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Dangerous Laughter
Thirteen darkly comic stories, Dangerous Laughter is a mesmerizing journey that stretches the boundaries of the ordinary world.
244 pages, Hardcover
First published February 12, 2008
About the author
Steven Millhauser
57 books417 followersMillhauser was born in New York City, grew up in Connecticut, and earned a B.A. from Columbia University in 1965. He then pursued a doctorate in English at Brown University. He never completed his dissertation but wrote parts of Edwin Mullhouse and From the Realm of Morpheus in two separate stays at Brown. Between times at the university, he wrote Portrait of a Romantic at his parents' house in Connecticut. His story "The Invention of Robert Herendeen" (in The Barnum Museum) features a failed student who has moved back in with his parents; the story is loosely based on this period of Millhauser's life.
Until the Pulitzer Prize, Millhauser was best known for his 1972 debut novel, Edwin Mullhouse. This novel, about a precocious writer whose career ends abruptly with his death at age eleven, features the fictional Jeffrey Cartwright playing Boswell to Edwin's Johnson. Edwin Mullhouse brought critical acclaim, and Millhauser followed with a second novel, Portrait of a Romantic, in 1977, and his first collection of short stories, In The Penny Arcade, in 1986.
Possibly the most well-known of his short stories is "Eisenheim the Illusionist" (published in "The Barnum Museum"), based on a pseudo-mythical tale of a magician who stunned audiences in Vienna in the latter part of the 19th century. It was made into the film, The Illusionist (2006).
Millhauser's stories often treat fantasy themes in a manner reminiscent of Poe or Borges, with a distinctively American voice. As critic Russell Potter has noted, "in (Millhauser's stories), mechanical cowboys at penny arcades come to life; curious amusement parks, museums, or catacombs beckon with secret passageways and walking automata; dreamers dream and children fly out their windows at night on magic carpets."
Millhauser's collections of stories continued with The Barnum Museum (1990), Little Kingdoms (1993), and The Knife Thrower and Other Stories (1998). The unexpected success of Martin Dressler in 1997 brought Millhauser increased attention. Dangerous Laughter: Thirteen Stories made the New York Times Book Review list of "10 Best Books of 2008".
Millhauser lives in Saratoga Springs, New York and teaches at Skidmore College.
Until the Pulitzer Prize, Millhauser was best known for his 1972 debut novel, Edwin Mullhouse. This novel, about a precocious writer whose career ends abruptly with his death at age eleven, features the fictional Jeffrey Cartwright playing Boswell to Edwin's Johnson. Edwin Mullhouse brought critical acclaim, and Millhauser followed with a second novel, Portrait of a Romantic, in 1977, and his first collection of short stories, In The Penny Arcade, in 1986.
Possibly the most well-known of his short stories is "Eisenheim the Illusionist" (published in "The Barnum Museum"), based on a pseudo-mythical tale of a magician who stunned audiences in Vienna in the latter part of the 19th century. It was made into the film, The Illusionist (2006).
Millhauser's stories often treat fantasy themes in a manner reminiscent of Poe or Borges, with a distinctively American voice. As critic Russell Potter has noted, "in (Millhauser's stories), mechanical cowboys at penny arcades come to life; curious amusement parks, museums, or catacombs beckon with secret passageways and walking automata; dreamers dream and children fly out their windows at night on magic carpets."
Millhauser's collections of stories continued with The Barnum Museum (1990), Little Kingdoms (1993), and The Knife Thrower and Other Stories (1998). The unexpected success of Martin Dressler in 1997 brought Millhauser increased attention. Dangerous Laughter: Thirteen Stories made the New York Times Book Review list of "10 Best Books of 2008".
Millhauser lives in Saratoga Springs, New York and teaches at Skidmore College.
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December 17, 2020
Every little thing needs its little opposite so without a tiny mouse there would be no cartoon about a big foolish cat trying to catch a smart mouse…
The stories in the collection are very diverse, belong to the different genres but all of them show artful originality…
The Room in the Attic is a postmodern romance full of mysterious Gothic overtones.
Dangerous Laughter is an absurdist fable about the fad, which can make deadly even the harmless laughter.
The Tower is a flowery philosophical parable in the style of Jorge Luis Borges.
A Precursor of the Cinema, written in the genre of magical realism, is a moody tale about the creator of animated paintings.
