Reading Books When You Are Little (A Kundera Thread)

they don't have to get everything. i probably don't get everything NOW. just put the books near them and see if any of it rubs off. my parents let me read anything i wanted. did i understand it all? no. but i was intrigued enough to keep going. i wanted to crack the grown-up code. i'm still trying.

And the other book would suck, and I'd say, "Wow, that was a stinker, eh?" and they'd be like "wtf?" and I'd be like, "Let's not read anything else by that author until someone gives us a very good reason!"

Then I'd let the class decide what we read next.

Anyone who wanted to talk about symbolism would be castrated, even if they were a girl.

I read practically all the Kundera in print around 15 years ago and I'm astonished at how little of it I remember. The Unbearable Lengthiness of Viewing sticks better because I've seen the film. Otherwise for all I remember I feel almost as if I needn't have bothered reading them, although I enjoyed the books at the time.

we never said "ok lets dwell in these two pages for a while and talk about all the little things going on."

also i don't think the kundera problem applies to all literature. i mean it just applies to certain types of situations and emotions and writing about them. or maybe the question is -- how much of the hs canon did it apply to?

I think a teacher's job is to try and remove barriers to understanding. The problem is that if you are good at your job a sixteen year old will come up with an honest but relatively naive response that won't impress examiners. The temptation is to coach them into being able to come up with a response that is dishonest but sophisticated. I plead guilty myself, because at one time I earned some extra money by coaching kids for exams. Usually they were very bright kids who were good at maths, science etc but needed to bump up their English grade to get into medicine, law or whatever. It's difficult to compensate for a 16 or 17 year old's relative lack of reading over their lifetime in a few months, and the easiest way to do it was to coach them to respond with a kind of pseudo-sophistication in the literature paper. It certainly wasn't a good way of inculcating a taste for literature, but it was the easiest way to work the system. An awful lot of university teaching seems to me basically the same thing.

As for teenagers learning literature... The way I learned literature in school was through the context of both history and religion, fortunately. Mark Twain, Dickens, Kafka, Achebe, the Bhagavad Gita: they all gave me a window into a time or place I wasn’t going to experience in small-town Ohio (though reading Sherwood Anderson hit somewhat close to home). We were encouraged to explore theme and meaning as well, and, even if we didn’t necessarily understand the more subtle points, most of us still tried to seek out meaning in it. I probably "got" more stuff once I went to college, where we were allowed to talk about all of the sexual themes (in fact, it seemed like we were encouraged to talk about nothing but), but it didn't keep me from getting them while reading Kundera, etc. Teenagers aren't that dumb.

the stuff up top is why i am dreading rereading ulysses. sterling would you like the idea of a seperate should-we-teach-literature thread so yr A Kundera Thread could be about Kundera, should ppl want to talk about Kundera?

cosign 100%, but why! hes like the deepak chopra of 20th c lit

English classes, tho, almost put me off reading altogether. Basically what Sterling said about focusing on the Big things and also really really bad questions especially w/r/t to symbolism and metaphors. I think the problem was just that it needed to be taught better tho (obv. possibility that poor quality was just my high school) rather than avoiding classic or difficult literature.

dude was a commie informant http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/14/world/europe/14czech.html

who wasn't! hell, for a nice cherry pie i'd inform on you right now.

Considering how hating Kundera has become of government-sponsored obligation in the Czech Republic, I remain very sceptical about this.

i'm increasingly convinced that there's no POINT in teaching teenagers classic literature since there's just no friggin WAY they're going to get it.

When do you propose people should meet 'classic' literature for the first time then? And do you think they'll 'get' it the first time around then? Unless you get people hooked on good book early enough, and by a teacher with enough enthusiasm and a thorough understanding themselves of the underlying themes, historical importance etc., when are people going to take it upon themselves to read something they've never encountered before, and which is considered difficult?

