Milan Kundera
1 Painfully Beautiful
"The Joke" is a marvel. It is moving, lovely, engaging, bittersweet, and at times even laugh out loud funny. It is irresistably readable. Unlike some of Kundera's other works, which can get horrifically and unsatisfyingly complex, "The Joke" is first and foremost meant to be *read.*
One does not have to have a particular political interest to enjoy this book, either. It is a story about love and humanity and the eternal question of how to live. Ludvik's life is changed because of his apparent opposition to Communism, but it is not at heart a political work at all.
If you love to get lost in a good book, especially one that really makes you think and feel, pick up "The Joke." You won't be disappointed.
2 I loved it . . . no joke
The first thing you notice about this brilliant novel is the narration. It switches narrators repeatedly (a technique that Kundera cannot use today because he puts himself into his novels as the first person writer/narrator, much the same way that McCrae does in his "Bark of the Dogwood"). The idea is that events in real life do not come to us fully formed - we hear one point of view, and another, and another, and it is up to us to unravel the various stories to find out what "really" happened. As everyone knows, one person's point of view will never be the same as another's. The Joke's genius lies in its unabashedly saying exactly that.
3 Fascinating characters.
I see that lots of readers have commented on Kundera's ego.
Who cares? I enjoyed the story and that's what counts isn't it? One thing that I can say about Kundera's books is that if I were to see one of his characters on the street, I'd be able to identify him. The people in his books are very complex. Like us. He creates human characters with contradictions, strengths and weaknesses. I love to read about what motivates them and why.
What causes me to really enjoy his novels is Kundera's insight. I think that many readers will find some of their own characteristics in his writings. The Joke is no different. If you're a Kundera fan, I think you'll enjoy yourself. And if you've never read Kundera before, this is a good novel to start with!
4 Kundera's best
Milan Kundera is smart, perceptive, and a brilliant writer. Unfortunately, he knows it. He gets caught up in his idea of the novel and refuses to abide by the techniques of suspense and narrative. But there's a *reason* those techniques are the norm - they're tried and true. They *work*. Kundera jettisoned those techniques in later works, putting the "climax" of his novels in awkward places. The results, in my opinion, were very good novels, not great ones.
The Joke is Kundera's first novel, and his current style of writing will not fully appear for another decade. This definitive fifth edition is, I believe, the best of Kundera's works (and to an extent leaves me wishing he didn't abandon what worked so well right here).
The first thing you notice about this brilliant novel is the narration. It switches narrators repeatedly (a technique that Kundera cannot use today because he puts himself into his novels as the first person writer/narrator). The idea is that events in real life do not come to us fully formed - we hear one point of view, and another, and another, and it is up to us to unravel the various stories to find out what "really" happened. As everyone knows, one person's point of view will never be the same as another's. The Joke's genius lies in its unabashedly saying exactly that.
By the seventh and final part, the point of view is switching rapidly from character to character. What is only slightly meaningful to one character brings another to the point of suicide. The final chapter is brilliantly lyrical - it reads like poetry and not like overblown purple prose (an aside - Kundera's greatest strength may be that he *never* writes purple prose; some may call him arrogant, but he's not pompous, and there's a difference).
The Joke is, frankly, not very political (it is certainly less political than, say, One Hundred Years of Solitude, which itself was mostly apolitical). Nor is it a period piece, as the (pompous *and* arrogant) literary critic Harold Bloom says. It is both ambitious and well-executed, both perceptive and melancholy. Kundera's books are barely recognizably in his first novel - and that may be good or bad, depending on your point of view.
Put it this way - I would recommend The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and Immortality to everyone who loves to read, think, and most of all, test his or her mind. I would recommend The Joke, however, to *everyone*, whether they think that Catch-22 was drearily boring (c'mon, it's *funny*) or that The Lord of the Rings is the greatest book ever written (Harry Potter is better, and you know it! ;) ). More than anything, it answers the question, "What if history plays jokes?" The answer doesn't bode too well for all of us.
5 Well Written Book Has HUGE Ego
While reading the Joke I was spellbound. The book itself was fantastic. It was well written, interesting, well-paced, and moving. The ideas conveyed within the story are especially vivid and yet are described so brilliantly that many appear only as subtle reflections in a small sentence.
The reason, however that I cannot award this book its proper 4-5 stars, is because of what someone else has already said. Whoever said that Kundera has a terribly huge ego was absolutely right. In the author's note he complains how annoying it was for him to be published and mistranslated, which while certainly reason to complain there seems to be a very crisp wave of arrogance. He goes so far as to say he left one of his publishers simply because they wished to change a few of his semi-colons to periods.
