I recently finished Milan Kundera’s novel, Ignorance, which I now understand is meant to refer to the Spanish word añoranza (meaning nostalgia or homesickness) as much as it is meant to refer to a lack of understanding. How have I survived so many years without his books? I must admit my knowledge of him was restricted to having noticed his name on the movie The Unbearable Lightness of Being when I saw it in Paris in 1986: a critical year in my development, and, perhaps, if I attempt to look back on that time, the moment of my break—or, to put it in Kundera’s words, the birth of my ignorance.
Let me clarify that: the two years I spent in Paris gave birth to my nostalgia for California, a longing to return that unbeknownst to myself was chipping away at my memories of that place (the place from which I wanted to escape). Unlike Kundera who was forced to flee, in my case, it was not a divorce, but rather a separation. The problem is that Californians generally prefer an amicable divorce to an ambivalent separation. Be that as it may, I didn’t give much thought to the idea that, in my own humble way, my situation was not so different from Kundera’s (he left his home for Paris—albeit under threat; I left my home for Paris—albeit as a voluntary quest) and I suspect, even under the drastically different circumstances which brought us to that city, he would agree with me that it’s a marvelous place.
In his case, the specter of an unfriendly government forced him to stay in the most beautiful city in the world. In my case, I was free to come and go as I pleased, and that is just what I did. Today I am not living in Paris, I am not writing in French— Kundera is. His crisis occurred in 1989 when the Iron Curtain was drawn, the borders were opened, and all the émigrés and asylum seekers were welcomed home with great fanfare. On that day, Kundera must have acutely felt the joy of living in Paris, which now, perhaps for the first time, he was responsible to declare with the same naïve verve as little Tony Marais, who when asked why he wanted to stay in Paris would surely say: “Because it’s great!” (A tangent: The soundtrack to Baghdad Café, which I saw in Paris about the same time as Unbearable Lightness is now playing in this café—thank you, Poland. In a movie or a book, this sort of coincidence would never work. But now I must ask you to believe me.) Anyway, as I was saying: Is the novel Ignorance just an excuse for not going home? I would say no, it is not. Kundera has offered up a heartfelt meditation on subjects (absence, emigration, memory and identity) which imposed themselves on him, not the contrary.
And what about me? Where do I fit into all this? I come from California. No one forced me to spend all these years abroad. From the start, I had no excuse. This is the reason you may not sympathize with me. It’s remarkable how people who act of their own volition get no sympathy. Anyone who has attempted to write a novel has dealt with the problem of rallying readers around the protagonist. It’s easier said than done: probably because we as writers experience total freedom and the world hates us for it. That’s why we’re compelled to hurl misfortune upon our characters in the hope of creating the illusion of fetters. Only then does envy slip away, and sympathy takes its place. I suspect this will be the greatest hurdle my generation must face: until George W. Bush came into office we’ve had no real contact with war or economic hardships. What’s the result? Despite our freedom we seek out stress and misfortune anywhere we can find it.
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