Painful and Disappointing

Like Balzac, Milan Kundera was on my reading bucket list. A number of friends talked highly of him, and some of my respected writers quoted him. So I chose to read his Immortality, a New York Times best-selling novel.

Unfortunately I was very disappointed.

Kundera doesn’t believe in the conventional form of the novel. He declares, “Dramatic tension is the real curse of the novel.” So Immortality has little plot. Instead Kundera uses the book to ponder some philosophical, social and behavioural topics, while criticizing and satirizing a slew of people and issues. He is as belligerent, vain and sexist as Jordan B. Peterson. But whereas Peterson offers some research-based and reasonable material, Kundera offers his own fragmented imagination with a flat story. He is egocentric, sarcastic, and didactic throughout.

The book consists of seven parts. The first one, “The Face”, introduces four characters, Agnes, her husband Paul, their daughter Brigite and Agnes’s sister, Laura. These four weave in and out of the so-called story. Kundera tries to prove that we identify with our face. If a person were able to change their face, they wouldn’t be the same person.

The second part, called “Immortality” is about Goethe and Bettina, a young woman enamored by Goethe. Bettina wrote copious love-letters to Goethe, and Kundera argues that those published love-letters immortalized Goethe more than his own body of work.

The third part, “Fighting” is about Agnes and Laura’s fighting. Laura, a neurotic woman is dating a much younger man, and when he tries to distance himself from her, Laura gets depressed and threatens her sister and brother-in-law with suicide. Kundera posits that she does that to immortalize herself. Because if a loved one commits suicide, you never forget them.

Fourth comes “Homo Sentimentalis” in which Goethe and Ernest Hemingway chat in the other world, and debate whether their fame is due to their talent and writing or due to what biographers and others said posthumously about them. Kundera also satirizes Romain Rolland, the winner of 1915 Nobel Prize in literature, for certain opinions the latter expressed.

In the fifth section, “Chance”, Agnes makes an appearance and Kundera tries to prove that in life chance plays a big role. Agnes’s story is intertwined with Kundera self-inserting himself and chatting with Professor Richard Avenarius, a German philosopher of 19^th century. They discuss writing, symbols, politics, love and chance. Kundera teaches the reader “…if we love someone, he cannot be compared. The beloved is incomparable.” On the very next page he contradicts himself by saying, “Maternal love is greater than conjugal love…”

Part six, “The Dial”, is about a new character, Rubens, who lives his life sleeping with every woman he comes in contact with, but doesn’t remember anything about any of them. Not even their names. There’s a real obsession in the whole book with men touching women’s breasts, to a degree that it turns the reader off sex altogether.

Part seven, “Celebration”, returns to Paul and Laura, again with Kundera self-inserting.

The book contains some disparate philosophical discussions among various characters. But overall Kundera sounds like a rebel without a cause, making derisive comments about everyone and everything, gesticulating just to be contrary, and to prove he’s right.

“Forget for a moment that you’re an American and exercise your brain.”

“…disciplined Swiss drivers obeyed the rules, whereas the French, shaking their heads in short horizontal motions, expressed their indignation at those who would deprive people of their right to speed and turned highway travel into an orgiastic celebration of human rights.”

“Once women start to fight they don’t stop.”

“It has been extremely lucky that up to now wars have been fought only by men. If they had been fought by women, they would have been so consistently cruel that today there wouldn’t be a single human being left on the planet.”

I persevered until the painful end to see if there was a point to the book. Alas, there was none to be found.

Lessons for this Life, Echoes from the Past

Anita Moorjani, the author of What if This is Heaven? almost died from lymphoma in 2006. While she was in the “dying process” she left her body and became capable of observing the hospital room and beyond. During this Near-Death Experience (NDE) she had many revelations, made many discoveries and as a result, changed the way she led her life. She also wrote a book about these discoveries and changes entitled Dying to be Me.

In What if This is Heaven? she examines the problems she faces practicing what she preaches, challenges some conventional social and religious/spiritual beliefs, calling them myths and says if we can change them our lives will improve immeasurably.

The main idea she stresses is that we are all divine and part of a bigger whole. We have to love ourselves for who we are, and we have to stick to our intuition and gut-feeling when making decisions in life. Regardless of how much our well-meaning friends try to influence us, we should stick to our guns and do what feels right to us. She says often the advice of the people who are close to us is a projection of how they feel about their situation. We should not feel guilty or worry that we will disappoint our friends or followers if we don’t do what they think we should do. She illustrates how hard that can be with examples from her own life. These include her struggles over whether she should listen to the advice of her good friends, give her audience what it expects, or do what she feels is the right thing for her at that time.

