I’m still trying to probe into that connection. I think “kitsch” in relation to art has originated and been explored most extensively in German, and then traveled outwards. I am not doing anything remotely methodical in my essay. But I think, as James Elkins pointed out in his comment, that a more serious consideration of kitsch should involve reading Hermann Broch, Robeth Musil, and Walter Benjamin. Thank you for reading!
I'm glad you reminded me of Robert Musil. For a while, I have been meaning to reread The Man Without Qualities (Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften), which I first read as a teenager. I think I'll go and look for it on my bookshelf. As for Walter Benjamin and Hermann Broch, I'll have to check them out. I came to art rather late, after another profession, so I'm still discovering many of these writers.
Having grown up in an environment that wasn't particularly rich in culture, I think I was somehow fortunate to rebel against what was kitschig in my early surroundings. Hahaha.
Thanks, it's an interesting subject, which could lead to several different conversations. Just two things that bear on the histories of the words "graphomania" and "kitsch":
— The association of graphomania with Central or Eastern Europe can be extended by comparing German texts (Max Nordau's Degeneration, 1892) and French texts (Ossip Lourié, La graphomanie, 1920) — or by taking a writer other than Kundera as a starting point, e.g. Miłosz. Kitsch can also be given a different genealogy, since it can be argued it was preeminently German, from Hermann Broch to Musil. Kundera might be misleading here, since he has become a traditional source but also belongs to his decades — while both graphomania and kitsch have histories that go back several generations before him.
— The origins of graphomania in psychoanalysis, and its extension in psychiatry (www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1525505004003671), point to a meaning that is different from the social explanations of alienation or the lack of readers. There is a kind of compulsive writing that is nonsemantic: it is done for the activity, the motor work, and not for communication. That might be a productive way to think about why "graphomania" is such a dreaded word: it names a nearly hopeless compulsion to write literature and poetry, but it also names a nearly hopeless compulsion.
Thank you so much for this fantastic comment which brings the origins of these terms into the conversation -- I was merely skipping around in my reading, thinking about how these terms keep haunting the literature of the region. I briefly mentioned Tokarczuk's "Ostatnie historie," which as a novel from 2005, might be the most recent mention of kitsch that I can think of... though Ugrešić probably wrote about it even later. Victoria Stoilova in her comment brought up the difference between how Kundera and Ugrešić use "kitsch." And, indeed, I think the term has become invested with different meanings across the decades. Musil and Broch are central to Kundera's thinking, but the term mostly functions as an insult of lost origins, it seems to me.
I really appreciate your point about the origins of graphomania, which has also become detached from its history, though Szymborska speaks (somewhat cautiously) of its compulsive side. Personally, I think the framing in the conversation with Teresa Walas serves mostly to avoid talking about class... but that's another fraught conversation about how these terms functioned under communism, what they revealed and what they mask. I genuinely wonder whether they continue to exert an influence or whether their afterlives have run out.
Thank you! Meanwhile… I’m still thinking through your Part 5 in the cycle on dreams and fictions. You have me thinking about failures of community and how literature can illuminate them… I just need to reread your essay a few more times — your writing always invites rereading.
Oh my heavens — that’s an amazing compliment, thank you. If that essay sparks interesting thoughts that go in new directions, it will have done its job. I’ve been a bit sad that it’s not been much read so far.
This was such a great post! Just fascinating. (You write beautifully Milena - always!) I have to confess I've never heard of the idea of graphomania nor the associations with poor quality writing. But how then would any writer write without being monstered by this concept!! How debilitating! Surely some delusion is necessary to write. It's like what you said about those higher levels of self-awareness resulting in almost too much disillusionment. One is rendered fragile and unable to act. The interesting thing is that graphomania implies a sort of hasty writing - writing at speed - and this is exactly the sort of writing I think I would be tempted to do to try to outrun disillusionment and finish the darn novel! - to outrun the fear that I might in fact be a graphomaniac.
I read an interview with A.S. Byatt in which she talks about writing fast (later in the interview she claims to be able to write 6000 words on a good day!) and she says: "I remember thinking that if you’re going to be really good you’ve got to learn to write faster and in a less inhibited way. And trust your own gift. To trust that what you do is any good. It’s partly with being a woman, I do think, I’m afraid, it’s something to do with the co-ed anxiety. One does look at it and think, “Well I could make it a bit better if I did a bit more work.” Whereas, I think that what one ought to think is, “I can write, let’s just see what comes out if I do this quite fast now.” And I’m not sure that what one does would be any worse. I think one always has to do a lot of work thinking and planning if you want to write good things, and that’s what I do want to do. I don’t want to write ‘Barbara Cartland.'”