I read some Huxley and Orwell when I was 16, To Kill a Mockingbird and Lewis Grassic Gibbon's Scots Quair when I was 17, a LOT of Thomas Hardy when I was 18. Sure, I get different things out of them now, but should that mean I got any less from them when I was 16? 17? 18? (I'm still only 22)

Teenagers and, in all honesty, everyone - in the first instance - gets out of a book exactly what they understand, and what relates directly to them. Similarly, everyone knows of books that DON'T speak to them - maybe they will 5 or 10 years down the line.

A while ago, there was an idea in the news (possibly only UK wide) relating to putting age recommendations on books. I'm against this. I read many things before I really understood half of what went on - in reading them, however, it spurred on my interest, led me to look at the historical significance of the book and storyline, led me to other authors, related genres. Isn't this what both reading and English teaching are all about?

I now also want to read that Kundera book - despite having avoided 'The Incredible Lightness...'

i'm increasingly convinced that there's no POINT in teaching teenagers classic literature since there's just no friggin WAY they're going to get it.

I think there are a slew of books BEST read while a teen: 'The Catcher in the Rye', 'On the Road', 'To Kill a Mockingbird', etc...

related to this, i'm increasingly convinced that there's no POINT in teaching teenagers classic literature since there's just no friggin WAY they're going to get it. or maybe to get it would mean talking about and explaining things that teachers aren't supposed to do?

i dunno i think kids in high school are way smarter than we give them credit for. they're not going to get it like adults get it but who cares?and yeah there are many books that are perfect for reading in high school--the ones Michael mentioned above, plus Lord of the Flies certain Shakespeare, etc

Mr. Que OTM. Also, you'll never experience that teenage level of obsession later on in life. So sure, teenagers will miss a lot of the overall subtext and maybe some emotional nuance, but OTOH it's really at that age that you'll actually go and explore all that subtext. I got so much out of reading those Kundera books when I was 15 - and i wouldnt be exactly the person I am if I hadn't.

The big book like this for me is Brief Interviews with Hideous Men - I read it at 16-or-so as cold, abstract horror, then at 23 with total recognition of myself.

The Abbess of Crewe, on Scott Seward's endorsement.

M. White OTM.

I like the idea that students should be required to read books as part of their schooling. But I don't see the benefit in making them all read the same book at the same time, apart from the benefit of making things easier on the teacher.

Why not let the student suggest the book they want to read, subject to approval by the teacher? Or provide a list of 50 or 100 widely assorted books they can choose among? This should increase the chances that the student will read the work with genuine enthusiasm.

I like the idea of exposing students to 'classic' literature, but again, why not let the teacher choose from a list, so the students are exposed to literature about which the teacher has some genuine enthusiasm? Or why not let a variety of teachers rotate through all the classes, so as to broaden the tastes and understanding the students are exposed to?

The idea that all students should walk out of school with an identical list of books they have read seems like a quixotic quest to me. With literature being so vast a subject and there being more good books than one can read in a lifetime, what is the point of all this reductionism anyway?

Why not let the student suggest the book they want to read, subject to approval by the teacher? Or provide a list of 50 or 100 widely assorted books they can choose among? This should increase the chances that the student will read the work with genuine enthusiasm.

Now that's a good idea. We weren't given the chance to do this until year 12, the last year of high school, when the only people studying English were those who CHOSE to do it anyway.

god i hated/felt ambivalent about all the books i read in high school - but i spent all but 18 months at a school where i feel like the english classes were dumbed down considerably. i don't even remember half the books. the books that did influence me were ones i picked up at the library, titles that i had heard referenced: catcher in the rye, to kill a mocking bird. those two books have been cornerstones in the style of writing i enjoy today. but the authors i read in high school were so boring, i read a lot of trashy stuff because i didn't know what else to read. i like aimless' idea of being given a list of classics to choose from - in between 'crime and punishment', 'pride and prejudice' and 'on the road' etc., kids are bound to find something they'll at least remotely enjoy or connect with.

feel free to contribute to this thread if you remember any of the bummers from high school, rubyredd:

School Daze! What Did Your Teachers Ruin For You And/Or More Positive Reflections On Required Reading

just cuz i like to read about other people's lit experiences as a teen.

