Laughter and Forgetting

Czech novelist Milan Kundera died in Paris earlier this week.

I started this blog in 2008. My private journal, which is older, is named after a Kundera novel: The Book of Laughter and Forgetting.

When I was trying to decide what to call this blog, I considered The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, but that name/URL was already taken on blogspot. I mentioned this to a friend, who then suggested Laugh and Forget. That name was available, but I didn't like it as much. I checked a few years later, just out of curiosity, and found that Laugh and Forget had also been claimed (trigger warning: suicide, depression, generally harrowing).

I really liked The Book of Laughter and Forgetting when I read it in college, and even gave it as a birthday gift to a girl I had a mild crush on (I don't know if she ever read it). But ironically given its title, I remember very little about the characters or plot. It's like what Anthony Lane says about one of Vladimir Nabokov's short stories:

One of my favorites, “Spring in Fialta” (1936), spins out a full-throated, halfhearted love story through so many offhand flashbacks that, if I were asked to justify my praise, I might not be able to say much more than that it is basically about spring in Fialta.

The Book of Laughter and Forgetting is basically about laughter and forgetting.

* * *

A few months ago, I was trying to remember a quote. All I could remember was, "The ____ of ____ against ____ is the ____ of ____ against ____." I also had an inkling that the first and fourth missing words were probably the same. But I couldn't remember where I had read it, nor who the author might be.

The words that I did remember were so generic that I didn't think a Google search would work, but I tried it anyway (the phrase in quotes, with asterisks for the missing words). Lo and behold, I found the answer. The quote is from The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, and it goes, "The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."

I had forgotten a quote about forgetting!

* * *

Around the same time, there was a tune stuck in my head, but I couldn't remember the name of the song, nor the artist, nor any of the lyrics. Finally, while waiting for a bus, one of the lines popped into my head: "They tell me I'd make more friends if I acted less fight or flight."

This, again, was enough to find the song: Stuck in Your Head by Calista Garcia.

Stuck in Your Head was stuck in my head!