Customer Reviews

Joke

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The first thing you notice about this brilliant novel is the narration. It switches narrators repeatedly (a technique that Kundera cannot use today because he puts himself into his novels as the first person writer/narrator, much the same way that McCrae does in his "Bark of the Dogwood"). The idea is that events in real life do not come to us fully formed - we hear one point of view, and another, and another, and it is up to us to unravel the various stories to find out what "really" happened. As everyone knows, one person's point of view will never be the same as another's. The Joke's genius lies in its unabashedly saying exactly that.

While reading the Joke I was spellbound. The book itself was fantastic. It was well written, interesting, well-paced, and moving. The ideas conveyed within the story are especially vivid and yet are described so brilliantly that many appear only as subtle reflections in a small sentence.
The reason, however that I cannot award this book its proper 4-5 stars, is because of what someone else has already said. Whoever said that Kundera has a terribly huge ego was absolutely right. In the author's note he complains how annoying it was for him to be published and mistranslated, which while certainly reason to complain there seems to be a very crisp wave of arrogance. He goes so far as to say he left one of his publishers simply because they wished to change a few of his semi-colons to periods.
Shame on you Kundera, if only it were not for your narciccistic ways your books would be so wonderful, please remove that author's note and let us enjoy the book... not despise the author!

This was the first and, as yet, only Kundera novel I have read. I look forward to consuming all his works of fiction. The narrative seemed odd and stilted at first, but as I stayed with it I became completely absorbed. The main protagonist, Jahn, exhibits so many human traits and failings that most people would try consciously to repress that I found myself feeling greater and greater "humanity" as I followed his exploits. Kundera also lays bare in this book many of the myths about Communist eastern Europe (e.g., that intelligent people only went along with the dogma unwilllingly). A really excellent and original writer.

After reading several books by Kundera -one of my favorite authors-, I decided to try his first novel, "The Joke". Because it's the first one, its natural that the style would differ from his latest production...however, the author is the same and the style is similar in all of his work, he explores human thoughts and emotions beautifully, maybe not in a such profound way like Dostoievsky or Hesse, but close enough to be in the same league.

If you want a detail of the plot (I personally don't like to do that before reading a book), you will probably find that in other reviews, I'll just said that the story is about a man that lost all of his achievements just for a misunderstanding, a joke that was not well received in a communism society. Kundera explores the thoughts of this man (in several time periods of his life), but also takes other characters and gives them a protagonic level (the story is written in first person, in the view of all of the characters). The book gets more and more interesting as it develops, and the climax is at the end, the last 50 pages are brilliant. A dramatic story with a great end.

Five stars for the way Kundera allow readers to get to know and love his characters.....brilliant narrative, brilliant book.

'The Joke' comes almost as close to 'The Lightness". Often times I woke up to realize I was reading Kundera and not Kafka ! I envy Kundera for how poetically he tells the story of an young communist , ludvik, his innocent 'joke' - and how that ultimately changes his life. Here is one of the excerpts from the novel , I liked so much - This is how the entire novel is like !

As soon as he got to Prague, he pounced on his wife ( I call her his wife, but she actually was just another nineteen year old girl) and she admitted everything brazently ( perhaps even eagerly ); He started beating her; she fought back; he started chocking her and smashed a bottle over her head; she fell to the floor and lay there motionless.He immediatly realised what he had done, panicked, and fled. Shomehow or other he found an empty summer cottage in the mountains and holed up there in terrified anticipation of being caught and hanged for murder. When they found him two months later, they put him on trial for desertion rather than murder.His wife, it turns out, has regained conciousness shortly after he ran out and had nothing to show for the adventure than a bump in the head. While he was serving his time, she divorced him and today he she the wife of a famous Prague actor. I go to his plays from time to time just to remind myself of Stanza and his unhappy end. After his term of service was up he stayed on in the mines; an accident cost him a leg, the amputation took his life.

This is a very good book, and amazing in that it was Kundera's first as far as I know. The most interesting thing about it for me is that it was written a couple years before the Prague Spring of 1968 when the Soviets sent the tanks in. All of his subsequent novels that I've read have been colored by this brutal invasion, so it was great to read about the relatively subtler techniques of oppression the communists used previously -- e.g. suppressing intellectuals, only allowing young enthusiastic communists to succeed in college, sending "Trotskyites" and other dangerous dissenters to work in the mines. The story is effectively told from the perspective of four different characters.

I can only give the book four stars for a few reasons. One is that I'm biased by Kundera's later books -- I loved "Lightness of Being", and "Laughter & Forgetting" to a lesser extent. The second is that I thought "The Joke" was usually well-paced, but dragged occasionally. Finally, I hate to sound PC, but the misogyny I detected was slightly troubling. I say this partly because the sections of the book told from a woman's point of view revealed her to be both hypocritical and foolish. More importantly, he has an extraordinary passage where he basically says that "You can persuade women to do anything if you use their self-delusions to your advantage", only much more eloquently than that. If he had said that about all people it would have been a terrific observation, but restricted to women it seemed bluntly sexist. I know it was coming from a character who was angry and misogynistic as a result of his troubled past, but it still left a bad taste in my mouth.

