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Kunderian Sighting and Boarding
I have always enjoyed Milan Kundera’s fiction, and especially his magnificent short stories, collected in Laughable Loves. In this piece of work, which has been first published before 1968 in Prague, he shows himself as a master of graceful illusion and illuminating surprises. All seven short stories deal with one big concern of human nature - love. Or rather with strategic and complex erotic games. Both, women and men desperately try to come to terms with their sexual and emotional needs and impulsive actions which can culminate in rather terrifying snowball-effect-like chain of reactions and consequences. In one of these stories, The Hitchhiking Game, the young couple pretend to be strangers, he picks her up, and as the story goes on, they indeed become strangers to one another.
Anyway, yesterday when I was cleaning my book shelf, I ran into this fabulous book again and I went directly to one specific piece of one story, that always made me laugh so much. The little story that got me to write this post is a story about two friends, who went on a hunt for girls. And one of them came up with a little theory about Sighting and Boarding.
Those of you who haven’t read about this little theory yet, here’s some explanation:)). Martin (the story character) came to conclusion that it is not as difficult to seduce a girl than is to know enough girls one hasn’t yet seduced. So, this sighting theory says that a guy needs always, at every opportunity, systematically to sight women. How? Well, he needs to record in a notebook (or better iPAQ or palm, lol) or even in his memory the names of girls who have attracted him in order to be able to board them one day:)). So, apparently boarding is a higher level of activity, and means actually getting in touch with a particular girl, make her acquaintance and gain access to her (sounds bit like ethnographers task of gaining access to their key informants in their field).
So, guys, according to this Martin guy’s theory, it’s not wise and perspective to boast with names of girls you have slept with before, but to have a perspective future in the field, it is necessary to have plenty of girls, being sighted and boarded.
Good that the story is so cute and funny that my feminist self couldn’t be bothered at all.
By Nana | January 6, 2005 | Topics: Books |