Ignu Reads

             

                      “Let me speak. Do not interrupt me. I have no time to listen to you,”

 

 

The story of firdaus is a remarkable one, it represents the hardships women go through in Egypt as many middle Eastern countries and patriarchal societies. Firdaus’s storytelling is moving, heartfelt, and honest. A story of victim of capitalism, patriarchy and oppressive regime of Sadat.

Nawal Saadawi is an Egyptian Anarcho-feminist, doctor, novelist, and leftist revolutionary, if you want to know more about her ( click here ) .  Saadawi was conducting a study on the effects of prison on female prisoners when she came across Firdaus in Qanatir Prison. She heard of Firdaus from a doctor who believed that Firdaus is incapable of killing a man and thus unworthy of a death penalty. Firdaus refused to see anyone, she barely ate, but after repetitive appeals from Nawal to meet her, she finally agreed to tell her story a day before the judgment .

Firdaus’ struggle is to claim her body as her own. Since her childhood, decisions concerning her were never hers to take, her parents cut off her clitoris at a young age. Her uncle took her away when her parents died, and then he did whatever he pleased with her fragile body, eventually he forced her to marry a man so old when she was only 19 of age. Men in the street look at her as if her body existed only for them, to please them.

Firdaus comes from a poor family, she got to school and had a high school certificate, but she never made it to the university. First reason, her uncle was a man of religion, a scholar, and for him it was shameful to his honor to send his niece to a mixed university where she will be seated side by side to men. Second reason, her uncle saw her dowry could help him, and make him get rid of her. Firdaus wanted to finish her studies, she liked to read, it gave her room for imagining a bigger greater world where she can escape.

Women in the story all suffer from imprisonment, an invisible cage designed to trap women. All females that Firdaus encountered are living in illusions, weather it is marriage, work, religion, or respect. Firdaus did every role a woman is destined to do in a patriarchal society, she did the housewife, the daughter, the student, the worker, and the prostitute, and she came up with the conclusion that all of these only imprisoned her. All men in the story sought of Ferdaus as a territory made for them, her father to beat her, and everyone else to abuse her sexually, literally all men she met.

She was never expected to have an opinion on things, until she escaped the marriage. She was surprised and confused when she was asked weather she prefers oranges or tangerines. Nawal Saadawi took it that far to accentuate the extent women are not allowed to have a taste of their own, to not have a choice.

Firdaus embraces death. For her it is liberating, it is freeing. Death alone can save her from her misery, and her destiny of a woman. She believes that women whatsoever their class, or status are suppressed, are not free from male dominance, and she wants to escape her destiny.

I Believe that this is a must read for feminist from all over the world, it is relevant, poignant, and moving. The storyline is relatable for women from all regions of the world. Plus it is a short but powerful read.

In the last few months, nights became unbearable, memories came crawling back and hit me harder every time, I cry myself to sleep, partly out of indecision, and disappointment. I am twenty one years old, and I feel like my life has ended, not because I am not depressed or anything, it’s the decay of loneliness, deep down I feel that it is only a matter of time and I will go back as I was before, so active, so productive, and social. I wanted to find solace in something, to get out all the heavy thoughts clouding up my consciousness, this time it is a book that I have had in my shelf for a while, but it never appealed to me as the book for my current mood until two days ago, this book is Our Souls At Night, by Kent Haruf. Honestly this book was everything I wanted it to be, it is tender, touching, emotional, and very consoling.

Our Souls At Night follows takes us into the lonely nights of two neighbors, Eddie and Louis who have been familiar with each others, but never were friends until this one night when Eddie came at Louis’ doorstep and asked him if he could share her bed, share their loneliness, to just lay there beside each others, drink some wine or beer and talk each other to sleep. Eddie has a son, and Louis has a daughter, but both of them live alone for years, both of them are haunted by memories, specially at night, you know how it feels to live backwards. Over the time they spend together, they pour their hearts out, they laugh, and they share some intimate regrets, piece of memories, and secrets.

