Laughable Loves

must read series of short stories on the humor of love.

Nice book

Character you're just going to want to cringe over, and perhaps relate to.

"We pass through the present with our eyes blindfolded." says Kundera. Most of the characters in this collection of seven great stories are blind in one way or another. If they happen to be wise, they turn out, after all, to be unbearably light, chasing after women, embracing men, for no purpose whatsoever other than that is what they seem destined to do. Their perspectives on themselves are often pitifully unrealistic, hence the stories tend to center around misunderstandings. The men can't break the habit of "continuing conquest". The women seem remarkably prone to give in. Even when the men are happily married, the chase still beckons. With great humor and wit, with a lot of philosophical depth, Kundera traces the mentality of various Czechs in different walks of life in the 1960s through the medium of their sometimes tawdry love life. Tales of would-be conquests turn out to be critiques of society, questions about the meaning of life, or witty perspectives on the old theme of youth vs. age. Great Romeos turn out to be duds, burnt-out old flames can be lit again. Eroticism is not what it is cracked up to be, but sometimes it's more than we expect. Great stuff.Maybe it's a special Czech style of writing about love, maybe it's that wry, ironic humor found in Hasek and Skvorecky that I've always liked, but Kundera's characters lack the aggression, material concerns, or passion for commitment found in American novels as well as lacking the love of style found in the French. They are simply average people with limitless libido. So are they average ? That one is up to you. In a story about how desire for a girl makes a young man invent a religious fervor, then defend it to the local Party committee, winding up in bed with his boss, who is supposed to purge him of religion, Kundera turns away from the plot to write...."it seemed to Eduard that [the girl's religious] ideas were in fact only a veneer on her destiny, and her destiny only a veneer on her body; he saw her as an accidental conjunction of a body, ideas, and a life's course, an inorganic structure, arbitrary and unstable. ....He saw her as an ink line, spreading on a blotter: without contours, without shape." The skill of a man who can stick lines like this into a story which STILL manages to entertain has to be seen to be believed. Each story provides its own stock of surprises. This is the first book by Kundera I've ever read. It certainly won't be the last.

I just came across this collection of short stories, and as a devoted Kundera fan, I quickly devoured it amidst Christmas preparations, letter writings and other more dreary readings. And what a delight! This is early Bohemian Kundera, written while he still lived in then Czechoslovakia, and it is quite evident that he has not yet matured into the thoroughly seasoned writer that produced masterpieces such as "Life is Elsewhere", "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" and "Immortality". However, this is unmistakenly literary genius in the making, and the mood throughout is simply captivating.The themes all deal with aspects of human sexuality - mostly from a Man's view. The stories have a raw sense of humanity to them - sometimes it can be uncomfortable reading; however, it has an undeniably tender undercurrent. Even when a character behaves despicably, I remained sympathtic with the human behind the actions. It just feels irresistably honest, and it is quite easy to get seduced by such well-portrayed human complexities.Among my favorite stories were "The Old Dead Must Make Room for the New Dead", which portrays the dilemma of whether to preserve a diffuse, but beautiful sensual memory or replace it with a graphic, but uglier version that will ultimately erase the former. "Edward and God" is another gem that deals with sexual longing and the fickleness of Religion (Atheism is cleverly presented just as irrational in its dogmatisms as Christianity).Finally "The Hitchhiking Game" is a classic portrayal of how easily perceptions can be irreversibly altered.I highly recommend this short-story collection; however, if you are reading Milan Kundera for the first time, I am tempted to recommened one of his more famous works...

Milan Kundera is one of my heroes. He is a symbol of artistic and political bravery from an age when the heavy heel of Soviet totalitarianism was firmly planted on the neck of central and eastern europe, including his home country of Czechoslovakia. 'The Book of Laughter and Forgetting', and 'The Unbearable Lightness of Being' were both huge international successes. But ... 'Laughable Loves' is one that I would prefer not to have read. It is a collection of short stories. Nothing wrong with that. They are Czech in tone and setting. Again, nothing wrong with that. The problem is that the idiosyncratic viewpoint in each story is (as judged from the 21st Century) cynically misogynistic. Not in a deliberately hyperbolic manner aimed at milking humor, but in a way that reflects on the attitude of the author. That's why I would have preferred not to have read it. The 'humor' is still born.

This is a collection of seven very early stories by Milan Kundera. I believe they were mostly written during the 60's and are set in the Czechoslovakia of that time.He has an innovative but very readable style - simple, precise, light. These stories bring out philosophical mysteries while being page turning reads at the same time. They sort of remind me of fables, but without any obvious moral lessons. Not exactly anyway. They will, however, give you plenty to think about on the nature of Identity, Desire, Ego, etc.For me, this is Kundera at his best or very near. I really liked Unbearable Lightness of Being and The Book of Laughter and Forgetting and this book has the same virtues as those. I think some of his later works, like Immortalitiy, tended towards self indulgence, but the early and middle stuff is some of the most inventive, engaging work of the 20th century.