The craft of kundera

　　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 The Novel.The title evokes the methodological solemnity of Henry James;but the book is in fact a rather short collection of essays which have already been…