Immortality (Perennial Classics)
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Manufacturer: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 891.8635
EAN: 9780060932381
ISBN: 0060932384
Label: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 352
Publication Date: 1999-11-01
Publisher: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
Release Date: 1999-10-20
Studio: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
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Editorial Reviews:
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Milan Kundera's sixth novel springs from a casual gesture of a woman to her swimming instructor, a gesture that creates a character in the mind of a writer named Kundera. Like Flaubert's Emma or Tolstoy's Anna, Kundera's Agnes becomes an object of fascination, of indefinable longing. From that character springs a novel, a gesture of the imagination that both embodies and articulates Milan Kundera's supreme mastery of the novel and its purpose; to explore thoroughly the great, themes of existence.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: Good book
Comment: Immortality is probably the last novel by Kundera that shows him at his best. This book, translated by Peter Kussi, released in 1990, is the last of a trilogy that includes the great The Book Of Laughter And Forgetting, and The Unbearable Lightness Of Being. While Immortality is not a great book, and not in the class of those other two books, it is certainly a good book that continues Kundera's metafictional ride through the 20th Century.
The nuts and bolts plot is about two French sisters, Agnes and Laura, and the man they are involved with- Paul. Except that none of them are real- they are the fictive inventions of the metafictional Milan Kundera who, after an old lady motions to a swimming instructor at a Paris spa, somehow becomes infatuated with the name Agnes, and decides to write a novel called Immortality. He says, `At the time, that gesture aroused in me immense, inexplicable nostalgia, and this nostalgia gave birth to the woman I call Agnes.' Of course, there are detours- whole sections of the book that are philosophic musings between literary figures like Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Ernest Hemingway. Also along for the ride is Professor Avenarius, a possibly real character who has been metafictionalized, who consults with Kundera on the progress of his novel, and whom Kundera rewards with a copy of his earlier novel Life Is Elsewhere. If this seems convolutes it is, and a bit unnecessary, although the more straight-forward passages in which literary and real world heroes come and go are better, and the philosophizing is first rate.
In many ways Kundera has taken what started with Vonnegut- the metafictive realm- and moved it to its next level. However, this book is not on a par with his two earlier masterworks, and the utter narrative convolutions are the book's undoing, what separates it from them. Where they are fresh and playful this novel, at times, seems on the verge of collapsing upon its own cutesiness. Also, the lives of the four `real fictive' characters never grabs ahold of the reader like those in the earlier books. Yet, overall, this is balanced by the great ideas put into life, death, art, and immortality.
But, this is not a book for the would be Kunderaphile to start with. Its convolutions may put them off from reading other of his works, and this book also marked the last gasp of greatness, as Kundera, since then, seems to merely be aping his former greatness, as his polypersonaic skills have faltered and he's become much more generic and predictable in both forms and ideas. Where once Kundera's interruptions of story were whimsical and refreshing, even by this novel, they seem more affective than effective, and his characters less individuals than personifications of themes. Agnes is not really Agnes, but a symbol of the human yearn for deathlessness, which then is rehashed by Goethe and his lover Bettina von Arnim- a woman who would nowadays be classified as a groupie of the rich and famous...And while I reiterate the fact that this is Kundera's best book, after his two masterworks, there is only so much breaking of the fourth wall that is needed to convey the metafictive nature of tales, in general, and this one specifically. Sometimes walls are not only necessary, but enough.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Oh I love this book.
Comment: I picked up Unbearable Lightness at the library and thought I ought to read it because it seemed like I should. And I did. And I was right. So I thought, hm, I'm going to read everything Milan Kundera ever wrote.
So I picked up Immortality at the library and ofcourse, I love it. People ask me what it's about and I'm like, I dunno, everything I think.
But you know what I do? When I got to Barnes and Noble in the mall you know how there is a table set-up and a sign on it called SUMMER READING? Well, I go over to the K section and pick up all of Milan's books and go back to the table and put them on top. Now, as you see, I'm not a book buyer, I'm a borrower, so I go into B&N strictly for this task. And when I go back to do it again, they are gone. So, do you think people are buying them? Or are they put back by some pesky salesperson who has strict guidelines about what people should be reading in the summer? I really don't know. Next time I do it I'm going to mark page 22 of Immortality with a little pen mark to see.
Anyhow, here is the gist of Kundera, in his own writing, "A novel shouldn't be like a bicycle race, but a feast of many courses."
Enjoy this feed-fest, it's a true wonder. I'm so happy I found Milan Kundera on this go round and that I am reading him while he is still alive (clap, clap, clap). It's such a bummer to read everything ever written by an author, to fall deeply in love and then find out he or she is dead :(.
Back to my summer reading...
