It would be easy to write off Milan Kundera’s newest novel, “The Festival of Insignificance,” as an exercise in navel gazing. After all, the novel actually opens by discussing this very thing: “It was as if their seductive power no longer resided in their thighs, their buttocks or their breasts, but in that small round hole located in the center of the body… But how to define the eroticism of a man (or an era) that sees female seductive power as centered in the middle of the body, the navel?”
It is in this cursory, yet somehow incisive, essayist fashion that Kundera attacks—or maybe does not—many themes in this novel, diving into not only insignificance, as the title suggests, but also fashion, Stalin, friendship, Hegel and, yes, navels.
For a novel, surprisingly little action takes place. Set in a modern yet timeless Paris, the novel plays out through seven loosely connected chapters exploring the conversations and daily, seemingly insignificant actions of four friends: Ramon, Charles, Caliban and Alain. These conversations between friends are frequently interspersed with direct musings from Kundera and strange, historical tales, such as a particularly memorable foray into Stalin’s war room. Every event or happening in the novel seems just a charade or a vehicle for Kundera to paint an idea or opinion, leaving not much room for plot or climax. For some readers, this may be an unwelcome departure from the more typical structure of the novel, but I found it refreshing, though in a longer work, I am not sure how effective it might be.
It is widely discussed that “The Festival of Insignificance” is most likely the last book the world will see from Kundera, author of the now-canonical “The Unbearable Lightness of Being.” As the book stands alone, it is short (115 pages with large font and margins) and kaleidoscopic almost to a fault, never lingering long enough on any one topic for the reader to have confidence that they have grasped the message at hand.
Yet, it is funny and smart in its brevity, maybe using its reticence to make a larger point: “Insignificance, my friend, is the essence of existence… But it is not only a matter of acknowledging it, we must love insignificance, we must learn to love it.”
Still, “The Festival of Insignificance” is hard to place, though it is a bit more comprehensible when viewed through the lens of all of Kundera’s earlier work. As Publishers Weekly suggested, the novel is “a fitting bookend to Kundera’s long career intersecting the absurd and the moral.”
I am tempted to call the novel “short yet sweet” and end the review, but I must admit my frustration with one important aspect of it– the view it takes of women. Female characters, of which there are few and who are rarely named, are seen merely as objects for desire or opportunities to muse on the nature of sexual attraction and judged by their looks alone. But, given Kundera’s wit and effortless charm, I am already tempted to forgive him.