I approve of reading books when you are little even if you don't understand them: there are so many, many books in this world to read, and our times is so limited, that why not? I loved Dickens when I was far far too young to understand the complexities- I was about ten, and they were basically just yarns to me - and when I was twenty-one and had for a couple of months a lot of time for reading I tried to read Dickens novels again and realised I just didn't enjoy them, the style absolutely turned me off. And so I feel as if -- if I'd waited to read them until I was in my late teens, later, I probably would never have read them. But I read them at ten, and the style I'd later dislike just slid past me because I cared about what was happening in the next twist of plot, and the things i liked about them at ten have stayed with me.

I even like the whole hating/feeling ambivalent about books you read in high school thing: I feel like it strengthened me as a person, because i could sit there and say 'we have all read wuthering heights and i hate every single character every last one of them is awful how can you call this book romantic' and have huge fites about it in class, and now I never have to read it again.

the focus was on interpretation of meaning, and I increasingly loathe that approach to literature.

i feel the same way, sort of. i'm only in college atm, so i haven't fully escaped this yet, but in high school i was depressed by the realization that my teachers didn't seem to read books to enjoy and experience them, but rather to analyze them and to painfully extract every ounce of meaning and symbolism out of them possible until all was left was the carcass of a plot and something to write an essay about. however, i feel sort of bad for having abandoned my love affair with meaning. i am by no means without intellectual pursuits, but reading was always the art form that felt the most cerebral. i gladly accepted that the appeal of music, film and design are all aesthetic and that they were mostly meaningless ages ago but i'm sad to have come to the same conclusion about literature. i'm currently writing a novel and it very much unresembles classic literature's focus on theme and meaning, but i'm not sure i can exclude my old friends so quickly. maybe it is more about the balancing of meaning and aesthetic/sentiment/whatever than the choosing of one or the other?

That wasn't necessarily how your teachers read books, it was how they taught them, or were paid to teach them. (The teaching was just their job.)

you're right. still, i think there is conflict between the experience of a book and it's meaning. should one overthink it's meaning they might miss out on the experience, should one only read it to experience it they might miss out on the meaning. my high school lit teachers rarely said anything along the lines of "yo kids, how fuckin awesome is this book!" and alot of kids never realized how fun reading is supposed to be.

I didn't realize how much I liked reading until I was like 20! And even then, for a time, I only had interest in non-fiction. I don't know where exactly I got tripped up or whose fault it was. Maybe it was the lengthy vocab memorization, maybe it was my teachers' ideas that reading comprehension=recalling minor details. I really don't know how they should have been teaching me, but I wish the hook had hooked much earlier.

A lot of it tho was probably just being a teen / pre-teen and therefore dismissive and retarded.

There's room for all kinds of reading in the classroom. In my Middle School classroom we try to read in different ways. One book we'll read as a class because the less advanced readers gain from watching the more advanced readers read. We also break into groups of 4-5 students and mock "book clubs", this involves a choice of about 3 books. Most importantly, we begin every class with SSR (silent sustained reading). During SSR, students choose their own books and read without the pressure of testing.

It is important to differentiate reading, because reading is not a singular skill, but a collection of many symbiotic skills. Some readers can assimilate these skills without ever realizing they exist individually, others need to learn them one at a time (most are a little of both).

The most important factor in reading fluency is motivation, if you don't think so, you should watch a kid who never read a book in his life pick up and fly through 400 pages of "Eragon".

Kundera symbolised everything, that was uninteresting about the so-called "Central Europe", wh/ helped forcing liberalism as "thought of the West" post-1989. I devoted whole book (Poor but sexy) to beat that position. &his portrayals of women/male-female relations are a disgrace.

