Review by Booklist Review
Kafka, Stravinsky, Rushdie--the modern artist confuses and often outrages critics looking for the clarity of orthodoxy. Kundera, whose talents as a literary and music critic almost match his formidable gifts as a novelist, defends the artist against obtuse or perverse critics, disciples, and allies. Thus he rescues Kafka the artist from the embrace of disciples who want to remake him into a thinker. Likewise, he brings the genius of Stravinsky out from under the shadow of the misguided criticism of a close friend. Similarly, Kundera reclaims Rushdie's Satanic Verses as an imaginative work from progressive intellectuals who have never read it but have claimed it as a political symbol of the need for a free press. Discipleship, friendship, and comradeship can all turn into betrayal. Against such betrayal, Kundera insists upon the creative autonomy of the novelist and the composer, whose works live in an ambiguous sphere outside of all history except the capricious history of human creativity. Though he offers keen insights into music and literature, it is in his celebration of humor in the European novel that Kundera's genial brilliance burns most brightly. --Bryce Christensen
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In this stimulating, free-form essay, Czech novelist Kundera (The Art of the Novel) traces the evolution of the novel from Rabelais to Kafka and draws parallels between literature and music as he shuttles effortlessly among Tolstoy, Nietzsche, Chopin, Thomas Mann, Bach and André Breton. The betrayals implied by the title include conductor Ernest Ansermet's rejection of the music of his erstwhile friend Igor Stravinsky; the halfhearted support for Salman Rushdie by intellectuals who misconstrued his Satanic Verses as an attack on religious faith; and Hemingway biographer Jeffrey Meyers's ``kitsch-making'' interpretations, which, in Kundera's view, confuse Hemingway's life with his fiction. Another alleged ``testament betrayed'' involves Max Brod, Kafka's friend and literary executor, accused here of promoting an image of Kafka as saintly martyr. Because of Brod, Kundera argues, Kafka's works tend to be read either as autobiographical or as religious allegories instead of as ``the real world transformed by an immense imagination.'' First serial to the New York Review of Books. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
"Great works can only be born within the history of their art and as participants in that history," states noted Czech novelist Kundera at the opening of this work. What follows, however, is not a history or even a straightforward analysis of the art of fiction. Rather, Kundera skims along gracefully as a skater, touching several high points-in music and philosophy as much as literature-in a wholly original discussion of how fiction functions and how it is implicated in the fabric of Western culture. Throughout, he is concerned with the moral dimension of literature, though not as a tool of instruction. He condemns the small-mindedness that would put a novel to work for some agenda, inevitably turning it into kitsch. Instead, he sees the novel as moral precisely because it is "a realm where moral judgment is suspended," allowing for the free play of ideas. Plenty of wonderful ideas play freely here. Recommended for all literary collections.-Barbara Hoffert, ``Library Journal'' (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Like a literary knight errant, Czech novelist Kundera (The Unbearable Lightness of Being, 1984; Immortality, 1991; etc.) rescues the novel, admired novelists, and composers from the distortions and betrayals of critics, translators, and friends while simultaneously offering provocative insights into the musical and literary arts. The essay, like the musical compositions Kundera discusses, is divided into complementary parts, in this case, nine. And within these divisions, writers and composers appear and reappear like characters in a novel who strut their stuff and endure the perfidy of friend and foe before taking their allotted place in Kundera's pantheon of seminal artists--a pantheon that, given Kundera's background, is Eurocentric, though Hemingway, Salman Rushdie, and Garc¡a Mrquez are included. But the writers that primarily preoccupy him are Rabelais, who wrote one of the first novels because ""he created a realm where moral judgment is suspended"" and introduced what Octavio Paz called ""the greatest invention of the modern spirit,"" humor; and Kafka, who, while showing ""that it's possible to write another way . . . to both apprehend it [the real world] and at the same time engage in an enchanting game of fantasy,"" has been ill-served by translators and biographers. Kundera also vigorously defends Stravinsky, whose detractors accusr him of""poverty of heart"" but didn't themselves ""have heart enough to understand the wounded feelings that lay behind his vagabondage through the history of music""; and composer Leos Jancek, though disdained for his innovative ""expressive clarity,"" is perhaps, Kundera contends, Czechoslovakia's greatest artist. A wide and engagingly erudite plea for keeping the faith and honoring the wishes of the illustrious dead, rather than insisting on our own self-serving agendas. Vintage Kundera. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