No one expected Kent Haruf to write a book after he was diagnosed with Cancer, even his publisher was surprised, in fact the book was published posthumously in May, 2015. My favorite works of my favorite authors are mostly either their last published books, or their posthumous publication, take of instance Long Day’s Journey Into Night, by Eugene O’Neill; the books that witness the last chapter of an author are the most intimate, the most autobiographical in tone, very insightful. I usually don’t write about the authors, but we can’t ignore how important this book was for Kent, like O’Neill he dedicated the book to his wife, a gift full of love and nostalgia. Kent Haruf and his wife used to spend so many nights late just talking, and chatting.

And just like Kent Haruf, no one expected a revival or romance from Addie and Louis, they as many old people were expected to give in to aging, to die before they stopped breathing, but Addie and Louis both refused this role by sneaking around at night, and sleeping in the same bed, although the reader is confused about weather anything is going happen between them other than the wine and chats. I guess that at such an age what is more important than sexuality is companionship, sharing aloneness with someone else. Addie and Louis have very poignant memories of their spouses, for instance we could feel that the memory of Addie’s dead daughter never left her, and we can still see the shadow of Diane over Louis, and his regrets, so when they are together, the memories don’t go away, except that they are uttered, they are expressed out loud, they are shared. And nothing can be more soothing than a shared melancholic moment.

Although the book is very simple, short chapters and full of dialogue, the thing that renders the characters accessible to the reader, still the book has a layer of complication, a lost unknown past to the readers except for few pieces of memories, dots that we as reader have to connect, it is not necessary though to connect these memories together to enjoy the the experience, but I felt uncertain about their decisions, I felt that for instance Addie had this feeling of guilt, she feels guilty about her dead husband, her dead daughter, and her son, she feels obligated to help her grandson out of guilt mostly, actually her romance with Louis reconnects her with her family.

I am so excited for the Netflix adaptation of this book, I hope it will do it justice, and introduce more audience to the genius of Kent Haruf.

Our Souls At night is a lesson on love, a lesson on fidelity and rebellion.

 

 

     I don’t believe in God. Can you understand that? Look around you man. Cant you see? The clamor and din of those in torment has to be the sound most pleasing to his ear. And I loathe these discussions. The argument of the village atheist whose single passion is to revile endlessly that which he denies the existence of in the first place. Your fellowship is a fellowship of pain and nothing more. And if that pain were actually collective instead of simply reiterative then the sheer weight of it would drag the world from the walls of the universe and send it crashing and burning through whatever night it might yet be capable of engendering until it was not even ash. And justice? Brotherhood? Eternal life? Good god, man. Show me a religion that prepares one for death. For nothingness. There’s a church I might enter. Yours prepares one only for more life. For dreams and illusions and lies. If you could banish the fear of death from men’s hearts they wouldnt live a day. Who would want this nightmare if not for fear of the next? The shadow of the axe hangs over every joy. Every road ends in death. Or worse. Every friendship. Every love. Torment, betrayal, loss, suffering, pain, age, indignity, and hideous lingering illness. All with a single conclusion. For you and for every one and everything that you have chosen to care for. There’s the true brotherhood. The true fellowship. And everyone is a member for life. You tell me that my brother is my salvation? My salvation? Well then damn him. Damn him in every shape and form and guise. Do I see myself in him? Yes. I do. And what I see sickens me. Do you understand me? Can you understand me?" -----White.

