Beauty in toilet paper
Identity by Milan Kundera, Faber, $220 Milan Kundera has firmly established his new identity. The setting for his recent novels has been France and deep philosophical questions about our existence and behaviour preoccupy his characters. Gone is the obvious wider political backdrop.
Identity is also, more surprisingly, a love story. Chantral, in her 40s, suffers an identity crisis when she realises men no longer look at her as they used to. Her lover, Jean-Marc, frightens himself by mistaking another woman in a crowd for her. They are in danger of no longer knowing each other.
Chantral then begins receiving letters from a mysterious lover, which provide her with an unexpected erotic excitement and rock her relationship with Jean-Marc. So begins a bizarre adventure where reality blurs into fantasy.
Identity manages to be bizarre, gripping and yet mundane. Maybe its flatness is because the characters lack humour, with even their sexuality underpinned by their existential thoughts.
There is plenty of wit, but no moments of sheer hilarity that so brilliantly lifted Kundera's previous novel, Slowness, beyond its musings.
Chantral and Jean-Marc talk and think. They do not live. As Chantral describes it, they have locked themselves away in their love. They find sanctuary in each other from their nihilistic world view. They have no wider hopes or dreams. While she has a job in advertising that half of her enjoys, he is a mere drifter. They are hardly a couple to really care for.
And yet reading this Kundera remains a satisfying experience.
The author is a master at making us view our existence through new eyes, drawing our attention to anything from the imperfection of the blink to why toilet paper is usually pink.
Our gradual disintegration is only one of the realities he makes us consider. More frightening is that Chantral admits to herself that there was a benefit, and even a scandalous happiness, from her young son dying. It freed her to live, love and think as she liked.
Friendship and love also define our identities. Friends act as a mirror from which we can know ourselves. Without them, the past can be forgotten, Jean-Marc discovers. It is a cynical view of human nature. Beneath the veneer of civilisation, we remain motivated by our selfish egos and basic instincts.
Part of Chantral wants to distance herself from her career in advertising, to enjoy her lover's greater freedom. But it is ironically the world of advertising that understands and embraces those basic needs.
'Toilet paper, nappies, detergents, food. That is man's sacred circle . . .' says Leroy, the ad executive. It is his mission to make it beautiful. Chantral, who escaped the depth of such banalities through her son's death, says this is 'desolation with make-up on'.
Such observations, mingled with the mystery of the love letters, make this book enjoyable. Kundera's words are perfectly measured out in the book's brevity. Any longer and it would pale into ennui.
Identity may be a surprising literary topic, but it is particularly apt for Kundera whose life and work have been shaped so dramatically by his own transforming identity, from Czechoslovak rebel to French thinker.