Shame on you Kundera, if only it were not for your narciccistic ways your books would be so wonderful, please remove that author's note and let us enjoy the book... not despise the author!
6 Genius
This was the first and, as yet, only Kundera novel I have read. I look forward to consuming all his works of fiction. The narrative seemed odd and stilted at first, but as I stayed with it I became completely absorbed. The main protagonist, Jahn, exhibits so many human traits and failings that most people would try consciously to repress that I found myself feeling greater and greater "humanity" as I followed his exploits. Kundera also lays bare in this book many of the myths about Communist eastern Europe (e.g., that intelligent people only went along with the dogma unwilllingly). A really excellent and original writer.
7 Kundera?s first novel, and maybe one of his best.
After reading several books by Kundera -one of my favorite authors-, I decided to try his first novel, "The Joke". Because it's the first one, its natural that the style would differ from his latest production...however, the author is the same and the style is similar in all of his work, he explores human thoughts and emotions beautifully, maybe not in a such profound way like Dostoievsky or Hesse, but close enough to be in the same league.
If you want a detail of the plot (I personally don't like to do that before reading a book), you will probably find that in other reviews, I'll just said that the story is about a man that lost all of his achievements just for a misunderstanding, a joke that was not well received in a communism society. Kundera explores the thoughts of this man (in several time periods of his life), but also takes other characters and gives them a protagonic level (the story is written in first person, in the view of all of the characters). The book gets more and more interesting as it develops, and the climax is at the end, the last 50 pages are brilliant. A dramatic story with a great end.
Five stars for the way Kundera allow readers to get to know and love his characters.....brilliant narrative, brilliant book.
8 Very Poetic ( An Excerpt )
`The Joke' comes almost as close to `The Lightness". Often times I woke up to realize I was reading Kundera and not Kafka ! I envy Kundera for how poetically he tells the story of an young communist , ludvik, his innocent `joke' - and how that ultimately changes his life. Here is one of the excerpts from the novel , I liked so much - This is how the entire novel is like !
As soon as he got to Prague, he pounced on his wife ( I call her his wife, but she actually was just another nineteen year old girl) and she admitted everything brazently ( perhaps even eagerly ); He started beating her; she fought back; he started chocking her and smashed a bottle over her head; she fell to the floor and lay there motionless.He immediatly realised what he had done, panicked, and fled. Shomehow or other he found an empty summer cottage in the mountains and holed up there in terrified anticipation of being caught and hanged for murder. When they found him two months later, they put him on trial for desertion rather than murder.His wife, it turns out, has regained conciousness shortly after he ran out and had nothing to show for the adventure than a bump in the head. While he was serving his time, she divorced him and today he she the wife of a famous Prague actor. I go to his plays from time to time just to remind myself of Stanza and his unhappy end. After his term of service was up he stayed on in the mines; an accident cost him a leg, the amputation took his life.
9 Kafka
From the moment I picked up the book, all I could think about was Kafka - The Castle, Joseph K in The Trial.... Kundera could not seem to escape his Masters - Kafka, etc. The novel is as intricate as any of his works and somehow sets the stage for future pieces. By far the most political of his novels, it is not a political novel. It is a story of human existence. Kundera picks apart a particular theme, on one level Kundera can be said to be exploring a sense of the absurd. The four part novel is cleverly written in the first-person narrative. The novel centers around Ludvik and Helena and the colorful storied surrounding them and their cohorts. Kundera sets up his heros as antiheros through a series of humanizing qualities - usually self-centered. Accused of portraying his characters from a male fantasy perspective, people lose sight of the intricate stories that he weaves - part advocacy, part parody. Centered around the narrative of the joke - Ludvik, who being a dedicated communist, finds himself the victim of a joke he outlined in an open postcard to a young lady he was trying to impress. Locked in this Kafkaesque drama, his life is one tragedy after another. He becomes a skeptic. He blames history. We are thrust into a tailspin of the "absurd situation" we find ourself in. Surface as this analysis has been, kindly look to the deeply insightful comment that Kundera makes on the human condition through the use of his characters. I am certain we will all find a little of ourselves in every character.
Miguel Llora
10 A great first book & an interesting critique of communism
This is a very good book, and amazing in that it was Kundera's first as far as I know. The most interesting thing about it for me is that it was written a couple years before the Prague Spring of 1968 when the Soviets sent the tanks in. All of his subsequent novels that I've read have been colored by this brutal invasion, so it was great to read about the relatively subtler techniques of oppression the communists used previously -- e.g. suppressing intellectuals, only allowing young enthusiastic communists to succeed in college, sending "Trotskyites" and other dangerous dissenters to work in the mines. The story is effectively told from the perspective of four different characters.