She also expands the idea of loving yourself by stressing the importance of mutual respect in romantic or marital relationships. No matter how much we love someone else, we have to love ourselves enough not to tolerate any abusive behaviour from anyone else. She challenges the new age spiritual teachings that say having an ego is selfish and we have to overcome or transcend the ego to be truly spiritual. She argues that having an ego is an integral part of this earthly existence, and is necessary for survival.

Moorjani challenges societal norms and ways of thinking. One of these is the trend of always being positive. She counters that it’s quite normal to feel negative emotions like fear, sadness, anger, etc. without trying to put a positive spin on them. Another idea is that women are the weaker sex. She says the female qualities of being sensitive, compassionate or nurturing, not only are not weaknesses, they are an important part of human characteristics that enrich our life.

She challenges the conventional religious/spiritual beliefs of karma, and paying for your sins either in this life, or after death. It’s not your fault if something bad happened to you, and after you die no one is waiting on the other side to punish you for something you did when you were alive. She believes that at the level of our spirits we’re connected not only to each other, but also to those who have transitioned to the world beyond: “…we are all connected, all part of one whole.”

This echoes the famous 13^th century Persian poet, Saadi’s viewpoint: “Human beings are members of a whole/In creation of one essence and soul”, as well as the renowned Persian mystic and poet, Rumi’s philosophy: “Why think separately/of this life and the next/when one is born from the last?”

What appealed the most to this reader was Moorjani’s message of love. “No matter what people think or say about each other, we are all worthy of being loved unconditionally just for being who we are. We don’t have to earn love—it is our birthright.”

Or in the words of Rumi: “Remember friends,/if you’re seeking closeness to the Beloved,/then love one another./Whether in their presence or absence, see only their good.”

Scratching Your Philosophical Itch

 

 

In The Golden Mean Annabel Lyon successfully strikes the golden mean between history and literature. Unlike a similar endeavour by Irvin Yalom, The Spinoza Problem, which was a solely intellectual novel about Spinoza, a 17^th century philosopher,  Lyon’s is a literary novel about Aristotle, a philosopher in 4^th century BC. She succeeds in making him and a few people around him multi-dimensional human beings with believable relationships. She adds in a nice dose of beautiful language too.

The title is one of the main tenets of Aristotle’s philosophy. The golden mean is the balance between two extremes, or simply put, observing moderation in behaviour. It proves easier said than done, both for the main protagonist and others, thus demonstrating the elusive quality of its ideal.

The story, told in first person from Aristotle’s point of view, is about the seven years he spent as one of the tutors of Alexander the Great. It starts with Aristotle, his wife and nephew moving to King Philip’s court in Pela, when he is hired by King Philip to tutor his young son, Alexander. It develops the close relationship and love between Aristotle, a seasoned teacher and thinker, and Alexander, a child prodigy. It explores both men’s psychology: Aristotle’s “sickness”, which comes across as depression and the ambitious genius, Alexander’s cantankerous excesses.

It also creates a believable circle of well-developed characters with meaningful interactions. Pythias, Aristotle’s quiet and brooding wife, Philip the king taken by his political and military exploits, Arrhidaeus, Alexander’s retarded half-brother, and Athea, the slave with supernatural powers, just to name a few.

In detailed flashbacks the story also paints the picture of Aristotle’s childhood, the shock of losing his parents at a young age, and his life under the guardianship of Proxenus, his sister’s husband.

One of the main strengths of the novel is the expert portrayal of the politics in the upper echelons of the Macedonian society. Aristotle has to handle his philosophical teachings judiciously both with the spoilt prince, Alexander, and his circle of friends. Being only one of Alexander’s many tutors, Aristotle needs to coordinate and balance his approach with the other prominent tutors too. He has to also navigate his way cautiously as a Greek in the Macedonian court, especially when Philip goes to war with Athens.

Another main asset of the novel is Lyon’s delicious language.

Of Aristotle’s and Philips’s relationship she writes, “Ours was an odd friendship, with respect and contempt barely distinguishable. I was smart and he was hard: that was what the world saw, and what we saw and liked and disliked in each other.”

In describing a state funeral, “Ritual sacrifices, funerary games, full pomp and honours in the high, golden, late-afternoon summer sunlight, pollen twinkling in the air all around.”

The novel is not without its drawbacks though. The main one is it’s too busy.

Despite the list of 43 names and the description of who they are in the beginning of the book, the mostly unfamiliar, 3-syllable Greek and Macedonian names become confusing at times. This is especially true when they are linked to equally unfamiliar locations or events. To make it worse, all those characters are not really essential. The story could be as meaningful without many of them.