Byatt sounds a tad graphomaniacal here, but then, rather interestingly given your connection with kitsch, she mentions not wanting to be like Barbara Cartland.
What struck me, though, reading your post was the role of shame. I think in other places (without this concept), we would think mostly in terms of good writing and bad writing. But with this concept of graphomania there's this additional element of shame tied in - that you have the audacity to want to write for a wider audience of not just family members and friends. How embarrassing. How shameful! You're probably not even good enough for that! You're probably getting above yourself. You're probably a graphomaniac!! In fact, as I write that, I'm beginning to see parallels with 'tall poppy syndrome,' with which I am much more familiar.
(Sorry for the lengthy comment! Just blathering on at this point... Graphomania!!!)
Yes! Tash, thank you so much for shining a light on the personal, intimate impact of this concept on someone who is trying to write. I think there is a common misconception that the enemy is “bad” writing or amateur writing and that if only there were less of it in the world great literature would be somehow more visible, there would be less “noise.” But I think the problem is not on the level of writing as such. There are so many competing incentives in publishing and in the circulation of literature, in literary communities that I think the quality of writing — if we believe in some sort of an ability to determine it easily and early, and I’m not sure I do — doesn’t even really figure in that very complex system.
Writing as sustained practice, writing as finding out what you are thinking, what patterns arrive easily and which ones need to be worked out — “graphomania” as a sort of frenzy or speed or ease might really help tease that out. Thank you for sharing those insights from AS Byatt.
Have you read Margaret Atwood’s Lady Oracle? Your comment made me think of that novel. The protagonist first learns to write Gothic romances from a man who writes nurse romances for a living. Later in the novel she tries automatic writing and produces a mysterious and, I think, somewhat surrealist novel that becomes surprisingly popular a la Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet.
Oh absolutely. I think you're spot on. Yeah, I immediately fell down the rabbit hole of - how-would-this-feel-as-a-writer! But yes. Anxieties about the source of any deterioration to literature and literary culture do seem misplaced. ("Those darn, kitsch-producing graphomaniacs, sucking up all the oxygen while worthy writers wither at the fringes!!") But it's that distinction between worthy writers and graphomaniacs that's so interesting. Because, in a way, it also isn't about the writing. It's about some sort of calculation as to which writers are 'legitimate' and which are (per Kundera) lonely, atomised, unconnected (to a writing in-crowd), suburban, Sunday-dabbler 'illegitimate'.
I have not read Lady Oracle but it sounds good (maybe even funny??)
I’m always behind! Please don't apologize. And I'm still thinking about your Great Books essay -- now in context of a Polish classic completely unknown outside Poland that I’m slowly rereading.
Oh wow. Do I even know what to suggest, ha ha... I will try not to get lost. Luckily there's more and more available in translation. If you read poetry, I think Wisława Szymborska's poetry might be a wonderful place to start. If you do not, then perhaps Olga Tokarczuk's Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead. Or her House of Day, House of Night. If you're in the mood for modernism, Bruno Schulz's Cinnamon Shops/Street of Crocodiles. Non-fiction but with the writer's voice intensely present, that is literary reportage: Ryszard Kapuściński's Travels with Herodotus -- a very personal book of his. I love Lem, but I think sometimes readers outside of Poland dislike how different his books are, so I'm often at a loss what to suggest... people usually like Solaris, which is a very serious novel. I also love the funny impish Lem of Cyberiada and Mortal Engines, for which I sadly see many disappointed reviews. For what it's worth, Ursula Le Guin loved reading Cyberiada to her son. The stories work for adults and older kids, but on different levels.
*Funny impish* appeals to me. And Travels with Herodotus as well. But I might start with Szymborska and Tokarczuk. Very into modernism but will work up to it! (I am pulling up a Polish pronunciation key to help me not mangle the names.!)
