SOURCE: "Milan Kundera, the Joker," in Esquire, Vol. LXXXI, No. 4, April, 1974, pp. 85, 178, 182, 184.

A prominent and controversial figure in contemporary American letters, Roth draws heavily upon his Jewish upbringing and his life as an author to explore his predominant thematic concerns—the search for self-identity, conflicts between traditional and contemporary moral values, and the relationship between fiction and reality. The scatalogical content of some of his works and his satiric portraits of Jewish life have inspired a considerable amount of critical debate. Roth wrote the introduction to the English-language edition of Kundera's Laughable Loves. In the following excerpt, he comments on the seriousness underlying the eroticism in Kundera's stories.

Erotic play and power are the subjects frequently at the center of the stories that Kundera calls, collectively, Laughable Loves. To be sure, sexuality as a weapon (in this case, the weapon of him who is otherwise wholly assailable) is...