Said characters engage in numerous unimportant peripheral encounters, meetings, background interactions and affairs, some of which are unnecessary and crowd the story. Olympias’s visit to Alexander, Aristotle’s party, and the details of long road trips from one location to another could have been easily omitted or shortened.

Overall, despite its few shortcomings, The Golden Mean is well-crafted historical fiction which also scratches your philosophical itch.

A Cerebral Read

How does the human mind work? Where do our ideas and thoughts come from? Why do we like certain people and dislike others? Why do we fall under some people’s influence and not others’? What is a human being’s strongest or most valuable trait: reason or passion? Is one trait intrinsically better/nobler/more valuable than the other?

These are some of the ideas examined in The Spinoza Problem. Its author, Dr. Irvin Yalom, a psychiatrist, examines the minds and behaviors of two people: Baruch Spinoza, a 17^th century Jewish philosopher, and Alfred Rosenberg, a 20^th century Nazi anti-Semitic ideologue.

This is a book that will appeal more to the rational and analytical reader.

In alternating chapters Yalom spins the story of these two exceptional people.

The first, Baruch Spinoza, is the smartest of his class and the favorite of his Rabbi. But he gradually finds inconsistencies, hypocrisies and irrationalities in the religious scriptures he’s taught. He voices them, logically explains them, objects to them but his Rabbi reprimands him, tries to change his mind and eventually bribe him into staying in the community. When Spinoza resists, he is ex-communicated forever from the Jewish community. The edict against him forbids any Jew to talk to him or come within a 15 feet distance of him. Talk about social distancing.

The second storyline is about Alfred Rosenberg, a loner, who as a high-school student in early 20^th century Germany, gives a fiery anti-Semitic speech and is called to task by his Jewish headmaster. To educate the young man his teacher assigns him a project on Baruch Spinoza, the Jewish philosopher, who was a major influence on famous German philosophers like Goethe and Nietzsche. This sows both the seeds of interest in Spinoza’s work and resentment of him in young Alfred’s mind.

Very little is known about Baruch Spinoza’s personal life. Few biographical or personal details made it into his books. Having been thrown out of the Jewish community, he lived a hermetic life, didn’t get married, subsisted on his income from lens-grinding and died at 44. So the part of the novel that is about Spinoza is mainly fictitious, based on his philosophy which he discusses in his books.

Yalom invents a friend for Spinoza named Franco, with whom he has long discussions. At first Franco is like a sounding board to whom Spinoza explains his anti-religious, pro-rational thinking philosophy. Later Franco challenges Spinoza on some of the tenets of his thinking. These character and philosophical analyses seem belabored and stilted, however necessary for a novice to understand Spinoza and some of the flaws of his beliefs.

The chapters about Alfred Rosenberg are much more fact-based, since there’s a lot of historical information about this 20^th century high-ranking Nazi operative. Rosenberg was a writer, a newspaper editor, and later a major official in Hitler’s government. He founded and headed major Nazi institutions such as Militant League for German Culture and Institute for the Study of the Jewish Question. As the head of the Ministry for the Eastern Occupied Territories he was in charge of looting libraries and cultural artifacts, mainly from Jewish families. It was in this role that he confiscated Spinoza’s library, housed in the Spinoza museum in the Netherlands.

Irvin Yalom, is a psychiatrist trying to understand and explain how an educated and seemingly civilized person can develop such irrational and passionate hatred against another race. So in the novel he invents a fictitious psychiatrist who is Rosenberg’s family friend, who tries to get to the roots of Rosenberg’s beliefs.

Yalom portrays Rosenberg as an unpopular and lonely person suffering from depression. In his youth he falls under the influence of the ‘racial theory’ of Houston Stewart Chamberlain. He simply cannot accept that Spinoza, a Jew, whom he believes to be inferior, could wield such intellectual influence over German philosophers. So he becomes obsessed with Spinoza and attempts to prove that Spinoza’s ideas weren’t his own but borrowed from other philosophers. He has a deep-seated and extremely passionate animosity against Jews and later develops an infatuation for Adolf Hitler. Despite his fictitious psychiatrist’s efforts to point out the folly of his beliefs to him, Resenberg remains adamant. Although at some levels he seems to be an intelligent person, every time he is questioned about his hatred of Jews he becomes hostile and storms out.

The relationship between Rosenberg and his psychiatrist friend also feels contrived and far-fetched.

The Spinoza Problem is not a literary novel. It’s an informative, educational and cerebral work about two unique human beings. The first one is Baruch Spinoza, who had an independent mind and the courage to stand up against tradition, family and community because of his beliefs, at no cost to anyone but himself. The other one is Alfred Rosenberg, a follower of other people’s thoughts, who caused considerable damage and suffering to others for his own personal advancement, only to be tried and hanged at Nuremberg.