We are ready to admire anything that is new but if miracles start happening every day they will become commonplace.
The stories in the collection are very diverse, belong to the different genres but all of them show artful originality…
He said that books weren’t made of themes, which you could write essays about, but of images that inserted themselves into your brain and replaced what you were seeing with your eyes. There were two kinds of people, he said, wakers and dreamers. Wakers had once had the ability to dream but had lost it, and so they hated dreamers and persecuted them in every way. He said that teachers were wakers.
The Room in the Attic is a postmodern romance full of mysterious Gothic overtones.
Dangerous Laughter is an absurdist fable about the fad, which can make deadly even the harmless laughter.
During the course of many generations the Tower grew higher and higher until one day it pierced the floor of heaven. Amidst the wild rejoicing, the overturned flagons and the clashing cymbals, a few thoughtful voices made themselves heard, for the event had long been anticipated and was known to be attended by certain difficulties.
The Tower is a flowery philosophical parable in the style of Jorge Luis Borges.
A Precursor of the Cinema, written in the genre of magical realism, is a moody tale about the creator of animated paintings.
The third painting, Pygmalion, showed the sculptor in Greek costume standing back with an expression of wonderment as he clutched his chisel and stared at the beautiful marble statue. Observers reported that, as they looked at the painting, the statue turned her head slowly to one side, moved her wrists, and breathed in a way that caused her naked breasts to rise and fall, before she returned to the immobility of paint.
We are ready to admire anything that is new but if miracles start happening every day they will become commonplace.
January 16, 2021
Steven Millhauser, nacido en Nueva York en 1943, ganador del Premio Pulitzer por ‘Martin Dressler’, es un escritor esquivo, al estilo de Salinger y Pynchon, un escritor que huye de las entrevistas y al que no le gusta ser fotografiado. Hace unos años, saltó a la fama cuando se adaptó un cuento suyo, ‘Eisenheim el ilusionista’, dando lugar a la más que aceptable película ‘El ilusionista’.
Millhauser es un escritor dado a incluir elementos fantásticos en sus historias, algo que puede echar atrás a más de un lector afecto del realismo más puro. Considero que sería una lástima perderse la lectura de estos relatos por tal nimiedad. Borges, del que Millhauser bebe en algunos de sus relatos, no tenía reparos en utilizar lo fantástico a la hora de escribir, y no creo que nadie dude de su calidad.
Pero vayamos con la extraordinaria ‘Risas peligrosas’, donde Millhauser nos muestra una mirada a la adolescencia y la soledad de sus protagonistas, a la invención de extraños aparatos y de personajes memorables, o a la memoria de la historia con elementos apócrifos. Lo que hace de Millhauser un gran escritor es su capacidad para sugerir situaciones extrañas y perturbadoras, que provocan en el lector una sensación desconcertante. Y es que Millhauser es sinónimo de imaginación. Distorsiona la historia a su conveniencia, sin que falte el ingenio, la inteligencia y la sensibilidad a la hora de escribir, haciendo uso de una prosa precisa y más que notable. Partiendo de hechos sencillos, va construyendo sus historias a base de ir añadiendo detalles y más detalles a la trama, sin dejar de asombrarnos.
Los cuentos incluidos en ‘Risas peligrosas’ están englobados en cuatro secciones:
DIBUJOS DE APERTURA
El ratón y el gato. Serie de viñetas noveladas de las persecuciones de un gato a un ratón (y viceversa), al estilo Tom & Jerry. Muy bien escrito, sorprenderá a quien no conozca de estos dos tunantes.
ACTOS DE DESAPARICIÓN
La desaparición de Elaine Coleman. Elaine ha desaparecido de su apartamento, de repente. Nadie la recuerda muy bien, apenas algunos esbozos. Es como si no hubiese dejado ninguna huella en la memoria de las personas. El protagonista intentará buscar la razón a este hecho.
La habitación de la buhardilla. Un chico hace amistad con un compañero de clase, el cuál le llevará a su casa, lugar donde se oculta un secreto. Perturbador, impresionante.
Risas peligrosas. Un grupo de adolescentes, en los años cincuenta, aburridos de hacer siempre lo mismo, empieza a practicar un juego que parece una leyenda urbana, consistente en juntarse para provocarse ataques de risa hasta llegar al extremo. Lo que parece un mero pasatiempo, puede convertirse en una obsesión.
