![]() ![]() No longer the Czechoslovakian, Cold War escapee, he writes in French, thinks in French-argues with the great philosophers in the French way-but he is still ever-fascinated with the motivations and machinations of the old Communist Party. Kundera is the open narrator of his books, with regular interruptions and sidebars. Indeed, much of life is pointless, and very few have the capacity to assert their will into concrete existence. It carries our attention and amounts to a life lived, while brilliance can be useless in everyday applications, shunned and feared by many, thereby alienating a soul. Insignificance, asserts Kundera, has real value in life and love. The internal monologues that dominate the narrative become a metaphor for the beauty of insignificance. The party is a fraud, as it is to honor a man who has faked his terminal illness. With The Festival of insignificance, Milan Kundera completes a series of short philosophical treatises loosely shaped around a fictional narrative involving the life, and mostly thoughts, of characters converging on a cocktail party. "People meet in the course of life, they talk together, they discuss, they quarrel, without realizing that they’re talking to one another across a distance, each from an observation post standing in a different place in time." ![]()
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