There have been passages of sheer brilliance in Kundera’s Joke. I’ve been fascinated so much that I went and purchased another of his books today. I don’t know much about this latest book other than that it is endowed with perhaps the greatest title possible; one that speaks of a remarkable potential sublimity. It is called, The Book of Laugher and Forgetting. Philosophically and spiritually (really the same thing at many levels) laughter has intrigued me for some time, and actions that bring about forgetting (laughter, eros, sorrow, etc.) have a peculiar mystery to them as well that beckons to me from a shadowy corner. Ecstasy is forgetful of all but its subject. Can various shades of eternity be found in these things?

Here is an excellent passage from The Joke to round things out (p. 87).

At the time I felt nothing but hatred for him, and hatred shines too bright a light on things, depriving them of relief. I saw him merely as a vindictive, wily rat. Now I see him above all as a young man playing a role. The young can’t help playacting; themselves incomplete, they are thrust by life into a completed world where they are compelled to act fully grown. They therefore adopt forms, patterns, models–those that are in fashion, that suit, that please–and enact them.

Our boy commander too was incomplete…if he was able to come to grips with the situation, it was only because so much of what he had read and heard offered him a ready-made mask.

Youth is terrible: it is a stage trod by children in buskins and a variety of costumes mouthing speeches they’ve memorized and fanatically believe but only half understand. And history is terrible because it so often ends up a playground for the immature; a playground for the young Nero, a playground for the young Bonaparte, a playground for easily roused mobs of children whose simulated passions and simplistic poses suddenly metamorphose into a catastrophically real reality.