The Joke By Milan Kundera
Harper & Row, 267 pp., $14.95 How are black people and Czechs similar? Well, in either case, we tend to patronize or overrate their fiction. Extra credit is given for peculiarity and suffering: we are somewhat less criticalminded. The black novelist has had a rough time establishing himself as more than just soul stew. So, too, Eastern European novels are often exploited for their convenient psywar impact. And, of course, Czech or Russian art can never be wholly neutral or without accent. To some degree it must sound dissident. After all, for the Western reader, any fiction that describes Communist life, even just in passing, will sound absurdist or satiric or downright subversive—so different is American political experience. The Joke, though, sets out to transcend this inherent dissidence. For that reason it is a brilliant, an exquisite, and a very problematical book.
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