— agata pyzik (@AgataPyzik) July 12, 2023

i feel like you couldn't throw a rock outside in the 80s without hitting an earnest young college student with their nose deep in a kundera paperback. and then i never really heard about him much in the 90s and beyond.

anyone ever read any of his later books?

anyway, RIP!

Thread not specifically about Kundera but reviving this on the day of his passing. I found his books compulsive reads and they introduced me to lit from Central/Eastern Europe.

I haven't felt the need to go back to him at all after reading 2/3. His book of essays was fantastic and it introduced me to Musil. His essay on Quixote I remember as being really good xp

I enjoyed The Joke and The Unbearable Lightness of Being (the film too!) and some of his thinking about kitsch informed my college years. I haven't thought about him in forever.

Very important to me in my life, can't think of a writer who has had more of an impact. I have only read three of his books, and none since 2001, but will come back round to them one day I'm sure.
(Cannot stand the film version of TULOB!)

Shamefully did not realise he was still alive. Wasn't such a fan of the early stuff, but think his books which dissolved the boundaries between essay and novel - The Art of the Novel, Immortality, Testaments Betrayed - are ultra classic, though haven't re-read in years. Will have another look tonight.

(Cannot stand the film version of TULOB!)

It gave flesh and bone and sinew to the novel imo, especially the vividness with which Lena Olin and Juliette Binoche embodied those women (and complicating the accusations of misogyny).

that agata pyzik tweet just covered a lot of thoughts i've had since reading the RIP

maybe a separate thread for thinking about World Lit/Cinema/Culture and its ideological anchors, why Kundera wass a western liberal greatest hit, the way this category is shifting (against resistance) and just y'know Worldness as a category (which belongs to a specific set of socioeconomic limits)

separate thread for the "women wearing hats" fetish but i don't care about that one so much

message I remember is that having sex with a woman significantly taller than you is weird and therefore doesn't really count but also that apparently it has to be tried at least once

— Official 💰 Mizzy 🪙Merch 💸 (@DogoKuno) July 12, 2023

The only book of his I've read is Immortality, which I thought was brilliant. I've always wanted to read the rest of his work. Anyway, RIP.

Re: teaching "classic literature" to teenagers, well, there are kids who will achieve deeper understanding than most even at relatively young ages. Reaching those kids, as well as bringing the rest into proximity with books worth reading, is worth the inevitable frustration. Personally, I've found re-reading works I first read at much younger ages to be enjoyable and revelatory. On the flip side, I have vivid memories of some of my fellow (English Lit) grad students having . . . not much to offer on most of the works (ahem, texts) we were exploring.

The Kundera-related thing I love most is Jaromil Jire's film The Joke, which is based on a Kundera novel and I think he adapted the script too? Young guy looks forward to Summer shacked up with girlfriend, girlfriend decides to go to Communist Camp instead, man is angry and cockblocked. Woman sends letters to him enthusing about all the great education they're getting, man replies with "long live Trotzky". Letter gets taken to authorities, man gets sentenced to hard labour. Decades after, man returns to his hometown and sets about his masterplan of seeking revenge on the guy who grassed him out by fucking his wife.

Tough to know what is Kundera and what is Jires here (well not that tough, I could read the book lol), but I really appreciate how it's about the violence of a totalitarian system brought to bear not on a noble resistance fighter but a dude who is consistently petty, motivated by sexual jealousy and pure ego.

With The Unbearable Lightnes... I also remember the bits about the secret police being pretty gripping even as I was rolling my eyes at the sex stuff and the attempts at philosophy.

"The attempts at philosophy" were what aggravated me when I read one or two of his books years ago, specifically the way he'd try to wrap them in the fiction as if to say, "see what these characters are doing? That proves my point!" Of course it does, you invented the story to do so!

I think I have no problem with that, in fact it's one of the things I first enjoyed in his writing. but it's been a while, might be mistaken in this.

He has to do it -- it's like going to a Rohmer film without digressions.