IMMORTALITY; by Milan Kundera; Grove Weidenfeld; 345 pages; $21.95.
Most novels do not contain scenes in which the book's author runs into one of his own characters on the street, barely recognizing him at first. But then, most novels are not written by Milan Kundera.Kundera's new novel, "Immortality," is loosely about what the title suggests. What do we leave behind us when we die, and what do we do during our lives to prepare that legacy?
Kundera, author of "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" and other works, uses unconventional means to examine this interesting but difficult theme.
Along with Kundera's fictional characters - Agnes, her husband and daughter, and her sister Laura - we find Johann Goethe, Ernest Hemingway, and Milan Kundera and friends in this book. But this is not insufferable postmodern mayhem. Instead, Kundera weaves fiction, biography and essay into a funny, readable, insightful book.
Kundera seems possessed of a particular wisdom about people and their relationships with one another. He characterizes the awkward relationship between the sisters in the novel, for instance, by saying that Agnes is the type of person who subtracts from her life, hoping to reduce it to something meaningful, while Laura is the type to add to her life, hoping to enhance it with pets and people and material goods.
The book's funniest moments are its most offbeat ones. Scenes in which Goethe and Hemingway run into each other in the hereafter and discuss the burden of their undying fame are less earnest than wacky.
More liberties are taken with traditional narration when Kundera puts himself into the picture, lunching with a friend who happens to know one of the characters in the novel. Kundera eventually meets several of his characters.
While this renowned Czech author does have moments of self-indulgence, and we sometimes question the point of it all, his moments of candor and brilliance are well worth the effort put into the book's more difficult passages. - Lisa McAnany (AP)