"The Unbearable Lightness of Being" by Milan Kundera

For ordinary readers looking for a light read, I can assure you: “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” can be unbearable for you. Though raised and educated in the mid-20th century France, the author Milan Kundera is Czech by birth. Therefore, we readers can expect what is so typical of Soviet-era Eastern European writings…replete with melancholy and drab colours, even when the backdrop of the story hovers between Zurich, Vienna and Prague.

However, there are several excellent qualities that make it worthy of read.

Reading the book is akin to what a man feels when he takes a stroll in the park, sees a beautiful stranger, brings her home and afterwards sleeps with her. Then, he starts peeling in detail, layer by layer, on that fleeting experience with the stranger. What does the experience of being in love feel like? When we love someone, does the volition to own the other’s body necessarily carry the weight of unifying one’s body to the partner’s? Is the activity of sex an obligation, a pursuit of pleasure, or both? How can love carry more weight when it is devoid of sex (and vice versa)?

Consider this example.  The main female protagonist of the story, Tereza, is married to a man, Tomas, who sleeps around with other women. She is fully aware of this fact, yet she willingly gives in to Tomas’ pursuits of outside pleasures, since she contends that he is merely satisfying the bodily needs while his soul belongs to her alone.

Or is it so?

Because at times she postulates that since the activity of sex itself does not necessarily define the emotions of love with it, she should be perfectly fine with it. In other words, she is not jealous of her husband when he seeks pleasure from other women. She is only jealous when her body is treated like other women’s. On this aspect, she compartmentalises herself, becoming a detached observer to the marital conundrums.

The banality of life is another interesting topic that Kundera has touched with his two separate yet interconnected stories. When the pleasures of life have become one’s routine, is it possible to rekindle the flames that had once surfaced when we experienced it for the first time? For example, going on a hike for the 100th time may not carry the same excitement and adrenaline rush as when we were about to do it for the first time ever. Marital and love can also carry out the same dissatisfaction due to this very reason: it becomes banal.

Though the topics dealt in the book revolve around love and pleasure, this is not a romance book. Far from it, even. Kundera has peeled each of the layers that each of us carries when the notion of romantic love, namely eros, and helps us to define how we see them and why we see them the way we do. We may not agree with his opinions, but at least we can give them a try.

Verdict:  8 out of 10 stars

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on Getting intellectual nourishment

Working as a librarian in the busiest public library branch in Kentucky has gained me nearly unlimited access to every single book that has ever been published in English since the 1930s, which is great considering that my very definition of a paradise includes reading a good novel with the company of a few friends.

Starting from the second week of March, I have decided to start posting my own reviews of some books I have read - either those in the distant past or those I came upon recently. This new project of mine has nothing to do with any classes I am taking at community college.

Quite the contrary, I have been dying of thirst for intellectual nourishment...and enrolling in a small-town community college sates me none of that.

Hence my book reviews, which I will faithfully post every Saturday.

The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, who at the dawn of the 1980s promulgated the notion of “cultural capital”: the idea that aesthetic choices are an artifact of socioeconomic position. He documented a correlation between taste and class position: The scarcer or more difficult to access an aesthetic experience is –literary world very much included- the greater its ability to set us apart from those further down the social ladder. This kind of value is, in his analysis, the only real value that “refined” tastes have. My book review project would hopefully help me in fulfilling my own need for reaching that aesthetic ideals.

Most will be fiction, some will be non-fiction, depending on whatever genre I feel like reading at the time. As a general rule, I would never post reviews on chick-lit or horror or Christian fictions, though I may find exceptions every now and then.

Unlike my old project of translating Indonesian songs once a week, I will not take suggestions from anybody on what books I should read or review. I will review the books when I feel like it, but one thing for sure, I can promise you a book review for your weekends.

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Life!

Tomorrow (27 March) will be my last day of work as a cashier in the gas station.

Though in one part I am relieved not having to work on Christmas, Thanksgiving, or New Year's any longer, it still saddens me somehow, leaving the coworkers I have grown attached to during the last two years.

Hence I still shall come and see them every once in a while.

And starting Wednesday onward I shall become an ordinary college student with only 15 hours on my part-time librarian job.

Oh, Life.

How I've missed you so much!

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"Coraline: Graphic Novel" by Neil Gaiman

It took me slightly more than one hour to finish reading this graphic novel adaptation of Neil Gaiman's work, for the first time ever.

I must admit, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I had always thought of Neil Gaiman to be some hollowed-out fantasy author, but after reading this graphic novel, I think I may reconsider...

"Coraline: Graphic Novel" takes fantasy into a teenager's psyche and transforms it into what not only seems otherworldly, but also...real. Sort of like children-friendly Kafka. I have known only a few authors other than Gaiman who can create such a distinctive quality.

Verdict: 8 out of 10 stars

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"Cakep banget deh dia!"

Oh crap.

I was commenting to my sister Melody about someone I just saw when I realised that half of the room actually understood Indonesian.

I had some stares back at me, but since the person in question did not understand one word of it, they kinda let it go.

Mom, Melody, and I were on a Christmas party in Southern Ohio hosted by an Indonesian American family. There were around.... 30 (or 40?) people altogether who came to the meeting, some naturalised citizens, some here on student visa, some married to Caucasian American men, and some are sons and daughters of Indonesian immigrants.

Here's the thing about Indonesian Americans: just like other Asian communities in USA, we hardly speak our own native tongue.

A typical Asian American family today looks like this:

1. The mother, who is Asian, speaks both English and her mother tongue fluently.
2. The father, who is Caucasian American, only speaks English. He can only understand his wife's language a little.
3. The kids, who are born and raised in USA, only speaks English. They can have true Asian names (such as Arjuna, Rio, etc... and these are real examples!) but they don't understand one word of their Mom's language.

So the lingua franca of the group is still English.

Which is not bad, considering that the only reason I came to the group gathering was for the food.

Until Mom and I discovered that there are several sparse enclaves of Indonesian American families scattered throughout Southern Ohio and Northern Kentucky region, we thought that we were the only ones of Indonesian ethnicity within a radius of 50 miles. Then she got introduced to a Chinese Indonesian from Surabaya.

Invitations came, warmly welcoming us to get to know some others too.

So we got to know one. And another. And another.

My sister got especially delighted that one of the women in the group was an alumni of a secondary school she went to in South Tangerang, Banten.

And I got introduced to someone who went to school to Singapore too.

What a small world.

So now, let's talk about the food. Indonesian food!

We had a lot of them, starting from prawn crackers, risoles, bolu kukus, Fried rice, bakso, sayur asam, inter alia.

Each of us had our own specialties that we brought to the gathering. The only meals that Mom is accustomed to make are Fried rice and Gado-gado, which she brings to the gatherings every once in a while.

Thank goodness nobody brought Sate Padang, which would have ruined my entire appetite that day. Even the smell of it can make me nauseous.

They conduct such gatherings every now and then, but since it usually falls on a Saturday (when I have a class), I could rarely come.

Also, I have not tasted Martabak Manis yet. The only one food that I absolutely love the most. I heard that somebody brought it to the gatherings one day. Alas, I had to go to work, so there went my chance!

A pity, since that is the one meal I would pay hundreds of dollars for.

* (translation of title: "Damn, she's cute!")

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