sounds like a plan, stan.

seriously, keep up the wonderfully sharp posting, justine. you do that, and i’ll try to always wear something presentable when i read your blog

We’re going to have to agree to not agree on the Kundera piece though. Yes, I’m aware he’s not advocating grandmother beating, but that piece was no more coherent nor less banal than my parody of it. I read it a bunch of times and it did not improve on re-reading. I’m still hoping it was a joke or a bad translation.

Fortunately, I don’t hold bad critical writing against primarily fiction writers (or vice versa). If I did I’d have to stop reading some of my favourite novelists. (Nope, I’m not going to name them!) Life is Elsewhere will always be important to me.

it seems to me kundera is merely presenting a type for the novelist. the age of 30 is simply a rather arbitrary age at which kundera feels authors are likely, having already hit a stride of sorts, outrun their lyric ideals. he is defining the novel as a medium through which authors discard a pre-interpreted view reality and install a fresh vantage point in its place. the reader is naturally forced by such writing to see the world in a new way, to see other people in a new way, and by extension see him/herself in a new way. surely this is not so much “wank” as you seem to think…

all silliness aside, do think about writing what you actually think about the essay, because you cannot possibly believe that kundera wants anyone to beat their grandmother

all that aside, i honestly love the humor in your writing – you’ve got a style the intelligence of which much of what one finds in the blogosphere does not begin to attain. i will certainly be back here again.

Chris: It’s either a joke that isn’t funny or it’s a wank. The article’s main sin is that it’s really really really boring as well as nonsensical. Just to be clear though what I wrote isn’t quotes but mocking paraphrase.

Marrije: That’s awesome! Tell your friend I must shake his hand.

Moles: Do me a favour and read the article then you’ll see what I mean. C’mon, I have a phd in semiotics it’s not like I am against profound thought on any number of topics, innit. This article reads like he got drunk and then just typed and thought it’d be a lark if he could get the New Yorker to publish his random typery.

When he says “novelist” he appears to mean a handful of dead white guys. Some of whom I admire excessively and yet not striking me as a very useful deployment of the term.

Though I also think when Kundera says “novel” he means something a lot more specific than most of us do.

I enjoyed The Unbearable Lightness of Being, too, but haven’t read Immortality yet, though Nathan Ballingrud just recommended it to me. I hope the wank isn’t too wanky. Err, you know what I mean.

Perhaps it really is a joke.