Milan Kundera and Ashton Kutcher in the crucible of my subconsciuosness.
PRAGUE, Czech Republic (AP) — A document written by the Czech Communist police claims that author Milan Kundera informed on a purported Western spy in the 1950s, a state-sponsored institute said Monday.
The Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes said a team of historians and researchers found a document written by the SNB, or Czech Communist police, that identified Kundera as the person who informed on a man who was later imprisoned for 14 years.
The usually reclusive Kundera, author of ”The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” rushed to reject the charge.
”I am totally astonished by something that I did not expect, about which I knew nothing only yesterday, and that did not happen. I did not know the man at all,” Kundera was quoted as saying by the CTK news agency.
Kundera accused the institute and the media of ”the assassination of an author.”
Kundera, 79, has lived in France since 1975 and it is there that he published his most famous books, including ”The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” ”The Book of Laughter and Forgetting,” ”The Art of the Novel” and ”Immortality.” He was granted French citizenship in 1981.
The author lives in virtual seclusion, only travels to his former homeland incognito and never speaks to the media.
Continue reading: The New York Times.
This reminds me of a dream I once had. Let me recount it to you.
At the point at which I become conscious of myself dreaming, I encounter Ashton Kutcher. He has written three books, all of which have been quite successful and are critically respected. I don’t know the details of the first and the third, but the second book is a remake of Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Kutcher had starred in the film adaption of the book, and then he had written his own version of the story, stripping away the actual intellectual content and replacing it with pseudo-intellectualism that appeals to people my dream-self considers half-wits. Whether or not the book has any intellectual merit, my waking self is left to speculate. It’s also of note that he has three books. His first book was acclaimed before he ever starred in or wrote the remake of the Kundera classic, and then he wrote another well received book afterward. He’s solidly established, and by all measures, a well-respected author and a veritable master of his trade.
When I actually meet Kutcher, we’re in a large green field with trees, which I take to be a golf course. We’re not golfing, and it seems like maybe there are some buildings somewhere behind us, but nowhere within the frame of my view. Kutcher’s sitting on a fence, talking to some high school girls, whom I would estimate are about fifteen years old. Within moments they’re fondling him through his pink and yellow plaid shorts while he half-heartedly discourages them. It’s at this point that I wake from the dream, wide-eyed and panicked.
Photo from A Photography Blog.