The Narrator Took Phil 101 and Loved It

a review of The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

This sexy lil book takes place mostly in Prague and the Pragueland Area. Prague is not a very horny place for me. I’ve been once, when I was 10; my dad had food poisoning. I wore lime-colored converse and watched the Astronomical Clock do its thing maybe three times a day.

Our Prague tour guide, and the book’s narrator, took Phil 101 in college and loved it. The narrator checks in on us, the fair readers, intermittently like Artie Bucco hovering over his patrons Nuovo Vesuvio. It walks the line between irritating and thoughtful and makes me want to say “It’s okay, dude, we got this. I also took Phil 101 and actually I bodied that course.”

This book pairs well with an entire bottle of cabernet sauvignon and an encyclopedic knowledge of Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals by Immanuel Kant, but I only had the cabernet sauvignon. I will never not have to google “metaphysics” which is basically the branch of philosophy that examines the nature of existence.

Kundera explores duality (lightness vs weight, soul vs body) and the ways in which they braid together like metaphysical challah in our psyche. He does this through a cast of horny, troubled characters who seem familiar to us. In our own lives we are the horny, troubled characters (HTCs). So we must look upon them with compassion when they pose in nothing but a bowler hat and underwear. First we cringe, then we try to understand.

The HTCs are all wrecked pancakes, burned at the edges while their gooey insides spill out under pressure. Tomas is a middle-aged surgeon committed to his “erotic friendships” in which he either sees a woman “three times in quick succession and then never again” or in 3 week intervals over years. Which means Tomas is the platonic ideal of a Fuckboy.

His wife Tereza is wrecked by body image issues that storm her dreams and rival those of a 13-year-old girl raised on Abercrombie and Fitch marketing materials. His mistress Sabina is an artist, guilty of the aforementioned bowler hat scenario, who I would probably feel envious of because guys would think she is hotter than me.

Kundera writes rhythmically and the book reads like a foreign film, narrated by an omniscient and handsome-sounding European man. It reminds me of “Amélie” and begs for a Yann Tiersen soundtrack. It’s not a love story, but Unbearable Lightness believes love stories are the driving force of an interesting life. If our lives are spun with love story thread, and the love stories are fraught, does that mean our lives are fraught, too? Would we have it any other way?

I like my romantic relationships like I like my series of events: unfortunate. Save froth for Netflix original content, because I would rather create lifelong bonds with random people who have repeatedly clicked “unsubscribe.” It is a mid-weight burden. If lightness is unbearable, mid-weightedness is annoying. Ugh. Or as Beethoven put it: Es Muss Sein (it must be).