How to Be Book Club - "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" by Milan Kundera

Book Club Bar's in-person philosophy discussion group! This month we're reading "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" by Milan Kundera

Existential crises are like a persistent rash. There's no cure, but if you're suffering from the Big Questions, maybe the How To Be Book Club can be a salve. Come hang out in Book Club Bar's back garden one Saturday each month, and join us in discussing works of philosophical fiction from across different eras and parts of the globe. We'll read the book beforehand (and do us a solid, if you can—get your book from our store), and then gather for casual conversation over drinks. No preparation needed; just bring your book and your curious mind!

This June, we'll discuss mimetic desire, triangulation, the scapegoating mechanism, ontological sickness, and other Girardian ideas, and explore the ways in which Kundera—in his instant-classic, 1984 novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being—contends with what he calls "the automatism of novelistic technique," and the albatross of Girard's theory, which—because it was so undeniably resonant—could be embraced, rejected, elaborated, but not ignored. How do Gerard's principles of desire play out in the lives of Kundera's characters—Tomáš and his wife Tereza, his mistress Sabina, and her lover Franz? How do these principles map onto our culture and relationships?

This month's picks: The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
& All Desire Is a Desire for Being by René Girard