Today’s material is a play, a debate, a serious poignant soulful conversation between two men. This debate confronts you with the most delicate and grim topics, death, family, suffering, and meaning, this play is perfectly written, full of emotions, as well as an intellectual and spiritual journey for its readers. The setting is nothing but a room in a small tenement in a ghetto in Manhattan, New York, it is animated by only two nameless characters whom the playwright chose to call by their racial roots, Black and White. The play explores the clashes between two different cultures, races, classes, ideologies and beliefs in a very moving debate.
There is not a precise or complicated plot in the play, except for the pretext, Black was on his way work, White was on his way to off himself, until Black intruded in his suicide, brought him back to him place where they debate about existence, and nonexistence, where Black desperately wants to convince White not to attempt killing himself again.
The first character is an ex-convict, a man of religion, he was convicted after killing several people, yet he claims it wasn’t the worst thing he has ever done, he is black, uneducated but smart, an old man seeking redemption,  while the second character is a middle class white man, a man who is cultivated, loves art, literature, and music, at least he used to, he is a nihilist, suicidal, and pessimist, a soulless individual yearning for nonexistence
The two men embody a class of cultures, represent two separate perspectives on religion, suicide, suffering, and meaning. Basically the difference in terms of education is a milestone in the debate, first you have the white man who is great with words, he has read thousands of books in his lifetime, while the black man speaks slang southern English, the bible is the only book he believes should be read, and as the debate gets more intense both characters face the question of how much our misery is caused by our education, would we be happier not being able to see the world as it is? in other words, White can’t undo his perspective, while the Black doesn’t want to see life as it is in order to be happy, and sane, for both of them, there was this point of questioning weather they can start anew, in fact Black while being hospitalized in the jailhouse, he was a murderer, a criminal, then he was reborn after he felt God’s presence, but for White, the concept of God is something we create to start anew, to avoid guilt, he can’t seek redemption in a world doomed to suffer.
Their debate also covers the quest for meaning, Black finds meaning in solidarity, in brotherhood, and in God, but those things never gave White meaning, and the things he valued were frail and fragile, lost their charm in a sense, he used to find meaning in, as he calls it, the foundations of civilization,  music, art and culture. Black and White’s perspectives are influenced by class, not generalizing, but poorer countries are the most religious, so is the case for Black.
The debate of the play is the contrast between two individuals who have and lack what pins them to existence, what gives them meaning, but it extends as most philosophical fiction or drama to show how we relate to the things that give us meaning, what keeps us alive, and up how much of our daily lives we spend on denying the cruelty of existence, or on rejecting the lack of a prior meaning to our existence. To accentuate, for example the difference between a political activist, specially in current monarchies or for example in Saudi Arabia, see repression and fight it, while the remaining citizens are not stupid or don’t have an opinion as much as they are terrorized to see the repression that befalls them and acknowledge it as it is, because in doing so they will feel like a failure, hence  our relationship with existence, we don’t want to complicate life, we don’t want to think about things on a grand scale, deep down we all know that we are ill-fated to live in a meaninglessness.
Furthermore, responsibility and lack of duty are very important in religions to keep people alive. Religions provide individuals with a sense of belonging to a community, thus a sense of responsibility for their kins that give them sort of a meaning I their life, but without religions, a lot of atheists  consider that nature in general is our home, collective home, and we have to be responsible of preserving it all of us, the thing that gives them purpose, but for WHITE building communities is a desperate move towards fulfillment, because they are as meaningless and painful as existence, and it if for this reasons he desires death, death has no communities. White doesn’t feel obliged to be responsible for other people.
This book is a must read for any person, it gives a insightful perspective of how people relate to what gives them meaning, either you were nihilist or essentialist, religious or atheist you will find your way to relate to it.

There are boys lying awake, hating themselves. There are boys screwing for the right reasons and boys screwing for the wrong ones. There are boys enraptured by love that they can’t get their hearts to slow down enough to get some rest, and other boys so damaged by love they can’t stop picking at their pain. There are boys who clutch secrets at night in the same way they clutch denial in the day. There are boys who do not think of themselves at all when they dream. There are boys who will be woken in the night. There are boys who fall asleep with phones to their ears.

I just finished reading Two Boys Kissing few minutes ago, then I went for a cigarette as my mind is sorting out the emotions in my head, I feel angry and satisfyingly proud of the achievements of our community, although on a grand universal scale the war for freedom is still fiercely being fought, in the twenty first century people are still being decapitated or jailed for being gay. I haven’t posted anything on the blog for a while because I had too much on mind and couldn’t focus on anything else, my family just found out that I am gay, they are in denial about it, they’re acting very weird, like they don’t want to lose me for something so sinful and disgusting, so they are holding on, avoiding, moping, they are trying to get closer to me, they ask me about my friends specially my male friends and how I got to know them and stuff, indirectly picking out the-might-be sex friend or boyfriend. I thought of escaping to the one thing I know best which is reading, I thought of The Destiny of Me, by Larry Kramer to make me feel better, a sense of consoling solidarity, to remind myself of who I am, to weep as the main character loses himself in his painful childhood memories, but that play led me to think of a book closer in theme, and closer to my experience and heart, Two Boys Kissing, by David Levithan.