Never thought about these topics before. 1. Maybe, because, word "Kitsch" was never used in Russian language. I think now, synonym to this word can be (I can be very wrong) is "poshlost'" which is untranslatable into English but may be is understandable in Polish.This example: havinin living in my childhood in the provincial city and in the most poor working part of it, I saw in some homes, visiting my school friends this kind of pictures in front of beds on the wall, instead of the wool rug: big piece of an oil-cloth with garishly bright colors pictures of some lake and white swans in it or lake and boat thith beautiful young couple, and so on... And you think, what a vulgarity, poshlost', the absence of good taste. Now, I would think, This is a vulgar kitsch, it is full absence of any artistic mode.
2. Graphomania. Very often used in the political sense by Soviet communists- editors not to publish any of anti-socialism work. Iosf Brodsky, in my time and others. But in real life, I think, it's the psychological or psychiatric problem. 3.About your famous literary figures. They are unforgivably arrogant, I think. Thank you for very interesting topics of your essays.
Larisa, thanks to your explanation I finally get to grasp something about the term “poshlost.” I have seen it now and again, but — because Polish actually didn’t borrow it — I’ve been struggling to understand what it covers. In Polish, the common insult is to call something “kicz i tandeta.” Kitsch (with a polonized spelling and pronunciation) is paired with “tandeta” a term that loosely translates as “cheapness” or shoddy work. It seems like “tandeta” might correspond to “poshlost” more closely.
Kitsch on the other hand might be expensive and expensive-looking. Its cardinal “sin” lies in oversimplification and manipulation of the audience. Art that is kitsch relies on familiar associations, on prettiness, on overused and tired symbols. It reaches the audience with a sense of immediacy and obviousness, hits them over the head with meanings that are crass, devoid of nuance and ambiguity. Sentimentalism and kitsch can be seen as related (I think), the use of art in advertising could also be said to constitute kitsch or even to turn the art into kitsch. There’s a corrupting aspect to kitsch: it corrupts taste and seems to sabotage art and the appreciation of it.
That’s my understanding of the term, but I worry now I might be misinterpreting it…
`Milena, I looked through like seven dictionaries, still more on the floor, but i can't do it anymore, and found that kitsch is from German language meaning 'trashy, slapped- together work.' In English, kitsch refers to objects, writings, or any other cultural products or activities that are either in ordinary cheap bad taste or in a kind of self-conscious and sophisticated bad taste that some have found amusing.
This definition is from Reader Digest SUCCESS WITH WORDS , A Guide To The American Language
Kitsch- from Oxford and New World American dictionaries has the same meaning of ' pretentiousness and lack of good taste in art, shallow art, writing, etc., designed for popular appeal.
In this case, I can say about Salvador Dali that his art is a kitsch, but for many it's the real art of genius, so the kitsch can be a very subjective as Russian poshlost' (in our pronunciation the sign ' means that we pronounce softly indicating consonant). We can form the other parts of speech from poshlost' like adjective or noun, say about a man , he is a poshliak, e.i. very vulgar ... Every language has some untranslatable words , again like Russian 'toska'. It is so much more than melancholy or longing, if you think about Chekhov's Toska. Oh, I go out of our topic. Thank you for your interest in our 'poshlost'. We use it a lot.
I think you might find that your view of Dali resonates with Walter Benjamin's description of surrealism as "dream kitsch."
I forgot to thank you for writing about the political uses of "graphomania" as a snub toward "politically unsound" writing. Such uses of the term deserve more attention. I mostly focused my essay on the fear of being accused of graphomania and kitsch, but of course there's so much more to say about both terms.
It is frightening, but personal journals are safe from these kinds of judgments, luckily. In any case, I think that journals is where a lot of meaningful thinking about literature and life happens.
I have not read that one. I have at least a couple of essay volumes of his waiting on the shelf. I think I might be a bad reader because I’m always underlining mentions of Gombrowicz, which is more like stalking Gombrowicz via Kundera than genuinely reading Kundera.
I don't know much about graphomania, but "kitsch" was a favorite term growing up in Germany. It's interesting to see the two discussed together
I’m still trying to probe into that connection. I think “kitsch” in relation to art has originated and been explored most extensively in German, and then traveled outwards. I am not doing anything remotely methodical in my essay. But I think, as James Elkins pointed out in his comment, that a more serious consideration of kitsch should involve reading Hermann Broch, Robeth Musil, and Walter Benjamin. Thank you for reading!