Historia de un trastorno. Un hombre deja de hablar al darse cuenta de que las palabras ya no significan nada para él, que la palabra asociada a un objeto dado ha dejado de tener sentido para él. Millhauser describe a la perfección la extraña sensación, que todo el mundo ha tenido alguna vez, de darle vueltas a una palabra en la boca porque de repente nos parece irreal.
ARQUITECTURAS IMPOSIBLES
La cúpula. Poco a poco, va extendiéndose entre la población el cubrir sus casas con una cúpula transparente.
En el reino de Harad IV. Historia del miniaturista más grande que jamás ha existido, y su obsesión por alcanzar la perfección.
La otra ciudad. Historia sobre una ciudad que tiene un duplicado de todo lo que contiene, reflejo perfecto de ella misma, y donde sus habitantes visitan como si de un museo se tratase.
La Torre. Como si de la Torre de Babel se tratase, la historia nos narra la construcción de una torre que llega hasta el cielo, y donde es posible vivir toda una vida antes de llegar al final de su ascensión, de tal manera que hay gente que se queda a vivir en sus diferentes niveles.
HISTORIAS HERÉTICAS
Aquí en la Sociedad Histórica. Historia donde se nos narra el afán de una sociedad de archiveros obsesionados por el pasado, desde el más remoto hasta el que acaba de pasar hace un momento.
Un cambio de moda. Ha surgido una nueva moda femenina: cubrirse completamente con sus vestidos. Donde antes se enseñaba, ahora no se ve nada de piel.
Un precursor del cine. A finales del siglo XIX, parece ser que existió un pintor cuyos cuadros poseían la extraña cualidad del movimiento. Impresionante relato.
Un mago de West Orange. Un grupo de genios está trabajando en la invención de un extraño aparato, el haptógrafo, capaz de reproducir el tacto. De nuevo genial.
Sin duda alguna, Steven Millhauser es un ilusionista.
Millhauser es un escritor dado a incluir elementos fantásticos en sus historias, algo que puede echar atrás a más de un lector afecto del realismo más puro. Considero que sería una lástima perderse la lectura de estos relatos por tal nimiedad. Borges, del que Millhauser bebe en algunos de sus relatos, no tenía reparos en utilizar lo fantástico a la hora de escribir, y no creo que nadie dude de su calidad.
Pero vayamos con la extraordinaria ‘Risas peligrosas’, donde Millhauser nos muestra una mirada a la adolescencia y la soledad de sus protagonistas, a la invención de extraños aparatos y de personajes memorables, o a la memoria de la historia con elementos apócrifos. Lo que hace de Millhauser un gran escritor es su capacidad para sugerir situaciones extrañas y perturbadoras, que provocan en el lector una sensación desconcertante. Y es que Millhauser es sinónimo de imaginación. Distorsiona la historia a su conveniencia, sin que falte el ingenio, la inteligencia y la sensibilidad a la hora de escribir, haciendo uso de una prosa precisa y más que notable. Partiendo de hechos sencillos, va construyendo sus historias a base de ir añadiendo detalles y más detalles a la trama, sin dejar de asombrarnos.
Los cuentos incluidos en ‘Risas peligrosas’ están englobados en cuatro secciones:
DIBUJOS DE APERTURA
El ratón y el gato. Serie de viñetas noveladas de las persecuciones de un gato a un ratón (y viceversa), al estilo Tom & Jerry. Muy bien escrito, sorprenderá a quien no conozca de estos dos tunantes.
ACTOS DE DESAPARICIÓN
La desaparición de Elaine Coleman. Elaine ha desaparecido de su apartamento, de repente. Nadie la recuerda muy bien, apenas algunos esbozos. Es como si no hubiese dejado ninguna huella en la memoria de las personas. El protagonista intentará buscar la razón a este hecho.
La habitación de la buhardilla. Un chico hace amistad con un compañero de clase, el cuál le llevará a su casa, lugar donde se oculta un secreto. Perturbador, impresionante.
Risas peligrosas. Un grupo de adolescentes, en los años cincuenta, aburridos de hacer siempre lo mismo, empieza a practicar un juego que parece una leyenda urbana, consistente en juntarse para provocarse ataques de risa hasta llegar al extremo. Lo que parece un mero pasatiempo, puede convertirse en una obsesión.