I can only give the book four stars for a few reasons. One is that I'm biased by Kundera's later books -- I loved "Lightness of Being", and "Laughter & Forgetting" to a lesser extent. The second is that I thought "The Joke" was usually well-paced, but dragged occasionally. Finally, I hate to sound PC, but the misogyny I detected was slightly troubling. I say this partly because the sections of the book told from a woman's point of view revealed her to be both hypocritical and foolish. More importantly, he has an extraordinary passage where he basically says that "You can persuade women to do anything if you use their self-delusions to your advantage", only much more eloquently than that. If he had said that about all people it would have been a terrific observation, but restricted to women it seemed bluntly sexist. I know it was coming from a character who was angry and misogynistic as a result of his troubled past, but it still left a bad taste in my mouth.
Overall, though, the book paints a vivid picture of the era, and his characters are well-developed and interesting. I recommend it.
11 Kundera's best!
Kundera's 1967 novel is definitely his best work. He merges the political situation of his country with the personal agony of his main character, masterfully showing how a single moment in a young man's life -an apparently harmless joke, actually- can turn it upside down forever.
12 Beautiful, original and moving.
This was my first experience of a Kundera novel, and I now find myself in awe of this brilliant writer. This cleverly constructed book unfolds gently and gradually to reveal the complexities of the characters involved, all of whom appear to be victims of circumstance. It explores the natural human desire for freedom, happiness, love and mutual understanding. Although the environment may in part stunt these potentials, it is mostly a person's own inner turmoils and imagination that destroys their ability to find happiness. At times I shed tears at the tragedy of the human condition, but also at the sheer eloquence and profundity of Kundera's thoughts. The main characters, whether male or female, are narrated in the first person, which reveals the author's great capacity for empathy, and writing skill in making these transitions believable. Surprisingly, there is often a delightful, underlying humour within the tragedy, perhaps a little like life itself.
13 For the love of life...
When I picked up this book for perusal, it had been quite a while since I experienced a love affair with a novel. _The Joke_ turned out to be an exquisite, tasteful, and tasty treat. I was enthralled by it for days, impatiently longing for a quiet hour to settle down with this remarkable text. Neither wishing, nor willing to put it down, I gluttonously consumed the last few chapters and found myself in tears over the concluding pages. Kundera is undeniably a great stylist, a skilled storyteller, and an unusually sensitive and compassionate author. _The Joke_ encompases so many things truly great novels tend to possess - profundity, elegance, memorable characters - to name but a few. It enlightens, prompts contemplation, and provides much eclectic food for thought. The ardent discussion of Moravian folklore and musical traditions is incredibly insightful and very accessible. Both subdued and volatile, this novel is an experience - in literature and in life - that is not to be missed.
14 A Mystical Thread
In the very first part of The Joke, Kundera begins setting up character types using contrasting religious affiliations. Kostka is the most obvious and continuous religious reference. He not only adheres to Christianity, but to Communism as well. He achieves this contradictory blend of beliefs through a process of rationalization in which everything relates back to God's greater design. Kostka rationalizes most things in his life and in the world around him as God's will. Unable to come to grips with his own image as a seducer, he conveniently clings to the religious notions of martyrship and absolution for sin. While unknowingly adhering to rational thought, Kostka criticizes rationalism as the corrosive force of both Christianity and Communism throughout history. In his final segment, Kostka's false piety is revealed as he suddenly doubts his faith in God and calls out in futility.
In this crowning moment of Kostka's development, Kundera is clearly having the last laugh. He seems to be telling us that it is not so easy and obvious to find God. Kostka is definitely not the image of harmony his name would imply, and, like everyone else, Kostka must struggle to find faith, salvation and comfort. Ludvik's later description of Kostka only confirms this interpretation and Kostka's character, with his dual beliefs, also serves as a platform for Kundera to criticize socialism and its hypocrisy.
The character of Jaroslav allows Kundera to express ideas much closer to his heart. Jaroslav's notions about fantasy are centered around an ancient belief common to many faiths that the most holy and true things are the oldest things. Jaroslav believes in archaic bad omens and also in Kismet. His love of illogical folk music, whose rhythm cannot be written down in our notation system is mirrored in Kundera's comments about rhythm in The Art of the Novel. Jaroslav, with his strong feelings for the past, struggles to live in the modern world of his wife and son, because, to him, it is a world devoid of meaning. The Ride of the Kings is his bridge between the two worlds, and when Vladimir blatantly rejects being the King, Jaroslav's fantasy world begins to fall apart.
