Laughable Loves by Milan Kundera

This book was so much more than I expected it would be - I love when that happens. 

"Laughable Loves" is a collection of about 7 short stories.  Short stories can be an amazing art form, but I do think it's hard to find a writer who does well with them.  The challenge is that a short story writer must fashion a strong story with a lot less than a novelist.  A short story writer must dive right in & grab hold of the plot quickly while seizing the details/images that pack the most punch.   I believe some writers thrive under that added pressure or challenge, while others overestimate themselves.  Well, Milan Kundera can definitely perform with the added constraints of the short story.  As a reader I didn't feel short-changed, like there wasn't enough there or that the story quit before it was really complete.

Kundera can create a viable world, situation, personalities, and conflict with only 30 pages.  I was kind of in awe of how well he did this, actually.  The highlight for me was The Hitchhiking Game - a short story about a 20-something boyfriend and girlfriend who are on a two-week holiday road trip.  Their relationship was not strong prior to this holiday but both are trying to make of the opportunity a special occasion.  Somehow, after a bathroom stop on the highway, a role-playing game evolves.  Instead of being themselves they are now playing a man who has picked up a strange, beautiful female hitchhiker.  The role-playing game coincidentally helps the young woman bypass her shyness concerning her sexuality - and suddenly she becomes a precocious, relaxed person.  However, she is achieving this by not being herself, it is not growth but playacting.  And her boyfriend becomes meaner to her as this goes on - frustrated with this fake shift in her.  It's a mean little corner that Kundera paints these people into - but it is a very believable and interesting story.

All of these stories are primarily concerned with sexuality - Kundera calls them sexual comedies.  If the story doesn't include an affair, a marriage or a courtship - than it is concerned with the lusting after something even if that something is not sex.

The epigraph to my second favorite story, The Eternal Apple of Desire, is:

"...they do not know that they seek only the chase and not the quarry."

~Blaise Pascal

In this story two male friends, one of whom is happily married, chase women.  They do so very scientifically - if they get a name and an address of a woman they call that a "registration" & even if they don't "make contact" with the "registration," they may follow up with that woman some time in the future.  What makes this game strange is that there seems to be no point to their aimless seeking.  One man is happily married and wants no one else.  He pretends he is playing for the benefit of his single friend, however his friend doesn't really believe anything will come of this game.  Playing definitely seems to satisfy something in each of these men that needs satisfying, but still for the most part it all seems senseless.  I suppose that was the unsettling quality of this story.  Desire is so central to our lives and it's really important that that is so.  And yet, we are not meant to become hollow beings ruled by our passions.  And so the question becomes how do we show due respect to the desire we feel without letting it lead us around by the nose? 

So these are the themes & issues of Laughable Loves and Kundera creates memorable characters through which to explore them.   A great read.