Dangerous Laughter by Steven Millhauser (Knopf, 2008).
Of all the writers I know, Steven Millhauser has probably the most uncanny imagination, the biggest range in themes, and at the same time, the most recognizable (ie., unique) style.
The first story in Dangerous Laughter, “Cat’ n’ Mouse,” is written like a precise report of a Tom and Jerry cartoon. In fact, having watched dozens of episodes of the latter as a teenager (on Romanian TV!), I am convinced that Millhauser has written many of the passages while watching the cartoon.
“The Room in the Attic” reminds me of Dickens. As in many of Millhauser’s stories, the narrator is a teenager fascinated with another boy his age, or rather, with the mysterious, wondrous world his friend gives him access to. The recurrent theme of the initiation into another, mysterious world, which often happens to exist across from our own home, is paralleled by the locus of the dark room as a variation on the magic behind the velvet curtain at the movie theater.
Several of the stories in this collection—“The Dome,” “The Tower,” “The Other Town”—revolve around an architectural theme, which is one of Millhauser’s preoccupations. In this, he is truly a creator, as he imagines alternative architectural possibilities to the ones we are familiar with: an entire town, then the entire country, covered by a dome, like a huge mall; a town, which is an exact replica of its neighboring town; and an imperfect version of the Tower of Babel, inhabited by humans.
This would have been one of my favorite Millhauser collections had it not been for the last part. Though interesting conceptually (For instance, “A Precursor of the Cinema” is fascinating as a combination of historical fact and fiction, not to mention a hidden reference to Balzac’s Le Chef-d’oeuvre inconnu through the character’s “self-erasure”) these stories were a bit tedious. Still, Millhauser is, as far as I am concerned, the best contemporary American writer.
The first story in Dangerous Laughter, “Cat’ n’ Mouse,” is written like a precise report of a Tom and Jerry cartoon. In fact, having watched dozens of episodes of the latter as a teenager (on Romanian TV!), I am convinced that Millhauser has written many of the passages while watching the cartoon.
“The Room in the Attic” reminds me of Dickens. As in many of Millhauser’s stories, the narrator is a teenager fascinated with another boy his age, or rather, with the mysterious, wondrous world his friend gives him access to. The recurrent theme of the initiation into another, mysterious world, which often happens to exist across from our own home, is paralleled by the locus of the dark room as a variation on the magic behind the velvet curtain at the movie theater.
Several of the stories in this collection—“The Dome,” “The Tower,” “The Other Town”—revolve around an architectural theme, which is one of Millhauser’s preoccupations. In this, he is truly a creator, as he imagines alternative architectural possibilities to the ones we are familiar with: an entire town, then the entire country, covered by a dome, like a huge mall; a town, which is an exact replica of its neighboring town; and an imperfect version of the Tower of Babel, inhabited by humans.
This would have been one of my favorite Millhauser collections had it not been for the last part. Though interesting conceptually (For instance, “A Precursor of the Cinema” is fascinating as a combination of historical fact and fiction, not to mention a hidden reference to Balzac’s Le Chef-d’oeuvre inconnu through the character’s “self-erasure”) these stories were a bit tedious. Still, Millhauser is, as far as I am concerned, the best contemporary American writer.
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Notes on Books
Book reviews and occasional notes and thoughts on world literature and writers by an American writer of Eastern European origin.
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