Two Boys Kissing tells, simultaneously, the story of eight characters as they come to terms with their sexualities and gender, as they define themselves, as they are defined and challenged by others, eight characters that are although very separate physically, still they connect, in fact essential to each others in ways they don’t yet recognize. The two main characters are the one performing a kiss, a kiss that will set up the Guinness record of the longest kiss, in fact the kiss did happen outside the story of David Levithan in 2013, in the book it is performed by Craig and Harry, former boyfriends, but yet they did it together to show the world that love is equal, that two boys kissing is okay, bu they did it after Tariq, another character in the book, got beaten up in the street by some homophobic group of guys, in fact they did know him only after this incident.

The books takes us into the the lives of five other character, Cooper, Avery, Ryan, Peter and Neil. Cooper is very hard on himself, he is always behind the screen of his laptop, taking refuge in sex gay apps talking to strangers but never meeting any of them, because it is so hard for him to accept that his sexuality is not only virtual, that it extends to his real life, but he had to confront that when his parents find out that he is gay from his online conversations, which came as shock to them specially in the way they found out, Cooper finds himself aimlessly in the street with his beat down self. Avery has pink hair, and Ryan has blue hair, they meet in a gay prom, they danced and exchanged numbers in hope to get catch up; Avery is a boy born in the body of a girl, and he is  undergoing a transition to his real skin, so we get a peak at how it feel to grow up in a different skin, how it is hard to be born in the wrong body, and most of all how hard to find love when you had to explain to people all of this, but Ryan is different, Ryan understands, their relation is so sweet and cute, it makes you want to fall in love. Then there is Peter and Neil, in fact Neil is the character that made me want to read this book all over again, I weirdly relate to him now because I am going through the same thing with my family, his Korean background and my own north African background are both alienated from the other characters, his family and my family are both in denial and avoiding the unpleasant fact of our sexualities, Neil and I both feel lost between acceptance and rejection.

The perspective of the story is the most interesting in the book regarding the style of writing,  the story is told from the view a Greek Chorus of gays who died of AIDS, they are the ones who takes us around and tells us about the characters, they also tell us about the change from their time up to now. They are very important in the book, they had to be present to witness a memorable and challenging event such as two boys setting the world record of the longest kiss, they add the item of nostalgia and wisdom to the book, sometimes you feel like they are directly talk to you which makes it more engaging and emotional. Walt Whitman poetry in the book signifies the change between the two eras, in the old times where they used to read his poetry in their closets, and in nowadays where it is celebrated and read in public.

The eight characters all go through a situation so violent and intense, some of them have a breakdown in their family kitchen asking for recognition , for approval from their parents like Neil, while Cooper got punched by his dad, was called a whole, was denied oblivion. Avery had to deal with people’s stares when he went for girls’  bathroom, and as we learned it is a day-to-day struggle,  Ryan got humiliated by some homophobic peers, almost got beaten up he and Avery.  Tariq was hospitalized after a very violent homophobic attack. Craig and Harry during the kiss endure physical pain, and the outrage of homophobic protesters, and Craig had to deal alone with his parents not supporting him, not coming back to witness and celebrate his accomplishment, in addition to all the memories of his relationship with Harry coming back all at once, like an unfinished business.

Nonetheless, the book also shows the positive side, the solidarity of family, specially moms and the cause the kiss is defending. Family is a central theme in the book, the eight characters come from very different backgrounds, some families like Harry’s are there to support their son with all they could, some of them can’t really stomach it, others slowly start to come to terms with it, and finally  some freak out that their outrage will result them losing their son. The book explore how far can go to harm you and make you feel bad about yourself, but at the same there will be those who lift us up, make us feel better, take our hands the whole way through.

Two Boys Kissing has been challenged since it came out, conservative claim that it has sexual explicit language, and others conceal their homophobia behind the cover, they say it is inappropriate for kids to see two boys kissing in a bookstore, or in their school libraries. Actually, it is considered one the ten most challenged books of the year according to Office Of Intellectual Freedom, what is more confusing is that most of these books mentioned deal with LGBTQ+ issues, so the question is not about suitability of these books for the young readers as much as it is purely homophobia. Some parents claim that the book doesn’t appeal to a wide audience, and it is provokingly against school libraries policies, but at the same school libraries you find straight couples kissing, which only proves the point.

