{"product_id":"the-book-of-imitation-and-trevor-cribben-merrill-9781628925234","title":"The Book of Imitation and Desire: Reading Milan Kundera with Rene Girard","description":"\u003cp\u003eTrevor Cribben Merrill offers a bold reassessment of Milan Kundera's place in the contemporary canon. Harold Bloom and others have dismissed the Franco-Czech author as a maker of \"period pieces\" that lost currency once the Berlin Wall fell. Merrill refutes this view, revealing a previously unexplored dimension of Kundera's fiction. Building on theorist Ren? Girard's notion of \"triangular desire,\" he shows that modern classics such as The Unbearable Lightness of Being and The Book of Laughter and Forgetting display a counterintuitive-and bitterly funny-understanding of human attraction. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eMost works of fiction (and most movies, too) depict passionate feelings as deeply authentic and spontaneous. Kundera's novels and short stories overturn this romantic dogma. A pounding heart and sweaty palms could mean that we have found \"the One\" at last-or they could attest to the influence of a model whose desires we are unconsciously borrowing: our amorous predilections may owe less to personal taste or physical chemistry than they do to imitative desire. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eAt once a comprehensive survey of Kundera's novels and a witty introduction to Girard's mimetic theory, The Book of Imitation and Desire challenges our assumptions about human motive and renews our understanding of a major contemporary author.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Trevor Cribben Merrill\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 162892523X\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9781628925234\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Bloomsbury Academic\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 10\/23\/2014\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 208\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.56lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 8.50h x 5.50w x 0.46d","brand":"Trevor Cribben Merrill","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":46420311933183,"sku":"9781628925234","price":51.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_ddc5bf2f-4eb9-438f-9195-19eb2b3d63bd.jpg?v=1734634259","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/the-book-of-imitation-and-trevor-cribben-merrill-9781628925234","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}