It’s been a while since I’ve ‘dated’ any good post-modern books.

“Dating without Kundera”:http://www.idlewords.com/2005/11/dating_withou… reminds me of my friend Isabella, whom I wrote about recently, because she recommended The Unbearable Lightness of Being to me (more than a decade ago!) According to this writer, however, that gesture meant little more than a pseudo-intellectual exchange of witty Euro banter between two East Coast proto-philosophers.

Like an early physicist studying the atom, you … hurl little bits of culture at your new love and collect valuable data about her inner life by observing the way they bounce off.

Was I being tested?

But hell, I’ve enjoyed Kundera’s work, not for its ‘turgid sex’ or obligatory references to Nietszche, but for its Joycean grittiness, surreal imagery and (god, I never thought I’d use this phrase myself) post-modern deconstruction of humans in – to put it mildly – interesting circumstances. (Upon rereading the linked article, I discovered the author had provided me with the perfect description of the environment Kundera – and these other writers – describe: absurd)

On the other hand, I didn’t feel the same rush on the second reading of TULOB as my first, in the same way that Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet speaks to me on a different, more mature level than it used to; more an exploration of the relation of self to others, rather than the validation of youthful solitude I took it for at the time.

I’m going to check out the other recommended books on that page, though. It’s been a while since I’ve ‘dated’ any good post-modern books.