I'm glad you reminded me of Robert Musil. For a while, I have been meaning to reread The Man Without Qualities (Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften), which I first read as a teenager. I think I'll go and look for it on my bookshelf. As for Walter Benjamin and Hermann Broch, I'll have to check them out. I came to art rather late, after another profession, so I'm still discovering many of these writers.
Etwas ist “kitschig” im Deutschen zum Beispiel.
Having grown up in an environment that wasn't particularly rich in culture, I think I was somehow fortunate to rebel against what was kitschig in my early surroundings. Hahaha.
Excellent reflecions.Thank you Milena.
Thanks, it's an interesting subject, which could lead to several different conversations. Just two things that bear on the histories of the words "graphomania" and "kitsch":
— The association of graphomania with Central or Eastern Europe can be extended by comparing German texts (Max Nordau's Degeneration, 1892) and French texts (Ossip Lourié, La graphomanie, 1920) — or by taking a writer other than Kundera as a starting point, e.g. Miłosz. Kitsch can also be given a different genealogy, since it can be argued it was preeminently German, from Hermann Broch to Musil. Kundera might be misleading here, since he has become a traditional source but also belongs to his decades — while both graphomania and kitsch have histories that go back several generations before him.
— The origins of graphomania in psychoanalysis, and its extension in psychiatry (www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1525505004003671), point to a meaning that is different from the social explanations of alienation or the lack of readers. There is a kind of compulsive writing that is nonsemantic: it is done for the activity, the motor work, and not for communication. That might be a productive way to think about why "graphomania" is such a dreaded word: it names a nearly hopeless compulsion to write literature and poetry, but it also names a nearly hopeless compulsion.
Thank you so much for this fantastic comment which brings the origins of these terms into the conversation -- I was merely skipping around in my reading, thinking about how these terms keep haunting the literature of the region. I briefly mentioned Tokarczuk's "Ostatnie historie," which as a novel from 2005, might be the most recent mention of kitsch that I can think of... though Ugrešić probably wrote about it even later. Victoria Stoilova in her comment brought up the difference between how Kundera and Ugrešić use "kitsch." And, indeed, I think the term has become invested with different meanings across the decades. Musil and Broch are central to Kundera's thinking, but the term mostly functions as an insult of lost origins, it seems to me.
I really appreciate your point about the origins of graphomania, which has also become detached from its history, though Szymborska speaks (somewhat cautiously) of its compulsive side. Personally, I think the framing in the conversation with Teresa Walas serves mostly to avoid talking about class... but that's another fraught conversation about how these terms functioned under communism, what they revealed and what they mask. I genuinely wonder whether they continue to exert an influence or whether their afterlives have run out.
Fascinating read. I couldn’t put it down. And that last sentence — yikes.
Thank you! Meanwhile… I’m still thinking through your Part 5 in the cycle on dreams and fictions. You have me thinking about failures of community and how literature can illuminate them… I just need to reread your essay a few more times — your writing always invites rereading.
Oh my heavens — that’s an amazing compliment, thank you. If that essay sparks interesting thoughts that go in new directions, it will have done its job. I’ve been a bit sad that it’s not been much read so far.
This was such a great post! Just fascinating. (You write beautifully Milena - always!) I have to confess I've never heard of the idea of graphomania nor the associations with poor quality writing. But how then would any writer write without being monstered by this concept!! How debilitating! Surely some delusion is necessary to write. It's like what you said about those higher levels of self-awareness resulting in almost too much disillusionment. One is rendered fragile and unable to act. The interesting thing is that graphomania implies a sort of hasty writing - writing at speed - and this is exactly the sort of writing I think I would be tempted to do to try to outrun disillusionment and finish the darn novel! - to outrun the fear that I might in fact be a graphomaniac.
I read an interview with A.S. Byatt in which she talks about writing fast (later in the interview she claims to be able to write 6000 words on a good day!) and she says: "I remember thinking that if you’re going to be really good you’ve got to learn to write faster and in a less inhibited way. And trust your own gift. To trust that what you do is any good. It’s partly with being a woman, I do think, I’m afraid, it’s something to do with the co-ed anxiety. One does look at it and think, “Well I could make it a bit better if I did a bit more work.” Whereas, I think that what one ought to think is, “I can write, let’s just see what comes out if I do this quite fast now.” And I’m not sure that what one does would be any worse. I think one always has to do a lot of work thinking and planning if you want to write good things, and that’s what I do want to do. I don’t want to write ‘Barbara Cartland.'”