David Levithan wrote the book to show the progress the LGBT community is undergoing, yet expose the homophobia that backfires whenever it gets the chance, and his point is accurate considering the attack on the book.

The Narrator is a ridiculous man, he is mad and utterly indifferent to everything and everyone. The narrator is a man who lost hope and direction in life, in fact he never had any hope or direction for since he was seven he was fully aware of his superfluous existence, and the conviction grew inside of him as he grew up until he could confront it, embrace its intensity and the freedom it came with, no one took him seriously, not even himself, he believed he was boring and everything he did stemmed not out of purpose, but from the lack of it. For instance he would knock passerby ‘s shoulders not because he didn’t notice them in particular, but because he stopped noticing people in general, for him nothing existed, and he had the permission to knock people’s shoulders simply because nothing matters.

On one night our adrift narrator on his way home, it was the gloomiest night possible, it was cold and damp after rainfall, he saw a star that stirred an idea in him, that he ought to shoot himself, he had a splendid revolved in his drawer, loaded for two months earlier, he had been waiting to be on the right state of mind to become zero, nothingness and be at peace at last, but one incident followed and it changed his life.

A little girl of about eight or nine took him by the elbow and begged for help for something awful happened to her mother, she cried out of despair, but he pushed her away with utter indifference and continued his way, and when he  reached his room at last, he sat up in the old comfortable armchair where he sits until daybreak every night for a year, he sat there and put the revolved on the table, then he was overwhelmed by, first the realization that this is it and he is one shoot away from nothingness, and second he questioned why he suffered at not helping the girl, he felt guilty and inhumane for not helping her. He concluded that :
 

As long as I was still a human being not nothingness, I was alive and so could suffer, be angry, and feel shame at my actions

A reflection came rushing in his mind, while million others escaped his consciousness until he fell asleep.  The dream he has is what will change his life forever, will reveal the truth to him bare. Afterwards  when he told people of his dream they teased him saying it was just a dream, but for him yes indeed it was, just a dream, yet it revealed to him a different life, renewed life, grand and full of power, for their reality, their life the are so proud to have, he wanted to extinguish.

In his dream he had killed himself, and was buried in a cold damp grave as he had imagined, but the only thing that he didn’t expect is a life beyond the grave, he expected nonexistence and eternal peace, but as soon as he was buried he was transported through time and space by an alien being, human like being, to the star he saw on his way home, on that star he wrote :
 

 It was the earth untarnished by the fall; on it lived people who had not sinned. They lived just in such a paradise as that in which, according to all legends of mankind, our first parents lived before they sinned; the only difference was that all this earth was the same paradise

The world he dreamed of, and the world he lived in were two different. The first was pure, innocent, untamed, and authentic, people lived in solidarity and harmony with nature, and with each others, they were a big happy family, they didn’t wait for science to know how to live, not did they worship any religion, they worshiped the unconditional love they had, they didn’t have jealousy, nor did they know the meaning the word conveyed. In the second world, wrath prevailed, jealousy and hatred, people found meaning in suffering and in their individuality, people draw limits, created illusion, and most importantly suffered for what the purity they had lost.

Dostoevsky suggest that the only living creatures in a sinful meaningless world that resembled the creatures he saw his dream are children, children are pure and innocent, authentic, but the more we grow we lose our virginal innocence for the things we attach to meaningfulness, for example religions or cultures, and slavery.

Dostoevsky, although lived in the 19th century, foresaw the events of the century that followed, he knew that the pace humans were taking to reach perfection could only lead to destruction, wrath, and inequality.


Here is an excerpt that for me sums up not only this short story, but life in general, the evolution of human sensuality.

