SOURCE: "Between the Iron Bedsheets," in The New York Times, Vol. CXXIII, No. 42,567, August 10, 1974, p. 27.

Broyard was an influential American literary critic who, during his career, contributed book reviews to the New York Times, served as editor of the New York Times Book Review, and lectured on sociology and literature at the New School for Social Research. In the following review, he finds Kundera's stories overrated and merely "passable. "

It seems to me that dissident writers from Iron Curtain countries are generally overestimated in the United States. We praise them for their moral courage, and overlook their literary lapses. Their fiction takes on for us a tension of personal risk and political drama that obscures its mediocrity as art. We feel the anguish of the writer's position and transpose it to his work. In a simple inversion, the censor's disapproval is regarded as a guarantee of quality. There...