...

Did I like it? Guess.

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Read more from the original source:
Immortality by Milan Kundera - Goodreads