           

 

        A big part of why I started this blog is interacting with my younger self, to understand and process the ideas and feeling that were going in my mind at the time, and this book played a big role in shaping who I am, although at this age I wish I had at the time read more philosophy and more complex literature as often as I read young adult book, but I never regret any moment I spent on reading this book when just came out, it’s five out of five for me, beautifully written, spectacularly representative of the mind of a fifteen/sixteen gay boy living in a rough violent neighborhood, perfect stream of consciousness, and almost perfect execution, I once read that we know that a book is good when it transports us and this book does it, at least for me

This book transported me to a time where being different wasn’t tolerated in all the states, people had to struggle to be who they are even within themselves. It’s almost like Larry Kramer or Tennessee Williams mixed in a young adult book, and it’s so cool. I really love the spirit of the book, and the message it stands for.

Well, Aristotle is a fifteen year old boy, he is Mexican living in a very rough neighborhood, his brother is in prison, and his older twin sisters are twelve years older than him, so he is so distant in age and even physically from his siblings, and even the ones that are close to him are distant except for his mother, and by the way I really loved his mom, but his father is inscrutable, he is fighting his own battles of Vietnam War inside of him. Aristotle is very reserved, he doesn’t have any friends , he doesn’t like to hung out around guys, and he couldn’t stay around in boy scouting, anyway he is very deep in personality, he thinks of some deep existential things inside of him, he has too many mysteries or secrets out there in the universe that he feels he should demystify in order to feel a more halcyon state of mind.

The book starts in the beginning of summer and Aristotle is processing the summertime sadness, I feel it whenever I finish a school year because of my friends at college live very far away and I miss them, but for me now it seems permanent, I just finished college so yeah I totally got under the skin of the fifteen year old friendless Ari for whom summer is hellish, until he meets Dante, a fifteen year old Mexican boy who is very smart, open, and hungry for knowledge, but he is also as lonely as Aristotle.

In Dante he finds consolation, he shares with him all his unanswered questions, for example why his brother is in prison, and why his dad is keeping secrets inside, and why he has to follow rules.

Their friendship develops in ups and downs, sometimes they’re reading to each others, other times they are watching the starts for a telescope, sometimes they’re saving birds, or analyzing paintings or Dante trying to sketch Aristotle. But the most heart breaking thing for me in the book, spoiler alert, is to see Aristotle unconsciously fighting who he is, he keeps running away from Dante at times, and he is afraid of becoming like him, and also it broke my heart to see Dante trying to make him jealous.

The main theme for me in the book is the transition from boyhood, to manhood. First of all, Ari and Dante gradually grow up in the course of events, and their actions change from their fifteen selves to their sixteen grown up selves, in the beginning of the book they’re throwing shoes in the middle of the street, and jumping around, or just talk about their problematic questions concerning the universe, but as they grow up, Ari became physically stronger and Dante was experimenting drugs and kissing boys and girls to figure out what he prefers, in the beginning of the book Ari’s mom had a rule about drinking an in the end she places a beer in front of him knowing that he already drinks. Moreover, what is most important, in the start Dante and Aristotle were attached emotionally which was okay as long as they kept it secretive, but they become very physically attracted to each others in the end of the book, there is even this scene where they go out from the truck naked under the rain in the desert. Second of all, both Dante and Aristotle think that by being themselves they’re going to disappoint their parents which creates a heavy burden for kids to carry, for Aristole there is the shadow of his brother, he feels obliged to behave, and be polite, and for Dante, being the only kid, he thinks he is taking away his parents expectations of having grandchildren.

Another theme in the book was family solidarity. At the beginning of the book I hated Ari’s mom, I thought she was stereotypically YA mom, but as the story unfolds we discover how strong she was and the hardships she has been through first with her husband going to war, and later on with her son going to prison, I would love to say more, but I encourage you to discover his mom on your own, but his mom is also concerned about Ari, she can see through him, she notices the struggle and pain inside of him, that’s a very painful event for parents when they see their kids struggling with their own insecurities but can’t actually save them no matter what. Family solidarity is also presented in Ari’s Aunt Ophelia who was living with her lifetime female lover, and it was breathtaking to read that part in the book, the depth of the book extends to a very hard past, Ophelia was abandoned by her family, they rejected, and no one came to her funeral except for Ari and his family, that was so sad.