"He discovered with happy surprise that Laura merged with the music; the only woman in his life whom he found to resemble the sea; who was the sea.."
Customer Rating:
Summary: Graceful Philosphy, Mild Plot.
Comment: I picked up "Immortality", which had been resting on my shelf for quite some time, with good expectations. Having read "Farewell Waltz" and "The Unbearable Lightness of Being," I knew what to expect from Milan Kundera in terms of style, and "Immortality" brought plenty of what was expected. With that said, I found "Immortality" a mediocre read; despite the elegance of the author's unique voice (one of my favorite aspects of Kundera's writing), I felt that, at times, he was too indulgent; his lengthy meditations on "life" after death, which comprised the middle sections of the book were potent at their introduction, but soon became stale. He simply blew the same note too often.
That being said, Kundera was not without his beautiful phrases; I was not enthused about Goethe's plot, so it was these singular images that kept me reading.
It is true, I may be biased by my age (22), but I felt the author's unweaving of Ruben's plot tedious. Sex and aging are universal themes; many have added their take, and Kundera's was not significantly different from the norm.
Having finished "Immortality" several hours ago, the maelstrom of themes and plots are still bubbling around in my head. Maybe it will be different when they settle down. Still, I do not think my rating will reach above 3.5, or below 2.5 (more likely the latter), nor will the opinions given in this review change much. Perhaps my expectations for this novel were too high, after all, an author cannot deliver hits every time around. And though "Immortality" is not an out-an-out flop, its lyrical gems and philosophical ingenuity cannot balance its self-indulgence and uneven plots. Sadly, I must call it a miss. Recommended only to die-hard Kundera fans.
Customer Rating:
Summary: But is it a novel?
Comment: This novel neither walks like a novel nor talks like one but its author obviously intends for us to consider it as such. Immortality is partly non-fiction or perhaps historical fiction with allusions to Rubens, Goethe and Hemingway. A great deal of musing is going on here as the author paints in sweeping, elegant, philosophical brush strokes. But turn-about is fair play and this style of literary paella somehow still largely works for me. That is, I respect authors who push the genre and try to take it to a new place. Otherwise, how would the novel evolve as a genre? While one may be transported in the parts of the novel which are clearly intended to be traditional fiction, the artifice of the historical flashbacks and the philosophy do intrude into the transporting flow of the fictional stream of the storyline. However, the philosophy is so wise and the allusions are so skillfully woven with relevant implications for the storyline that, once again, Kundera manages to pull of this effect, much to his credit. This novel is engaging, easy to read and thought-provoking. So no matter how one may characterize this quasi-novel, it simply works for me and I plan to read another, which is always a fairly reliable test as to whether you really believe a book is a good read. This middle-brow, literary novel has legs.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A feast of many courses
Comment: Milan Kundera is one of the most important writers in post war Europe. Each of his novels is playful, philosophical, digressive in a style reminiscent of Sterne and tries to make sense of the difficulties of human life in a playful and erotic manner. Immortality ranks as one of his best novels and perfectly fulfils Kundera's definition of a novel as a feast of many courses - a banquet for the brain to be savoured in many sittings, not a race to the denoument at the end.
Only some minor flaws. Kundera is an exemplary novelist of ideas. Themes considered in Immortality include the notion of 'Imagology' - the musings on the role of the image - in advertising, politics, the image of Lenin proliferating and dominating the ideology of Communism is perfectly attuned to our modern times, bombarded as we are by the sinews of consumerism. However some of the ideas here come across as a little strained. The notion that Bettina - with her attachment to Goethe to pursue immortal love with the great man - subsumed his literary reputation makes for playful, intelligent writing, but it is true? Nah. Goethe's reputation remains, I had to look up Bettina on wikipedia. The whole thesis is like a beautiful flower of many beautifully shaped petals that crushes instantly in the hand as it is so insubstantial.
Also, am I alone in tinging a strain of fretful, excited sexual deviance in Kundera's work, not just this novel, but in his books as a whole? Through out Kundera's work images of female humiliation occur such as the opera singers in 'The Book of Laughter and Forgetting' being trained with pencils up their rectums, girls having their skirts hoisted up in public, girls standing bare breasted and shamed in public, musings on 'Miss Elsa' - the heroine of an obscure Arthur Scknitzler novella who is forced to show herself nude to repeal her father's debts. Images like this clearly swirl throughout Kundera's mind on hot writing afternoons so that he comes on like Philip Larkin in his sweating, fervid 'Willow Gables' pornographic mode, getting a fretful thrill from imagining women degraded. Perhaps Kundera's sexual excesses might have been tempered by a few cold showers? Or maybe that would ruin something vital in the essence of the work? Worth a ponder.
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