Byatt sounds a tad graphomaniacal here, but then, rather interestingly given your connection with kitsch, she mentions not wanting to be like Barbara Cartland.
What struck me, though, reading your post was the role of shame. I think in other places (without this concept), we would think mostly in terms of good writing and bad writing. But with this concept of graphomania there's this additional element of shame tied in - that you have the audacity to want to write for a wider audience of not just family members and friends. How embarrassing. How shameful! You're probably not even good enough for that! You're probably getting above yourself. You're probably a graphomaniac!! In fact, as I write that, I'm beginning to see parallels with 'tall poppy syndrome,' with which I am much more familiar.
(Sorry for the lengthy comment! Just blathering on at this point... Graphomania!!!)
Yes! Tash, thank you so much for shining a light on the personal, intimate impact of this concept on someone who is trying to write. I think there is a common misconception that the enemy is “bad” writing or amateur writing and that if only there were less of it in the world great literature would be somehow more visible, there would be less “noise.” But I think the problem is not on the level of writing as such. There are so many competing incentives in publishing and in the circulation of literature, in literary communities that I think the quality of writing — if we believe in some sort of an ability to determine it easily and early, and I’m not sure I do — doesn’t even really figure in that very complex system.
Writing as sustained practice, writing as finding out what you are thinking, what patterns arrive easily and which ones need to be worked out — “graphomania” as a sort of frenzy or speed or ease might really help tease that out. Thank you for sharing those insights from AS Byatt.
Have you read Margaret Atwood’s Lady Oracle? Your comment made me think of that novel. The protagonist first learns to write Gothic romances from a man who writes nurse romances for a living. Later in the novel she tries automatic writing and produces a mysterious and, I think, somewhat surrealist novel that becomes surprisingly popular a la Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet.
Oh absolutely. I think you're spot on. Yeah, I immediately fell down the rabbit hole of - how-would-this-feel-as-a-writer! But yes. Anxieties about the source of any deterioration to literature and literary culture do seem misplaced. ("Those darn, kitsch-producing graphomaniacs, sucking up all the oxygen while worthy writers wither at the fringes!!") But it's that distinction between worthy writers and graphomaniacs that's so interesting. Because, in a way, it also isn't about the writing. It's about some sort of calculation as to which writers are 'legitimate' and which are (per Kundera) lonely, atomised, unconnected (to a writing in-crowd), suburban, Sunday-dabbler 'illegitimate'.
I have not read Lady Oracle but it sounds good (maybe even funny??)
(And sorry, I've fallen behind on substack reading - hence the rather slow response to your excellent post!)
I’m always behind! Please don't apologize. And I'm still thinking about your Great Books essay -- now in context of a Polish classic completely unknown outside Poland that I’m slowly rereading.
Any advice on where to start with Polish literature? Assume no prior knowledge! Heard a podcast recently discussing Solaris...
Oh wow. Do I even know what to suggest, ha ha... I will try not to get lost. Luckily there's more and more available in translation. If you read poetry, I think Wisława Szymborska's poetry might be a wonderful place to start. If you do not, then perhaps Olga Tokarczuk's Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead. Or her House of Day, House of Night. If you're in the mood for modernism, Bruno Schulz's Cinnamon Shops/Street of Crocodiles. Non-fiction but with the writer's voice intensely present, that is literary reportage: Ryszard Kapuściński's Travels with Herodotus -- a very personal book of his. I love Lem, but I think sometimes readers outside of Poland dislike how different his books are, so I'm often at a loss what to suggest... people usually like Solaris, which is a very serious novel. I also love the funny impish Lem of Cyberiada and Mortal Engines, for which I sadly see many disappointed reviews. For what it's worth, Ursula Le Guin loved reading Cyberiada to her son. The stories work for adults and older kids, but on different levels.
Oh, I'm so glad I asked - thank you!
*Funny impish* appeals to me. And Travels with Herodotus as well. But I might start with Szymborska and Tokarczuk. Very into modernism but will work up to it! (I am pulling up a Polish pronunciation key to help me not mangle the names.!)