At the same time, Ludvik suddenly beings to change places with Jaroslav. In true mystical Kundera form, Ludvik arrives at his changed state through some inexplicable revelation. From his irrational babbling, Ludvik ultimately arrives at a new faith that renounces the false faith of believing in eternal memory and redressibility and perceives the meaning of life as existing only in the moment. Living in the present, Ludvik is finally able to let go of his past and desire for revenge and find peace with himself.
The imagery surrounding the character of Lucie is highly mystical. While not a strong character, Lucie is a stark contrast to Helena, Kundera's ultimate joke and most biting object of satire. Along with all of the magical reference to her, Lucie's life is much like that of the traditional mystic. She is isolated, anti-social and does not communicate through normal means, yet she is somehow a representation of ultimate truth. In reality, Lucie's image carries more mystical qualities than her actual situation. This idea of image is one of Kundera's key concepts.
Rich in absurdity and reproach for hollow, hypocritical guises of faith, The Joke shows us that Kundera values a more intimate, abstract and individual form of faith as an avenue of meaning over the more formal, institutionalized religions created by man, which are often highly lacking in meaning.
15 To choose is to rennounce
This book made me very aware of the fact that every choise that one makes opens many posibilities and also brings many unpredictable consecuences. By choosing something, anything, we alter the path of our lives permanently.
Read and enjoy, reread and learn.
16 Beyond Ballard Book Club
The enemy is indifferent. Ludvik is a party follower with a predilection for silly jokes. As a young man, he teases a beautiful, serious woman and his joke destroys the future he planned. Kundera writes of the gray paradise of a penal town and the true love from a common girl. For those of you who are new to Kundera, this is not a Jackie Collins book. In JC's books, the hero as a child has been hurt and then as a young, sexy adult, s/he takes control! In a Kundera book, the hero must learn to let go, let God do the driving. Kundera's heroes also have sex, but it's the yearning that's the true pleasure. The Beyond Ballard Book Club gave this book 3.5 stars, with those who prefer a story that moves fast, giving it 3 stars and those who enjoy words and ideas over swift story, giving it up to 5 stars.
17 Stunning
This book was my first experience with Kundera, and a wonderfule place to start to get to know this author. The experiences of the main character, Ludvik, are heart-wrenching. They are unfair. Yet he bears them with strength and whatever dignity he can muster. No American could have written this book. Ludvik, while anti-Communist, is as un-American as they come. Yet, he is human, and a reader can relate to his losses, his sorrows, his rage.
With this book, Kundera opened my eyes to an unfamiliar life, and an unimagined way of creating literature.
18 Conscious wit
This book was my first encounter with Kundera, and it lead me to devour other books of his. I think what I appreciate most about Kundera is the consciousness of his wittiness, and how this consciousness is both beautifully insighful and at the same time threaded with the cutting edge of irony. Life is a struggle and the gods play dice in Kundera's world, but it is that struggle that makes those the humanity of the characters profound.
Compared to his other books, I think what I appreciated most about his book is how it all came together at the end. As different characters add their voices and perspectives to the narrative, you begin to grasp a sense of the whole. You know how some books just leave you in an afterglow when you finish? That's how I felt with the Joke.
19 funny and sad and brilliant
Is it "arrogant meanspiritedness", "authorial gracelessness",and "publishing astigmatism" to ask for a reasonable and honest translation? To ask that a translator save his "creative" flights for his own works? I say it is not. I say readers are more likely to be offended at and have a right to be offended at an unfaithful translation (as well as at the Kirkus review above). This is a brilliant book well worth the care Milan Kundera took with it, well worth the care Milan Kundera took with its re-translation.
Also recommended: PENTATONIC SCALES FOR THE JAZZ-ROCK KEYBOARDIST by Jeff Burns.
20 An existentialist commentary
I was curious to see how many readers emphasized the political aspects of this book rather than the existentialist life philosophy which is exemplified. The truth is that the Ludvik's political joke that so backfired on him is only one of the jokes that life plays on the characters in this book. The theme, as I see it, is that we all have only an illusion of control over our lives--ultimately the joke is on us.
