It is part of Mr. Klima's undoubted skill as a writer (again one is reminded of Chekhov) to resist absolutely the kind of intellectual fireworks in which Mr. Kundera specializes. His writer's stance is that of the plain man doing a plain job, or trade, even if it is one that the state apparatus has arbitrarily found for him. The stories suggest that he has become a writer not by having a vocation but by finding himself writing: a humble do-it-yourself activity that can keep you sane in a mad world, especially a mad political world. Ironically, the state has inadvertently shown him how to behave like Voltaire's Candide, and to cultivate his garden.