Overall, though, the book paints a vivid picture of the era, and his characters are well-developed and interesting. I recommend it.

Kundera's 1967 novel is definitely his best work. He merges the political situation of his country with the personal agony of his main character, masterfully showing how a single moment in a young man's life -an apparently harmless joke, actually- can turn it upside down forever.

This was my first experience of a Kundera novel, and I now find myself in awe of this brilliant writer. This cleverly constructed book unfolds gently and gradually to reveal the complexities of the characters involved, all of whom appear to be victims of circumstance. It explores the natural human desire for freedom, happiness, love and mutual understanding. Although the environment may in part stunt these potentials, it is mostly a person's own inner turmoils and imagination that destroys their ability to find happiness. At times I shed tears at the tragedy of the human condition, but also at the sheer eloquence and profundity of Kundera's thoughts. The main characters, whether male or female, are narrated in the first person, which reveals the author's great capacity for empathy, and writing skill in making these transitions believable. Surprisingly, there is often a delightful, underlying humour within the tragedy, perhaps a little like life itself.

When I picked up this book for perusal, it had been quite a while since I experienced a love affair with a novel. _The Joke_ turned out to be an exquisite, tasteful, and tasty treat. I was enthralled by it for days, impatiently longing for a quiet hour to settle down with this remarkable text. Neither wishing, nor willing to put it down, I gluttonously consumed the last few chapters and found myself in tears over the concluding pages. Kundera is undeniably a great stylist, a skilled storyteller, and an unusually sensitive and compassionate author. _The Joke_ encompases so many things truly great novels tend to possess - profundity, elegance, memorable characters - to name but a few. It enlightens, prompts contemplation, and provides much eclectic food for thought. The ardent discussion of Moravian folklore and musical traditions is incredibly insightful and very accessible. Both subdued and volatile, this novel is an experience - in literature and in life - that is not to be missed.

In the very first part of The Joke, Kundera begins setting up character types using contrasting religious affiliations. Kostka is the most obvious and continuous religious reference. He not only adheres to Christianity, but to Communism as well. He achieves this contradictory blend of beliefs through a process of rationalization in which everything relates back to God's greater design. Kostka rationalizes most things in his life and in the world around him as God's will. Unable to come to grips with his own image as a seducer, he conveniently clings to the religious notions of martyrship and absolution for sin. While unknowingly adhering to rational thought, Kostka criticizes rationalism as the corrosive force of both Christianity and Communism throughout history. In his final segment, Kostka's false piety is revealed as he suddenly doubts his faith in God and calls out in futility.

In this crowning moment of Kostka's development, Kundera is clearly having the last laugh. He seems to be telling us that it is not so easy and obvious to find God. Kostka is definitely not the image of harmony his name would imply, and, like everyone else, Kostka must struggle to find faith, salvation and comfort. Ludvik's later description of Kostka only confirms this interpretation and Kostka's character, with his dual beliefs, also serves as a platform for Kundera to criticize socialism and its hypocrisy.

The character of Jaroslav allows Kundera to express ideas much closer to his heart. Jaroslav's notions about fantasy are centered around an ancient belief common to many faiths that the most holy and true things are the oldest things. Jaroslav believes in archaic bad omens and also in Kismet. His love of illogical folk music, whose rhythm cannot be written down in our notation system is mirrored in Kundera's comments about rhythm in The Art of the Novel. Jaroslav, with his strong feelings for the past, struggles to live in the modern world of his wife and son, because, to him, it is a world devoid of meaning. The Ride of the Kings is his bridge between the two worlds, and when Vladimir blatantly rejects being the King, Jaroslav's fantasy world begins to fall apart.

At the same time, Ludvik suddenly beings to change places with Jaroslav. In true mystical Kundera form, Ludvik arrives at his changed state through some inexplicable revelation. From his irrational babbling, Ludvik ultimately arrives at a new faith that renounces the false faith of believing in eternal memory and redressibility and perceives the meaning of life as existing only in the moment. Living in the present, Ludvik is finally able to let go of his past and desire for revenge and find peace with himself.

The imagery surrounding the character of Lucie is highly mystical. While not a strong character, Lucie is a stark contrast to Helena, Kundera's ultimate joke and most biting object of satire. Along with all of the magical reference to her, Lucie's life is much like that of the traditional mystic. She is isolated, anti-social and does not communicate through normal means, yet she is somehow a representation of ultimate truth. In reality, Lucie's image carries more mystical qualities than her actual situation. This idea of image is one of Kundera's key concepts.

Rich in absurdity and reproach for hollow, hypocritical guises of faith, The Joke shows us that Kundera values a more intimate, abstract and individual form of faith as an avenue of meaning over the more formal, institutionalized religions created by man, which are often highly lacking in meaning.