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Virtual Macedonia Bookstore - Slowness
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List Price: $21.00
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Manufacturer: Harpercollins
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Average Customer Rating:   
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 891.8635
EAN: 9780060173692
ISBN: 0060173696
Label: Harpercollins
Manufacturer: Harpercollins
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 156
Publication Date: 1996-05
Publisher: Harpercollins
Studio: Harpercollins
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Yawn
Comment: here comes a time when every writer should know when to hang it up, for they have run out of fresh ideas and are merely left aping their former selves, and better works. That time, it seems, came for Milan Kundera with 1995's Slowness. It is a terrible little novel, or novella, for it is a small-sized book of 156 pages, with large font.
Now, Kundera first made a splash in the English speaking world in the late 1970s and early 1980s with two majestically great books- The Book Of Laughter And Forgetting and The Unbearable Lightness Of Being. In his works prior to those two touchstones his work was yet to be fully formed, and since then his work has been a mere shadow of its earlier metafictional glory.
The novel opens with the author and his wife Vera driving from Paris to a country chateau for a night's getaway. A hell-mell motorcyclist follows them and Vera remarks that people lose their fear when they get behind the wheel. It is an offhand remark, akin to the one that prompted the novel Kundera wrote just before this, Immortality, but it propels the rest of the book. This book, as his others, will be part novel, part memoir, and part philosophic discourse. Its subject will be a lyrical meditation on speed and time, technology and the mortal, memory and forgetting. Quoth the master: `The man hunched over his motorcycle can focus only on the present instant of his flight; he is caught in a fragment of time cut off from both the past and the future; he is wrenched from the continuity of time...in other words, he is in a state of ecstasy; in that state he is unaware of his age, his wife, his children, his worries, and so he has no fear, because the source of fear is in the future, and a person freed of the future has nothing to fear.' From this extended observation Kundera rues the loss of the art of slowness, as well its appreciation.
Of course, being Kundera, there is another track that the book operates on. Kundera claims to be currently reading a novella as he relates his own tale. Whether this is a real or made up work I don't know, nor do I care, for its veracity is irrelevant to the success or failure of Kundera's work. It is called Point de Lendemain, or No Tomorrow. It was written by an 18th Century debauchee by the name of Vivant Denon, really a pseudonym used by its author to retain anonymity. In the novella a young chevalier travels to the same chateau Mr. and Mrs. Kundera are at, to meet his true love, the married Madame de T, and perform sexual rituals known to only a select few....Unfortunately, along with being formulaic, Slowness is dull, preachy, pedantic, screedish, smug, and banal- all at once. It is a slim yet bloated discourse on sex, existentialism, anal fetishism, and manners. In his defense, Kundera at least showed some honesty in classifying the book as a mere divertimento- meaning he never intended to say anything of depth in it: on art, nor anything else. That is his right, of course, but couldn't he have warned his devoted readers, those with a true desire to use art to explore the world? Instead, he showed an utter contempt for his audience, in foisting this piece of crap into the world, and to me, such an act is the final curtain on a once glorious career.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Kundera's 'Slow' Meditation on Pleasure.
Comment: Slowness offers a lesson for these fast-paced times, where "time is money," multi-tasking is a talent, and couples must schedule time together for their sexual interludes. Published after his better-known novels The Unbearable Lightness of Being and Immortality, Milan Kundera's 1993 book, Slowness (La Lenteur), is more of a meditation on the effects of contemporary life and technology on memory and sensuality than a traditional novel. "Why has the pleasure of slowness disappeared," Kundera (as narrator) considers as he tells two parallel tales of seduction separated by more than two-hundred years. Through multi-layered plot lines, Kundera (his wife Vera refers to him as "Milanku") visits a country chateau-turned-hotel, while a young, 18th-century French Chevalier also visits the same chateau for an unforgettable night of slow sensual pleasure with his mistress, Madame de T (described as a "Loveable lover of pleasure"). Meanwhile, Kundera's friend, Vincent, arrives at the hotel on his motorcycle, where he joylessly pursues a "quickie" with a girl he met in a bar. A "dancer" named Berck is so caught up in getting things done that he is unable to enjoy his life. The novel ends with a brilliant and unexpected plot twist, with the 18th-century nobleman having a "morning-after" encounter with his modern-day counterpart, Vincent. Ultimately, Slowness is about the modern desire to experience life quickly without the benefit of reflection. Kundera equates slowness to pleasure and remembering, and speed to vulgarity, forgetting, and failure. Slowness reveals Kundera's brilliant mind at work, and as its title suggests, Kundera's short novel is meant to be savored slowly.
G. Merritt
Customer Rating:
Summary: An Intriguing Novel on Pleasure and Sex from Kundera
Comment: Those familiar with Kundera's "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" may find "Slowness" a bit of a leisurely letdown, and yet, like its more prominent predecessor, it is also an intriguing exploration of sexual relationships, but told this time more from those aspects of pleasure. Kundera's first novel written in his second language, French, "Slowness" pays homage to a classic like "Les Liasons Dangeureuses" in its elegant depiction of 18th Century French sexuality, but also has more than a nod or two to current Czech and French history. Miraculously, Kundera manages to keep these seemingly disparate storylines intact up to a most improbable conclusion that - for want of a better term - ends as some sort of dream-like fantasy. Much to his credit, Kundera excels in his depiction of slight details which render both tales rather realistic in their depictions of relationships, but readers may wonder whether Kundera has focused too much on such depiction while forsaking the establishment of meaningful plots. Still, I found much to behold in Kundera's translated prose, and recognize that it is still a very important book in his entire oeuvre.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great observations, but what happened to his style?
Comment: I struggled to give this book 4 Stars. I rather feel like 3, but that would put it in the league of far less intelligent books. Slowness is a very inspiring reflection on speed and memory, lust and enjoyment, truth and fiction, individuality and acting. It is also an ironic commentary on today's intellectuals and the media. And it is a story about love and eroticism. Maybe that's the problem with this book: It is too much that Kundera tried to convey in just about 150 pages. If you read closely, you get the point, but whereas Kundera preaches slowness and enjoyment, he practices speed and overload. His style is usually witty, sparkling, elegant and yet full of meaning - elements that are also occasionally present in Slowness. But here they have a hard time to stand out between passages of smart-aleck feuilettonism and the unconvincing attempt to be erotic, provocative and psychoanalytic simultaneously (it rather comes off as quite funny but both pretentious and vulgar at the same time). Even Kundera's usually refreshing experiments with form and style seem somewhat contrived. This book is still a notworthy read - philosophically inspiring, frequently quite funny and definitely original - but it's well below the esprit and stylistic brilliance of Immortality or Unberable Lightness of Being.
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Summary: An entirely unique author.
Comment: Let this be only the first of Kundera's books you read. It was my first, and now I've read everything of his that has been translated into English and if there's more I'm willing to learn another language to get to it. This book is humorous, but that is the least of it. I've never read an author with such perception, such a wily mind. It's impossible to get his characters or their lives out of your mind. Reading Kundera makes life, other people, and the whole world make more sense. And less sense, at the same time.
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Editorial Reviews:
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Two simultaneous stories, both taking place in a French chateau two centuries apart, details the sexual encounters of an eighteenth-century couple and the absence of sex for a twentieth-century married couple and compares the ""morning after"" of the two men. $100,000 ad/promo.
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