JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

I’ve been using Moleskine notebooks for a couple of years, they’re the perfect companion on trips, and they’ve put up with heavy-but-reasonable use without complaint. Until now.

 

 

This carnet fell apart for no good reason. The binding on the second to the last page before the pocket came apart. The pocket contained two business cards, a concert ticket and a folded receipt, so it wasn’t exactly full to bursting. 

 

 

I take obsessive care of my notebooks—one of the vestiges of my Theresian upbringing—I don’t like dog-eared pages and I especially don’t bend the spine back (shudder). The only explanation I can think of for this disintegrated notebook is that the glue can’t withstand high humidity. Which doesn’t explain why its fellows are in perfect condition.

I still love Moleskines, I’m just a little disgruntled.

*****

A Czech weekly called Respekt released details from police records in 1950 which suggest that the writer Milan Kundera denounced a person suspected of espionage. The suspected spy was sentenced to 22 years in jail. Was Milan Kundera a rat? Does The Unbearable Lightness of Being ring true if it was written by an informer?

Samuel Abraham says, “the manner of reporting this tragic case represent another substantial drop in the level of decency and professionalism in journalism.” Bernard-Henri Levy reprimands the media and defends Kundera, saying, “”My thoughts are with Milan Kundera. I am thinking about this literary war which has been choreographed with the precision of a ballet, where the first blow leaves the enduring mark and a newspaper, which has the audacity to call itself Respekt, takes it upon itself to destroy you, and all you can do is sit out the beating, bend over double and live out the rest of your days with an infamous shadow which is not your own.”