Milan Kundera And The Impossible

I have a simple question for my fellow authors to ponder today: What author(s) do you aspire to write like but know that you could never come close to matching?

That’s not to say, who is your favorite author(s). Rather, who is it that inspires you especially because they are so great that they could never be surpassed? You read their work and every time it leaves you in awe, because you can’t figure out how they ever could have conceived of writing something so beautiful, so profound, so impossible.

For me, that author is Milan Kundera. Every time I read one of his novels, I become enraptured by the startling ways he structures his stories. They are like nothing I have ever read. I feel like I’m Alice and I’ve fallen into Wonderland. Nothing makes sense, but I know there’s something grand and profound about the whole experience.

More than just the way he structures his novels, Kundera is an expert at using his stories and characters to capture elements of the human experience I’d never thought about before, but that ring completely true. My favorite and most highly recommended one of his novels is Immortality. It’s a book that literally changed my life and how I view the world.

I know that no matter how hard I try, I’ll never be able to write anything nearly as triumphant as a Milan Kundera novel, but realizing this fact only inspires me to write even more.

That’s what great authors do. They exceed what you thought were the limits of artistic possibility and move you to emulate them at the same time.

Who is that author for you?

Check out Decater's new novel, available now at Amazon. Plus, don't forget his earlier books: Ahab's Adventures in Wonderland and Picasso Painted Dinosaurs.