Now the most important theme is homosexuality in the context of the eighties in Mexico. The Author could have chosen to write about a contemporary love story, but he chose to transport us back to a dark place the history in the LGBTQ+ community. Mexico in the book is more than a place, for me it represented every ideology that makes you hate yourself, so while Aristotle was embracing Mexico and fighting his homosexuality, Dante was trying to turn his back on Mexico, and embrace his homosexuality. There is once scene where Dante gets beaten up with four kids, and the strange question in the reader’s mind is why didn’t he run away, why he stood there and let them break his bones, for me I reckon that Benjamin wanted to show the hazards of discriminatory cultures on minorities, he wanted to put us face to face with the horrors homophobia cause.

I came to read this book as a coincidence.


The Unbearable Lightness Of Being is a novel about the ambivalences of life, the dual nature of things, the randomness of life, and kitsch of politics, religion, and people’s choices. The book starts by Nietzsche’s idea of the eternal return, Kundera suggests that we only live once, therefore we are ignorant of the value or drastic consequences of our choices simply because we have not lived another life, we don’t have other repeated experiences to compare our choices with, that we have no way of knowing what is meaningful or not since we only have to make one choice, walk one path, and thus reducing the possible turns our life might take either for good or bad. Life is a chess game, once you start playing, there is no turning back.

    Any schoolboy can do experiments in the physics laboratory or test various scientific hypotheses. But man, because he has only one life to live, cannot conduct experiments to test whether to follow his passion or not.

we cannot know what to want, because living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives, nor perfect it in our lives to come

Kundera, unlike Albert Camus, perceives the meaninglessness of the universe as unbearable. Lightness rings the bells of positivity, but in terms of existence it is painful. Kundera in different passages keeps making comparisons between the human and the nonhuman experiences , how we are tormented by our consciousness. The novel is full of dualities, soul and body, privacy and publicity, love and sex, lightness and heaviness.

The Unbearable lightness of being is a novel, so we have the talk about the literary aspect of it. Kundera’s novel reminds me a lot of 1984 by George Orwell, it is set up in a world full of crisis, the 80s in a communist Czech invaded by the Soviets, in a world where there is no room for freedom of speech, nor for privacy under strict surveillance system. But Kundera chose four worn down characters, four of them seeking acceptance, lightness, adventure, and sex.  Kundera is giving us a grotesque peek in the era through dreamy characters, heavy characters, and light characters.

These four characters represent the pillars of society, Tomas the surgeon, Tereza the photo journalist, Sabina the artist, and Franz the intellectual, but they’re disappointed and distrustful when it comes to politics, love, and sexuality. All of them are trying to escape a world into a lighter or heavier one, for Tereza she is yearning for a world where she doesn’t feel objectified, where she doesn’t feel like a pile of meat, a world free of her mother and infidelities, but infidelities and betrayal are at the core of the artistic and sexual life of Sabina, who betrayed her destiny and her history that is loaded with restrictions, and ideals, her betrayals make her life light. For Tomas life is a random collection of fortuities, and coincidences, for him love and sex are two separate  things one for pleasure and the other to discover, and to reveal the “I” of his partners, but for Franz sex is a sacred thing, he believes only by being public can one live in truth, he is so romantic about demonstrations and parades, they represent for him what is real.

These four characters come to know each other by random circumstances, they lose contact in random circumstances, and they die in random circumstances, so random and human they are.

The Unbearable Lightness Of Being is more of a philosophical novel, that a literary novel. One of the interesting things I got from the novel is the notion of kitsch. Kitsch is the absolute denial of shit, in both the literal and figurative senses of the word, it excludes everything from its purview which is essentially unacceptable in human existence. Kundera playfully expressed his opinions about politics, and social movements using this notion of Kitsch. Totalitarian kitsch that denies people their individualism, their artistic creativity, their sexual orientations, and their equal rights.

Tomas is disappointed both at the soviet union kitsch, and the editor and the comrades kitsch. Both of them wanted to misuse his words, both of them have death lurking behind, both of them wanted him to sign things he didn’t right.

For Sabina, her life was full of kitsch, first communism kitsch, and later on in her artistic life. A lot of artists dealt with censorship in that era, a lot of them had been called degenerate, they were harshly attacked.





By kitsch, Kundera claims that everything is just a dream, a fantasy, and only true theoretically. His characters are apolitical, not in the sense that they’re ignorant, but consciously apolitical.

