"When Don Quixote went out into the world, that world turned into a mystery before his eyes. That is the legacy of the first European novel to the entire subsequent history of the novel. The novelist teaches the reader to comprehend the world as a question. There is wisdom and tolerance in that attitude. In a world built on sacrosanct certainties the novel is dead. The totalitarian world, whether founded on Marx, Islam, or anything else, is a world of answers rather than questions. There, the novel has no place."
Milan Kundera, "The Book of Laughter and Forgetting."
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23 comments:
Careful. You are triggering painful PTSD flashbacks of sitting through three heavy, unbearable hours of The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
James Patterson has sold 305 million books, mostly novels.
In high school I tried a creative writing experiment to rewrite "Catcher in the rye" from a Muslim perspective. The novel was 3 pages long and didn't end well for Holden Caulfield. The end.
Don Quixote was a character who thought that his chivalric romances described the real world, and so got into scrape after scrape where his ignorance led him to be bested. Kind of like what is currently happening with our media, who apparently live in their own phantasmagoria enabled by cheap money and billionaire largesse, and so are constantly shocked when the real world upsets their expectations.
Does the stupidity of people come from having women in charge?
The best thing I'll read all day.
This is profound enough, and more pertinent now than when he wrote it. (Thanks, AA.) Not only is that intolerant certitude more widespread now in the general populace, my personal survey of millennials (the younger ones especially) and zennials suggests that the novel itself is all but dead.
But so are movies in which CGI isn't the co-star alongside superheroes. I was talking to a 35-year-old who works at Netflix and self-identifies as a "movie buff" (his words). I asked his opinion of Casablanca, River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia, Cuckoo's Nest, Amadeus, and Witness (chosen more or less at random). He'd seen none of them. (I didn't bother asking about novels after he said he didn't read much.)
I like it. Totalitarian and monotheistic religion have unquestionable answers. They persistent because people fear uncertainty and doubt and crave simple answers curated to confirm bias.
The coolest thing about being a Catholic is the amount of mystery involved w/in it.
Some things are revealed to us as we mature. Other things will hang over us until we die. I often wonder, not just the answer- but, the Truth. That’s why I love Althouse etymology lessons so much. With words I never would have thought of: it’s an adventure into our collective historical past.
Cool book.
I’ll have to look up the man, too.
He birthed it;0)
“The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything”. So true!
Politicians seem to think they must have an answer or an opinion for every question posed. In reality, it’s perfectly ok to simply say “Gee, I don’t know. I haven’t looked into to that but I will”. Unfortunately, Jen Psaki, with her “circle back” response, which was a total dodge, gave thoughtful consideration of a matter a black eye.
A further test, of whether or not to even state an opinion, would have kept Disney out of trouble. The first question is: Does this matter directly affect my business? Yes or no. If No, stay out of it. If yes, ask the next question: Where are my customers on this? If they are of divided opinions, stay out of it. If not, proceed very carefully if you must. You don’t get in trouble for something you don’t say.
"The novelist teaches the reader to comprehend the world as a question."
So if I already "comprehend" the world that way, I can skip the lesson?
"All great novels, all true novels, are bisexual."
Milan Kundera
The genius of the novel seems to be that ordinary people can be heros. This role is neither just for classic ancient heros, soldiers and legislators, nor for saints. Ordinary people can get a taste of real heroism by questioning dogmas, rules and authority, exploring new things. Why has the novel been replaced by something else? Partly by movies: big, bombastic entertainment, with much deeper and more varied satisfaction for voyeurism than was ever available before. Maybe building on the novels of Dostoevsky rather than those of Jane Austen.
Socrates says in Plato's Republic that a democratic people will go through a period of freedom, then demand a tyrant to impose order. The boomers and those they have taught may be going "back" to puritanism: no more jokes or novels.
I thought a novel is about telling a story from your perspective. To say that everything must be a question takes the “you” out of a novel and makes it more of a Buddhist meditation. That’s fine for what it is, but it will never be The Brothers Karamozov.
Cervantes published in the world of the Inquisition.
But, but we have so many super intelligent people with all the answers. Just look at the World Economic Forum.
Could it be that intelligence and stupidity are not mutually exclusive? Why yes, it could.
Howard: "Totalitarian and monotheistic religion have unquestionable answers."
True to form, Howard is unable to distinguish between people's answers and God's answers.
was "novel" a word in usage before /literary form/ was invented?
So as we retreat into ethnic, sexual and ideological identity ghettos, each with their own established truth, the novel is bound to decline as a genre, even though more novels are being published than in earlier ages? Literary novelists aren't doing much to bridge the gaps and bring people together.
The Impossible Dream to reach the unreachable star will forever keep Don Quixote of La Mancha forever in our rich heritage of hope.
I gave a speech to the MBA class at a local college a few years ago. In the Q&A one of the students asked what books should she. read to be a better manager. I said she should read good literature. I tried to explain that she, and the rest of them, were young people who would be put into roles in which they have to manage people with dramatically different life experiences than they have had: older people for sure, maybe someone going through a painful divorce, someone whose child just did something great, etc. Experiences that they, in their manager role, have no similar preparatory life experience. Good literature could put them into other peoples' heads and help them see through others eyes. It would make them a better manager.
They looked at me as if I had two heads.
The Bible asks good questions:
Where are you? (God to Adam and Eve after the Fall)
Do you not know? Have you not heard? (Isaiah)
What does it profit to gain the whole world and lose your soul? (Jesus)
"True to form, Howard is unable to distinguish between people's answers and God's answers."
God's answers are authored by people.
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