📚 24 - November
Starting with the October 2024 post, I'm putting the book blog on partial hiatus.
Milan Kundera (1986). L'Art du roman. [The Art of the Novel]
Loved this book (I seem to be going on a kick with books like this).
Kundera addresses the "is the novel dead" question by saying something that makes perfect sense to me. The novel isn't dead; in fact, it has throughout its history gestured toward novelistic modes that were dropped and not fully explored. The genre of broad comedies of Tristram Shandy or Jacques le Fataliste et son maître weren't the artistic forebearers of e.g. 19th century realism. But Kundera goes on to say that, if the novel is to continue being relevant, it must address the "terminal paradoxes" of contemporary (1980s) society.
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