Milan Kundera-Prediction

  How Milan Kundera hasn’t already got a Nobel Prize amazes me.  I’ve only read The Unbearable Lightness Of Being but that, for me, is enough to say that he deserves the prize.  That book is really one of the very, very few books I’ve read that when reading had thought that what I was actually doing was listening to music.  He is a rhythmical writer who knows how to bring his themes up again and again while putting on the necessary variations to make the whole experience at every point fresh as anything. 

 

He deals with sex as well as philosophy, a combination that has proven popular, living as a self-confessed hedonist.  In Unbearable he analyses the psychology of the concentration camp, of the protest and the use of tanks on civilians but he deals with these heavy themes with the lightness of his wit and his pleasure.  It is this dialogue of the light and the heavy that revolves with peculiar motion that makes it one of the great modern classics that is possible comparable to Italo Calvino.  There is also a stand out moment of tragic comedy involving a celebrity at a protest and a land mine that made me laugh with visceral on a train across Europe (passengers nearby probably looked at me with wonder than saw the book and then thought it was justified).

 

He plays with ideas and offers new ones for stale identities needing a restoration.  Kundera is the breath of fresh air where we may breathe clearly while facing our inherited problems and concerns that comes with the job of being human.  I can’t stress enough how remarkable he is as a writer Unbearable has been one of the best reads in my recent life.  Though he has said that the novelist should only produce seven novels so that there is enough for the casual reader as well as the hardened fan I think he has gone over this limit but then it seems hard for a writer of his caliber to ever stop writing.

He deals with many issues and personalities with searing insight and comprehension of the human condition in an incredibly readable way.  He reminds us of our old humanity in a new way and no doubt is in the ‘ideal direction’ and is, I would argue, the best of writing.  I should make this post a bit longer but what else is there to say other than to state his brilliance?  I yearn to read more of him and I have The Joke, Immortality and The Book of Laughing and Forgetting ready on my bookshelves.

   
So Nobel Prize Committee if you are reading this then give Kundera his deserved Prize and you will have my everlasting thanks.

Now this is where you hit a paywall- well not exactly a paywall more like a moat you can swim across- but what I'm saying is that if you enjoyed this blog and my previous work than you can help support me by going on Patreon.com and search for Alistair David Todd-Poet. 

I only ask for the lowest possible donation ($1) so that you don't have to wake up in the middle of the night sweating about bills and tax.  Two reasons I ask you of this is 1) It would mean a lot to me and 2) I can buy more Nobel Prize Winning books. 


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Gabriel Josopovici-Prediction

 

My inclusion of Gabriel Josopovici on this list comes down to two things:  The book ‘Contre-Jour’ (with it’s fantastic cover) on my shelf and his other book about modernism.  I’ve not read either of them but what I make my judgment on is the quotes on the back and it’s high praise indeed.  It’s not that his work is good that tips me off but it also the suggestion that he is moving in an interesting fashion.  He is one who not only writes well but also has a vision.  It strikes me that he purposeful writes European literature and knowing how the committee can be euro-centric this may be to his advantage.

  There may not seem to be much to base a prediction on but I think that in not reading Jospipovici’s books I can tell that he would be considered a candidate.  In this fashion he is a bit like Aberto Manguel whom I know little.  He’s a serious thinker of literature demonstrated in his book about modernism asking what happened to it?  So it is likely that he would bring that into his books.  Everything about ‘Contre-Jour’ screams high literature from the Pierre Bonnard painting to Josipovici’s name.  If he is, like the Guardian says, ‘one of the very best writers now at work in the English language’ than there is no reason why he cannot be a candidate for the Nobel Prize.