The things that give our lives meaning have ridiculous roots.  For Tomas and Tereza, their love is what makes their lives meaningful, but looking back at how they came to love each others we find that it was just a coincidence, Beethoven, room number six, the dog waking up at six. They could have fallen in love with a million other possible people. Even Sabina came to be an artist in a ridiculous way.


 

AS soon as the CT scan was done, I began reviewing the images. The diagnosis was immediate: Masses matting the lungs and deforming the spine. Cancer. In my neurosurgical training, I had reviewed hundreds of scans for fellow doctors to see if surgery offered any hope. I’d scribble in the chart “Widely metastatic disease — no role for surgery,” and move on. But this scan was different: It was my own.

When Breath Becomes Air is an unfinished memoir published posthumously written by Paul Kalanithi, he is/was a chief neurosurgeon resident, he also had two master degrees in both literature and the history and philosophy of science. Paul at the age of 35 got diagnosed with stage four lung cancer at a moment when he was close to achieving his potential, and he had wrote the book in his deathbed. The book is an examination of Paul’s life, about what gave his life a meaning. To label the book as a cancer book would be unfair to Paul’s purpose, it is not as much about death as it is about the art of living a meaningful life, it is a profound insight on mortality, philosophy, and literature, it is a book about the classical debates on science vs literature and which one explains the human experience more deeply.




Finishing high school, Paul was interested in literature and philosophy, as well as biology, therefor he decided to major both of them, for him these fields provided different perspectives on mortality, death, and meaning. His biggest dream back then was to be a writer since for him literature provided the best account of the life of the mind, and later on he becomes equally interested in neuroscience which studied the brain as an organism that ignites meaning, language, and interpretations of the world around us. He was driven by his quest for meaning, and he was eager to lead a life that would give him the chance to confront death, and suffering, he chose to find the answers which books didn’t provide about what makes human life meaningful even in the face of death and decay. During his residency as a neurosurgeon he was surrounded by decay and death indeed, each day he witnessed people die, and others live, he saw people losing their identities, their abilities to communicate, and most importantly people losing what gives their life a meaning. Paul became a chief resident, he became more responsible, more experienced, and more insightful, so he could feel the life he was aspiring becoming so reachable, but then he was diagnosed with stage four of lung cancer.




With his diagnosis everything started feeling so uncertain, his dreams, his hopes, and his body were all shifting, and becoming distant with each day. Paul had to decide what gives his life a meaning, he chose to depend his future on how much he will live, he hope he’ll have enough time to preserve both the identity he grew into, and the identities of his future patients, and he had another plan to become a writer and a father if he had less than two years to live.




One of the few lessons to learn from this book, and apply on our lives for a meaningful future is would be keeping on doing the same mundane activities if we knew we would die within the next four or three months. Grab a paper, and write a list of things you would do, for me I would defiantly tell my brother how much I hate him, or write a book, maybe I would tell someone I love how much I love them, or spend more time with those close to me, and be grateful to have them in my life. The lesson we learn from this book is in order to live, we have to embrace the fact of our mortality, to understand what makes our lives meaningful, what is the hidden force that keep us on striving tirelessly.












Another thing I loved about the book is how independent and smooth Paul wrote the events. Paul would have been a great writer if his life had taken a literary turn instead of science. His book is beautifully written, timeless, philosophical, and heartbreaking. The fact that we read a dead person’s memoir is sad, adding up to that the metaphors Paul put into the book, and the poetic glimpses, as well as the deeply spiritual insight the book becomes angst, and gloomy.




The choice of this book came to me when I thought of how a lot of us can’t get over a breakup, or the death of someone either we know, or fictional characters. When The Fault In Our Stars, by John Green came out, the vast majority of readers felt deep attachment to Augustus and Hazel, and everybody felt heartbroken after ending the book, the characters always stay with us, deep down within all of us, they reminded us of people we lost for cancer or other terminal diseases, or in sudden car accidents, we still mourn for them, When Breath Becomes Air helps us both examine our own lives, and make our approach to mortality more graceful. It is a therapeutic book for the simple fact that it is a real discourse on a real people’s own private battle with cancer, and the existential weight.