Roth: Is this [novel], then, the furthest point you have reached in your pessimism?<\/p>\n
Kundera: I am wary of the words pessimism and optimism. A novel does not assert anything; a novel searches and poses questions. I don’t know whether my nation will perish and I don’t know which of my characters is right. I invent stories, confront one with another, and by this means I ask questions. The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything. When Don Quixote went out into the world, that world turned into a mystery before his eyes. That is the legacy of the first European novel to the entire subsequent history of the novel. The novelist teaches the reader to comprehend the world as a question. There is wisdom and tolerance in that attitude. In a world built on sacrosanct certainties the novel is dead. The totalitarian novel, whether founded on Marx, Islam, or anything else, is a world of answers rather than questions. There the novel has no place. In any case, it seems to me that all over the world people nowadays prefer to judge rather than to understand, to answer rather than to ask, so that the voice of the novel can hardly be heard over the noisy foolishness of human certainties.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was too darn busy this weekend to write about that final Montaigne essay, and this week’s going to be pretty rough at the office, but I don’t want to leave you guys in the literary lurch. So here’s the closing passage from Philip Roth’s 1980 interview with Milan Kundera. It’s not that I’ve been … <\/p>\n
Continue reading “The Book of, uh, something and something else”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,17,20],"tags":[610,609],"class_list":["post-3659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literature","category-politics-explicit","category-religion","tag-milan-kundera","tag-philip-roth"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-X1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":8463,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/podcast-the-hollow-man","url_meta":{"origin":3659,"position":0},"title":"Podcast – The Hollow Man","author":"Gil","date":"December 29, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Virtual Memories Show: The Hollow Man It's the ONE-HUNDREDTH EPISODE\u00a0of The Virtual Memories Show!\u00a0And they said it would never last!\u00a0To celebrate hitting the century mark, I asked past guests, upcoming guests and friends of the show to interview me this time around! This special episode includes questions and recorded segments\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Podcasts"","block_context":{"text":"Podcasts","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/podcasts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/e\/ir?t=voyantpublishing&l=as2&o=1&a=B002SQJLA4","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":15292,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/episode-489-ira-nadel","url_meta":{"origin":3659,"position":1},"title":"Episode 489 – Ira Nadel","author":"Gil","date":"June 7, 2022","format":"audio","excerpt":"Virtual Memories Show 489: Ira Nadel \"Roth left so many instructions and prescriptive statements about how things should happen after his death, that he was really trying to \u2014 to use a phrase uttered by the gravedigger in Everyman \u2014 square the hole.\" Professor & biographer Ira Nadel joins the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Art"","block_context":{"text":"Art","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/art"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/nadelcomp.jpg?fit=1063%2C800&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/nadelcomp.jpg?fit=1063%2C800&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/nadelcomp.jpg?fit=1063%2C800&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/nadelcomp.jpg?fit=1063%2C800&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/nadelcomp.jpg?fit=1063%2C800&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":4576,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/publishers-at-play","url_meta":{"origin":3659,"position":2},"title":"Publishers at Play","author":"Gil","date":"October 25, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"When I was a pretentious young man (I'm older now; but that doesn't mean I'm less pretentious), the Paris Review Writers at Work anthologies were my Bible. (Or at least my Apocrypha. My Bible was a mash-up of Tropic of Cancer and Inside the Whale.) I'd seek out the collections\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "0-fer"","block_context":{"text":"0-fer","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature\/0-fer"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0802131786","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":7839,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/roth-on-roth-action","url_meta":{"origin":3659,"position":3},"title":"Roth on Roth action","author":"Gil","date":"April 17, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Looks like PBS has the entire Philip Roth ep. of its American Masters series free online! He remains #1 on my dream-list of guests for the podcast. Yesterday's interview, Lynne Sharon Schwartz, told me that she's acquaintances with him, but I doubt that'll be enough to get my foot in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "literature"","block_context":{"text":"literature","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":16094,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/episode-541-jonathan-papernick","url_meta":{"origin":3659,"position":4},"title":"Episode 541 – Jonathan Papernick","author":"Gil","date":"June 6, 2023","format":"audio","excerpt":"Virtual Memories Show 541: Jonathan Papernick Author Jonathan Papernick joins the show to celebrate his fantastic new short story collection, Gallery of the Disappeared Men, and new novel, I am my Beloveds (Story Plant). We talk about his writing life, the weirdness & joy of retracing the footsteps of his\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "literature"","block_context":{"text":"literature","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/papernickcomp.jpg?fit=1200%2C542&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/papernickcomp.jpg?fit=1200%2C542&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/papernickcomp.jpg?fit=1200%2C542&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/papernickcomp.jpg?fit=1200%2C542&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/papernickcomp.jpg?fit=1200%2C542&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":2029,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/sun-roth","url_meta":{"origin":3659,"position":5},"title":"Sun Roth","author":"Gil","date":"May 1, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Today's edition of the New York Sun's Arts+ section continues to defend its title as Official Newspaper of Gil Roth (and several other Roths, as seen in #s 1 and 2): Roth Time Redux, discussing the impact of Dieter Roth, a new exhibition on Philip Guston, with a shout-out to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Art"","block_context":{"text":"Art","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/art"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3659"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3659\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3660,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3659\/revisions\/3660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}