Milan Kundera, Immortality
While some authors use their novels to espouse philosophies of life (e.g. Mark Helprin: “life is beautiful”), Milan Kundera uses his to compare them, embodied in his characters. In Immortality, he describes two sisters, Agnes and Laura, with opposite methods of expressing their “self.” Agnes takes a negative approach, attempting to strip herself of superficial gestures and thoughts until nothing remains but the essential core. Laura takes a positive approach, relishing her individual eccentricities and expressing herself in their accumulation. Which should we prefer? Kundera doesn't say, and, for me, the power of his work is in the questions he poses. For example, is our image “only an illusion that conceals our selves” or is the “only reality, all too easily graspable and describle, ... our image in the eyes of others”? Or, in the loves we know, do we see a true love which transcends its object (and thus passes easily onto another) or one which cares only for its beloved?
Finally, besides offering insights into culture, history, journalism, death, and posterity, Immortality questions the role of the novel in the age of adaptation. Kundera tells us that he has written it to be specifically resistant to conversion into other media, leaving us to wonder if the presence of film, TV, the Web, have changed literature in the way that, for example, the development of photography altered painting. In this particular case, a non-conclusive progression, an emphasis on specific phrases, references to the author and the wriing process, historical interludes, and code-named characters (A, B, M, etc.) help tie the work to its form, elevating the reading above the story, and, of course, make my few comments incapable of expressing anything of the essence of the novel, which you must read for yourself.