The Crabshack Gallery

Recent Reads: Dangerous Laughter

24th May, 2009 - Posted by MashPotato - No Comments

Slowly but surely, I’ll catch up with posting ;)

A sculptor who seeks to create minatures so small they are invisible; a tower so tall that it extends into heaven, and takes generations to climb; a husband suddenly overcome by the abstractness of words.  Just a few of the stories in Steven Millhauser’s latest short story collection, Dangerous Laughter.To admit bias at the very start (because I know people rely oh so heavily on my opinions! ;) ), Millhauser is one of my favourite authors: he has an uncanny ability to create the impossible in settings that are yet also nostalgic, and to show the hidden of the everyday.  And he didn’t disappoint in this collection.

A recurring theme is objects or experiences that grow it complexity and intricacy until they seem to touch another world, before it must inevitably collapse.  However, unlike most books where I read to find out what happens, it’s really in the growing that the tale (or description, not all of them are really “stories” in the usual sense) really shines.  In the titular story, teenaged girls attend “laugh parlors” where laughter is forced out of the participants until they can no longer handle the explosive release.  However, Clara Schuler, a withdrawn, unstriking girl is different:

She stood so motionless that she seemed to be holding her breath; perhaps she was; and you could feel something building in her, as in a child about to cry; her neck stiff; the tendons visible; two vertical lines between her eyebrows; then a kind of mild trembling in her neck and arms, a veiled shudder, an inner rippling, and through her body, still rigid but in the grip of a force, you could sense a presence, rising, expanding, until, with a painful gasp, with a jerk of her shoulders, she gave way to a cry or scream of laughter–laughter that continued to well up in her, to shake her as if she were possessed by a demon, until her cheeks were wet, her hair wild in her face, her chest heaving, her fingers clutching at her arms and head–and still the laughter came, hurling her about, making her gulp and gasp as if in terror, her mouth stretched back over her teeth, her eyes squeezed shut, her hands pressed against her ribs as if to keep herself from cracking apart.

[...] Now whenever loose groups of us gathered to pursue our game, Clara Schuler was there.  We grew used to her, waited impatiently for her when she was late, this quiet girl whod never done anything but sit obediently in our classes with both feet on the floor before revealing dark depths of laughter that left us wondering and a little uneasy.  For there was something about Clar Schuler’s laughter.  It wasn’t simply that it was more intense than ours.  Rather, she seemed to be transformed into an object, seized by a force that raged through her [...]And we understood one other thing: she would allow nothing to stop her from joining our game, from yielding to the seductions of laughter, for she lived, more and more, only in order to let herself go.

But can the disconnect between body and this other realm last indefinitely?  You’ll have to read to find out, because (as you might have already guessed) I recommend this book.  Some stories are a bit weaker than others (I’m looking at you, “Cat ‘n’ Mouse” and “The Dome”), but even at its lowest points, Millhauser’s great imagination provokes wonder.