anticlimax.

[zubird]

my roommate has taken all the posters down off her wall, and put her things in boxes. her stereo, our coffeemaker. (she's left me the lamp, which isn't particularly magnanimous of her, since it's currently being held up by strings and pieces of cardboard.) uhh. i am not the sort of person who's inclined towards pithy summations, so i'll just say

Comments

[zubird]

i'm surprised you haven't seen the misogyny in kundera. it isn't as if he doesn't occasionally create female characters that are appealing or at least less reprehensible than his male ones (it's true that his male characters are usually worse people); it's simply that he hardly ever allows them any dignity. helena in the joke is the most flagrant example of this, of course, but it's also true for tereza in unbearable lightness (you can tell that he finds her usage of her weakness as a weapon somewhat disgusting, and i agree with him), for laura in immortality, for that girl...what was her name...olga, i think, in the farewell party, with the executed father and the breasts like twin plums (who is portrayed sympathetically in the beginning but in the end, when she seduces the dissident who was a sort of father figure to her -- i'm sorry, it's been a long time since i read the book -- she comes out disgusting and ridiculous). the most sympathetic women in kundera's novels, i'm thinking of agnes and specifically sabina, are essentially his avatars. his sympathetic male characters, like ludvík in the joke and klíma the saxophonist in the farewell party are usually not particularly admirable people, but they have a sort of agency about them that his female characters don't.

i just get the feeling from kundera that he finds women repulsive. i occasionally find women repulsive in similar ways, so i sympathize. but it doesn't make him any less of a misogynist.

(incidentally, i find kundera's affection for animals pretty endearing.)

as for the Greatest American thing, apparently they are going to do a Greatest American show on the discovery channel. it'll be interesting (well, unfortunately i'll be in europe while it's airing). here you can see the nominees. they're fairly standard celebrities and political figures... you know, i really have no idea who i would call the greatest american. it all depends, obviously, on your definition of "greatest"...most often, people seem to define it as "most admirable" or "most morally upstanding", and then we get people like harriet tubman and helen keller. i would probably vote for henry ford or alexander graham bell if it were "most influential". anyway, i would bet you ten dollars abraham lincoln is going to win.

yes, it's worth noting that there are more literary figures among the 100 greatest czechs than there are in the american nominees. i would say this probably is because americans love their historical political figures more than czechs do, not because the czechs are a more cultured nation or anything like that. and i think that the fabled eastern european wryness and irony is clearly a side effect of national trauma resulting from years of subjugation; americans, having always been the conquerers and not the conquered, are more likely to take their history very very seriously, with trumpet fanfare and waving flags. (have you ever read sherman alexie? native american writer. he talks about native american history with an irony and wryness i think is similar to some czech authors' -- also some irish ones.)

also, i can't think of any american writers who i think are greater (= more influential, admirable) than american politicians or businessmen. we're just a nation of shopkeepers. and no -- you're right, american culture does put a high premium on industriousness and such. but i really find historical american counterculture just as irritating and dissatisfying as i do american mainstream culture.

oh: the Greatest Czech show isn't over yet, they don't yet have the greatest. voting is still going on for the greatest czech among the 10 best, jan hus being one of them.

as for me, i'm most recently from Chicago, although i've lived in other places too. i go to school in Massachusetts.

[zubird]

ok, after mulling that unnecessarily provocative statement about american literature in my head for a few hours, i've decided that i don't really believe it and i was just being an asshole. (i make a habit of saying unnecessarily strong things like that, things i don't even think, just to say them.) umm... i suppose i didn't mean that there are no influential american writers. i may not like them very much (hemingway? bleh), but yes, ok, there are. it's just that they don't really play the role of pillar of the nation that they do in certain other countries. whether it's a direct conclusion from there that the czechs are a more cultured nation than we are, well, i doubt i'm the one who's to say.

[staterejectsbus]

no, your point's well taken; we have artists, but they don't mean much to us. and statements that're too large for their words are good; i make them all the time. especially, like, in a room full of new people, i'll say Overly Large things that are semi-opposite of the people in said room. i don't know why i do this.

Hemingway... i am fairly neutral towards. i haven't read too much. in fact, i'm looking at my bookshelf, and most of the books that really mean something to me aren't of American origin. but, movies, photography, music, that's a little different..

[staterejectsbus]

hmm.. agency. yeah, i see what you mean. but--i find agency to be fairly loathsome in most cases, so i found myself sympathizing far more with Tereza than Ludvik. i mean, yeah, Helena at the end of Joke, yeah.. but i guess, and this is probably a limitation of my vocabulary and point of view, but, i tend to see something like that not so much as a judgment Kundera's making on women, but a judgment he's making on Helena. and, moreso, it seems that judgment of any kind tends towards the smallminded, though much fiction deals with making somebody look sad and somebody else look strong, and that's a reflection of the flawed nature of life. or something. i have no idea. (i dunno. i'm thinking about this friend of mine. loves his mom, relates to her more than his dad, but simultaneously holds a generic, knee-jerk bitterness towards the female gender that i find puzzling and somewhat disconcerting. but, at the same time, it's not puzzling, because it stems from a few emotionally trying experiences and, mostly, many unquenched desires. is he a misogynist? yes... but. at the same time, i suspect he sees that in a longer view of things, he's being angry and absurd, for reasons utterly personal. i'm not approving or apologizing for it; in fact, i get pretty openly annoyed at him when he mutters things along those lines, but. i dunno. him and Kundera. i dunno. i try to shy away from words like misogynist, mostly because i'm never entirely sure what they mean.)

as for me, i find, in general, men to be the more repulsive gender. though i've been trying to keep my generally misanthropic tendencies in check, lately. of course, we all start out the same and end up the same; so i suppose i should just get over it. finding one thing more annoying than another, i mean.

i'm skimming the list now..

if it was for most influential American, i'd probably go with Ford: suburbia and interstates. not to mention all the rest..

but greatest is an awful word. it should only be used in describing personal reactions, memories and moments. when you start using it to describe anything much bigger, problems arise.

still skimming list.

yeesh. okay. yeah. we've got the whole cult-of-politics thing going.. (Reagan got something like four hours of Charlie Rose interviews, that same week, i remember, Ray Charles got like fifteen minutes. weee, obituaries!) and all the "glory" and relative lack of here-based wars must be a big part of that. but, i dunno, i've been able to find things, here and there, in music or movies or books, that i sympathize with more than a little. elements of American culture that admit that things end and that a good thing is usually a bad thing for somebody or something somewhere. the wry and sad parts. not all that victorious stuff.

what bits of American counterculture in particular do you find annoying?

is Massachusetts nice? i've barely been anywhere, and never there. it always looks nice, in pictures and movies, etc. the trees, i mean. i'm a fan of trees. though Iowa has trees, and nice skies, so i shouldn't complain.