Customer Reviews

Dangerous Laughter: Thirteen Stories

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

If you got this far, you should get the book. I don't think there is anything quite like Millhauser except, of course, for strange machines where you can put a quarter in and find yourself shrunk ala Tom Hanks.

This is a most enjoyable read even when you get weary of the current story only to go on to the next, better one.

I'm not going to synopsize the stories since that has been well done by the other reviews. This book has actually been a thrill for me, someone who is not a fan of short stories, because I have never been exposed to so many great stories with this particular slant. One story that really drew me to it was the man who stopped speaking; I don't know why, but I must have read that 8 times while reading the entire book. One reviewer said that s/he had to read all the stories at one sitting, but I was just the reverse. I loved these so much that I only allowed myself 3 stories and a re-read of the man who stopped talking at each sitting.

After reading the first 2 stories I logged onto Amazon and ordered everything by this author.

I suggest you buy this book. I feel certain that you won't be bored.

As in all of his work, Steven Millhauser creates worlds that are just to the left of the center of reality. Each story has a haunting quality that is impossible to quantify, and each keeps you wanting to know more about the inhabitants of his world. Some are thinly veiled allegories, some not so obtuse metaphors, but every one of these 13 stories makes the reader think more about his own world and his perception of it.

I thoroughly loved Millhauser's 1990 short story, "The Barnum Museum", full of understated sparkle and wonder. Therefore I really hate to say it... but for me, this particular collection fell far short.

Though the ideas were creative, I found their execution repetitive, monotonous to the point of being tiring. There were few likable narrators. I do often enjoy long or slow-moving stories (e.g., I loved "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell" and much of Charles Dickens in the face of others complaints about their slow pace), but these thirteen Millhauser stories didn't entrance me enough to care. Yes, I plodded through, but only to reap ultimate disappointment.

My favorite of the bunch was "The Wizard of West Orange", though even there I was sorely tempted to skip ahead.

I loved these stories. They are surrealistic fables, somewhat in the spirit of Borges but with greater narrative drive and a pervasive sense of foreboding. Borges with just a dash of Ray Bradbury or Rod Serling, you might say. The result is both engaging and thought provoking, and beautifully rendered in language that is spare, precise, and evocative.

As I see it, Millhauser is centrally concerned with humanity's creative impulse as it is manifested in artistic endeavors, acts of invention and exploration, and flights of imagination. He is interested in what drives this impulse forward, how it affects those who obsessively indulge the impulse, and how its products enter into the real world and at times overwhelm it.

The stories that explore these themes - stories about artists and inventors, lovers and dreamers - are rich with allegorical overtones.

In one story, a painter experiments with techniques that are increasingly realistic, yielding figures that appear to move with growing independence of the static canvas.

In another, the residents of a small town construct an exact replica of their town, and what begins as an idle amusement becomes an obsession.

And my personal favorite concerns the puzzling disappearance of a young woman. This story unfolds as a kind of locked-room mystery, but with a metaphysical twist that invites us to ponder the many people we encounter in everyday life but fail to befriend, notice, or remember.

Having read a couple of Millhauser's novels, I'm convinced that his gifts are best suited to the short story form. These are dazzling, although perhaps best sampled in small doses.

These short stories are captivating and fantastic. They compel the reader to consider the the relationship between absurdity and reality. Great food for thought.

Millhauser's short stories transform what start out as thought experiments into dream states where the ordinary world is entirely present and yet utterly destabilized. Everything solid melts into air. You sometimes aren't sure if you're reading or dreaming, but it's all done so skillfully that you never feel as if he's showing off or conjuring for conjuring's sake. Each story reads like a report from branch office, written by Borges. Millhauser is only true peer of Murakami.

Elaine Coleman is a character in one of the stories who gradually disappears. I know how she feels: one thirteenth of me seemed to disappear with each story in this tedious volume until I was all gone.

The author has several good ideas, but you just simply don't care for any of his characters because there ARE none.

At least anyone you could actually recognize as a human being.

These stories are tiresome architectural or mathematical constructs. They don't live. They don't breathe.

(One star, however, for a couple good ideas, although poorly executed.)

This is a very strong collection that some less than flattering reviewers have correctly described as repetitive and lacking characters. Were one to read a single story from this collection, it would have a very different effect than a person going through the whole book. This might sound obvious; however, readers who need more character-driven stories are going to be repelled by the collection, whereas they might be able to grant a writer this approach for a single story. The stories are more like imaginative histories either without characters or with characters that are not really the main point. Each story tends to be built around a single fanciful obsession. There are aspects of Poe, Shirley Jackson, Borges, and Hawthorne's short stories in these. The stories begin with disembodied narrators, such as, "After the Age of Revelation came the Age of Concealment," "We here at the Historical Society are tireless in pursuit of the past," or "During the course of the many generations the Tower grew higher and higher until one day it pierced the floor of heaven." After reading a number of such stories, a story such as "The Tower," which comes in the second half of the book, feels already played out before it begins--though it proves, after one gives it a chance, to have a pretty interesting premise. Readers will have a higher opinion of the collection if they cherry-pick stories; however, based on reading other reviews I can tell there's little consensus on which stories to pick!

In my opinion, "Dangerous Laughter" contains a number of excellent stories that can support repeated readings. "Cat 'N Mouse," which stands quite apart from the rest of the stories--except in that it recounts the history of a consuming rivalry--is very amusing and fun. I loved it too when the narrator goes into each animal's psychological state. To me, the other best stories are "The Disappearance of Elaine Coleman," "History of a Disturbance," "The Other Town," "A Precursor of the Cinema," and "The Wizard of West Orange." Another reviewer said "The Other Town" didn't quite cut it; however, it is a fabulous allegory for representation and art. (Some may dismiss it as too ready made for a graduate seminar in post-structuralism where simulacra rolls too easily off of everyone's Baudrillard-loving tongue.)

The weakest stories, I think, are "The Room in the Attic," which just asks for too much suspension of disbelief, and "Dangerous Laughter." Both stories attempt to foreground character more but come off as too artificial--an amusing outcome for a book with so many fantastical conceits.

For readers who like the historical approach, see Jim Shephard's "Like You'd Understand Anyway." His stories are based on real history, however, and Shephard is very comfortable navigating character motivations.

Milhauser uses exaggeration as a literary device. This works well in his novels, where it is just one of many elements. However, in these short stories, where it is the primary focus, it often seems a little too precious.

There are some very good stories here -- Tower, Here at the Historical Society, the Room in the Attic -- where the exaggeration helps to illustrate greater truths. However, stories like In the Reign of Harad IV and A Change in Fashion come across as one-note and hardly worth the effort to write or read.

2 1/2 stars out of four