Never thought about these topics before. 1. Maybe, because, word "Kitsch" was never used in Russian language. I think now, synonym to this word can be (I can be very wrong) is "poshlost'" which is untranslatable into English but may be is understandable in Polish.This example: havinin living in my childhood in the provincial city and in the most poor working part of it, I saw in some homes, visiting my school friends this kind of pictures in front of beds on the wall, instead of the wool rug: big piece of an oil-cloth with garishly bright colors pictures of some lake and white swans in it or lake and boat thith beautiful young couple, and so on... And you think, what a vulgarity, poshlost', the absence of good taste. Now, I would think, This is a vulgar kitsch, it is full absence of any artistic mode.
2. Graphomania. Very often used in the political sense by Soviet communists- editors not to publish any of anti-socialism work. Iosf Brodsky, in my time and others. But in real life, I think, it's the psychological or psychiatric problem. 3.About your famous literary figures. They are unforgivably arrogant, I think. Thank you for very interesting topics of your essays.
Larisa, thanks to your explanation I finally get to grasp something about the term “poshlost.” I have seen it now and again, but — because Polish actually didn’t borrow it — I’ve been struggling to understand what it covers. In Polish, the common insult is to call something “kicz i tandeta.” Kitsch (with a polonized spelling and pronunciation) is paired with “tandeta” a term that loosely translates as “cheapness” or shoddy work. It seems like “tandeta” might correspond to “poshlost” more closely.
Kitsch on the other hand might be expensive and expensive-looking. Its cardinal “sin” lies in oversimplification and manipulation of the audience. Art that is kitsch relies on familiar associations, on prettiness, on overused and tired symbols. It reaches the audience with a sense of immediacy and obviousness, hits them over the head with meanings that are crass, devoid of nuance and ambiguity. Sentimentalism and kitsch can be seen as related (I think), the use of art in advertising could also be said to constitute kitsch or even to turn the art into kitsch. There’s a corrupting aspect to kitsch: it corrupts taste and seems to sabotage art and the appreciation of it.
That’s my understanding of the term, but I worry now I might be misinterpreting it…
`Milena, I looked through like seven dictionaries, still more on the floor, but i can't do it anymore, and found that kitsch is from German language meaning 'trashy, slapped- together work.' In English, kitsch refers to objects, writings, or any other cultural products or activities that are either in ordinary cheap bad taste or in a kind of self-conscious and sophisticated bad taste that some have found amusing.
This definition is from Reader Digest SUCCESS WITH WORDS , A Guide To The American Language
Kitsch- from Oxford and New World American dictionaries has the same meaning of ' pretentiousness and lack of good taste in art, shallow art, writing, etc., designed for popular appeal.
In this case, I can say about Salvador Dali that his art is a kitsch, but for many it's the real art of genius, so the kitsch can be a very subjective as Russian poshlost' (in our pronunciation the sign ' means that we pronounce softly indicating consonant). We can form the other parts of speech from poshlost' like adjective or noun, say about a man , he is a poshliak, e.i. very vulgar ... Every language has some untranslatable words , again like Russian 'toska'. It is so much more than melancholy or longing, if you think about Chekhov's Toska. Oh, I go out of our topic. Thank you for your interest in our 'poshlost'. We use it a lot.
I think you might find that your view of Dali resonates with Walter Benjamin's description of surrealism as "dream kitsch."
I forgot to thank you for writing about the political uses of "graphomania" as a snub toward "politically unsound" writing. Such uses of the term deserve more attention. I mostly focused my essay on the fear of being accused of graphomania and kitsch, but of course there's so much more to say about both terms.
Milena, dear, don’t think about some special thanks, we are interested in each other writings and it is amazing and more than enough.
Interesting (and a bit frightening!) as someone who has been journaling more than writing lately
It is frightening, but personal journals are safe from these kinds of judgments, luckily. In any case, I think that journals is where a lot of meaningful thinking about literature and life happens.
i've just got back into Kundera via his essays, excellent one on laughter in The Idiot and how it never is expressing joy or humour
I have not read that one. I have at least a couple of essay volumes of his waiting on the shelf. I think I might be a bad reader because I’m always underlining mentions of Gombrowicz, which is more like stalking Gombrowicz via Kundera than genuinely reading Kundera.
i love the idea of stalking one writer in another’s work!
I just hope that reading about "graphomania" won't dampen your reading pleasure!