21 what Kundera might've been
Before he slowly became completely self-absorbed and deluded himself into thinking that he had something new to say, culminating in the awful Unbearable Lightness of Being, Kundera wrote The Joke, a beautifully written, painfully sad novel about an "innocent" joke that almost ruins a young man's life. It is one of the most brilliant and scathing indictments of communism I've ever read. And unlike Kundera's later works, it's a real story, where the "point" is made _through_ the story and not _over_ it. To put it bluntly, Kundera's ego doesn't steal the show. Too bad it could only happen once. A wonderful book.
22 Insightful About Life Under Communism
I learned more from this book about life under Communism than from pages and pages of political science text at college. Kundera brilliantly depicts the frustration and futility of negotiating private and public personas as is necessary in a Communist regime. I would recommend this to anyone interested in acquiring a personal understanding of life under Communism.
23 The "Joke" is a metaphor for the Communist system in E. Eur.
Kundera's work "The Joke" is an intricate metaphor which describes the impact of the communist system in east central Europe. Kundera describes how communism actually robs E. Europe of its culture by imposing a rigid uniformity which is actually intended to eliminate culture and nationalism in these satellites. By eliminating culture the Soviet Union will not have to contend with dissent. Ultimately, the Czechs and other eastern Europeans will see the communist system for what it is - oppressive- and will rebel. Emotion will replace blind devotion to ideology and Czech culture will prevail.
24 Spell-Binding
This is perhaps not Kundera's most developed work; however, the entire situation and issues explored are engaging. You can't put it down. It reads in one sitting
25 An insight into self actualization
I have always wondered about the thought process of a self actualized being. Could never make up my mind whether the term self actualization applied to Colonel Auerliano of "One Hundred Years of Solitude" or did Howard Rourke of "Fountain Head" fell into this category.You meet Ludvik in The Joke and then you get to know about the thought process of a genius; of what it is really like to be at peace with yourself. You get to learn however that indeed it is a very painful process; whether the journey is worth it or not; read for yourself.
26 Thought - provoking
A beautiful book about the eternal human search for meaning in a short-lived society that claimed to have all the answers.
27 A magic art of Kundera to capture our personal feeling.
Because of a joke, Ludvik is accused of having betrayed his party. When he is condemned he loses every certainty realizing that any attempt of defence is useless. He renounces his own reason and lets himself be dominated by the implacable truth of the absurd. The hopes of youth, of life, are suddenly broken with the expulsion from the comunist party and the expulsion from the University studies. The experiences of reawakening finds himself on the obscure threshold of anger, hate and revenge. Overwhelmed by anguish he seeks love, and Lucie is the brief love story that moves him deeply - a tormented sentiment unable to realize love. In the end, Ludvik is ready to let himself go as a person to be made more of silence than words.
28 Good but not Kundera at his height
'The Joke' is, no doubt, a fine book. Yet compared to Kundera's other works, it fails to impress me. The plot lacks the subtle and surprising turns which 'The Book of Laughter and Forgetting', 'Immortality' or even 'The Unbearable Lightness of Being' contained. If you are really after the "real" Kundera, read 'The Book of Laughter and Forgetting" - you will discover the best book you will ever have read.
29 A great book of love and socialism.
The story is developed strangely at the begining of the book; nevertheless we can infer most of the character's "leitmotive" when you have already read the third chapter. Every action of the main character (Ludvik) is the direct consequence of his called "Stupid Joke". Love is not easy in the story, sometimes is aggressive, others tender.
I think there was a little missunderstanding of Liev Trotsky's role in the "Social Revolution" in Czech Republic. Because he was the victim of Stalin afted Lenin's deth.
30 Mind-expanding.
My reading "The Joke" opened my eyes to an entirely different style of prose than I have ever experienced before. Kundera has more respect for his characters than any American novelist I have ever read. Rather than creating characters to tell the world about himself, I felt that Kundera revealed these characters' lives to tell us all something about the world. The best book I read in 1996 due to its complexity of story yet ease of reading, its engaging characters, and its honest depiction of people who learn to live thier lives despite the expectations of their society. The feelings experienced by these people - alienation, betrayal, revenge, and, in the end, a kind of defiant acceptance - are experiences most of us in late 20th century America can relate to
31 The premiere novel of a world famous novelist.
_The Joke_ is the first, and most traditional, novel by
Milan Kundera, the well-known author of _The Unbearable
Lightness of Being_. The story of a man who is sent to
prison after he sends his girlfriend what he thinks are
humorous remarks about Soviet philosophy on a postcard,
this book shows the influence of Kafka as Kundera
ruthlessly brings the absurdity of life in a totalitarian
state to an end that comes not with a bang but with a
whimper. This new edition corrects serious errors made in
the first translation, and which Kundera describes in his
introduction.
