One of max Beerbohm's cartoons shows Mrs.Humphry Ward as a very little girl,saying to a sardonically smiling Matthew Arnold:"Uncle Matthew ,oh why will you not be always wholly serious?"The question arises unbidden in the novels of Milan kundera.The mind behind the novels is essentially serious,and yet they are very funny,sometimes farcical.Our puzzlement is not wholly laid to rest in Kundera's new book,The Art of …showed first 75 words of 878 total…

…showed last 75 words of 878 total…reader is aware of the omnipresent comic spirit;but still,the comedy is in the manner,not the matter.We must then accept that Kundera's comic sense is very bitter;true to the spirit of his compatriots Kafka and Jaroslav Hasek's The Good Soldier Schweik,Kundera's comedy is a chillingly sardonic resistance to the seriousness of his thought. writer:Ian wan; in Los Angeles Times Book Review,March 6,1988,pp.3.7.