SOURCE: “The Character as Victim,” in Hudson Review, Vol. XXXVII, No. 3, Autumn, 1984, pp. 468-82.

In the following excerpt, Lesser offers a negative assessment of The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

What I understand by an author's love for his characters is a delight in their independent existence as other people, an attitude towards them which is analogous to our feelings towards those we love in life; and an intense interest in their personalities combined with a sort of detached solicitude, a respect for their freedom. This might be—indeed should be—a truism, but I suppose it to be one no longer. The writers whom we admire today do not appear to love their characters, and the critics who appraise their books show no sign of doing so either. For a writer or critic to show delight in a character would seem today rather naive, an old-fashioned response left...