Historia de un trastorno. Un hombre deja de hablar al darse cuenta de que las palabras ya no significan nada para él, que la palabra asociada a un objeto dado ha dejado de tener sentido para él. Millhauser describe a la perfección la extraña sensación, que todo el mundo ha tenido alguna vez, de darle vueltas a una palabra en la boca porque de repente nos parece irreal.
ARQUITECTURAS IMPOSIBLES
La cúpula. Poco a poco, va extendiéndose entre la población el cubrir sus casas con una cúpula transparente.
En el reino de Harad IV. Historia del miniaturista más grande que jamás ha existido, y su obsesión por alcanzar la perfección.
La otra ciudad. Historia sobre una ciudad que tiene un duplicado de todo lo que contiene, reflejo perfecto de ella misma, y donde sus habitantes visitan como si de un museo se tratase.
La Torre. Como si de la Torre de Babel se tratase, la historia nos narra la construcción de una torre que llega hasta el cielo, y donde es posible vivir toda una vida antes de llegar al final de su ascensión, de tal manera que hay gente que se queda a vivir en sus diferentes niveles.
HISTORIAS HERÉTICAS
Aquí en la Sociedad Histórica. Historia donde se nos narra el afán de una sociedad de archiveros obsesionados por el pasado, desde el más remoto hasta el que acaba de pasar hace un momento.
Un cambio de moda. Ha surgido una nueva moda femenina: cubrirse completamente con sus vestidos. Donde antes se enseñaba, ahora no se ve nada de piel.
Un precursor del cine. A finales del siglo XIX, parece ser que existió un pintor cuyos cuadros poseían la extraña cualidad del movimiento. Impresionante relato.
Un mago de West Orange. Un grupo de genios está trabajando en la invención de un extraño aparato, el haptógrafo, capaz de reproducir el tacto. De nuevo genial.
Sin duda alguna, Steven Millhauser es un ilusionista.
En un sentido oscuro, tenía la sensación de que mi secreta afición a la lectura era una forma de abrirme paso cavando hacia ese lugar subterráneo donde me aguardaba una versión mejor o más auténtica de mí mismo.
October 14, 2021
A set of 13 unconventional short stories, so unconventional that it’s perhaps debateable whether “stories” is the best description for them. I’ll continue to use the word in this review though. I had the impression the author came up with certain ideas, and wrote about where those ideas led him.
The collection opens with Cat ‘n’ Mouse, which didn’t do much for me. It’s a sort of re-working of the old Tom and Jerry cartoons, with a message, as far as I could tell, of how enemies need each other to give purpose to their lives. I loved Tom and Jerry as a kid, but for me its visual humour didn’t translate well to print. The remaining stories are grouped into the themes of Vanishing Acts, Impossible Architectures and Heretical Histories.
Of all the stories, The Disappearance of Elaine Coleman is the one where the author spells out his message most clearly. It’s a decent story though, that left me thinking. I also liked the next one, The Room in the Attic. A teenage boy is introduced to his friend’s sister, who has withdrawn from life and who stays in her room in total darkness. The two develop an intense non-sexual relationship, with the boy gradually becoming obsessed with the mysterious girl.
The title story describes a town where the teenagers engage in a sort of epidemic of laughing, meeting each other in groups to pursue this new craze. It’s a comment on the need to belong and to be popular, something teenagers are especially vulnerable to. History of a Disturbance is a strange tale of a man who begins to find language unsatisfactory.
The four stories in the “Impossible Architectures” section all involve an architectural or design concept that is taken to an absolute extreme, with each story then describing the psychological and social effects that follow. Because of the similarity of approach, I found these stories rather repetitive. The Tower was maybe the best of them. A civilisation builds a tower so high that it eventually reaches Heaven. What then?
The last section opens with Here at the Historical Society which features a local history group obsessed with collecting every possible object, extending to things like elastic bands and fridge magnets. Although this seems absurd, the story poses the question of how history is presented. Once historians decide that some things are worth preserving and others aren’t, they are by definition presenting an incomplete view of the past, tailored to their own preferences.
A Change in Fashion imagines extreme shifts in fashion for female clothing, whilst A Precursor to the Cinema features a 19th century New Yorker who invents paintings that come to life. The last story, The Wizard of West Orange, was one of the less satisfying. It’s told in diary style with short, staccato sentences, supposedly from the perspective of an assistant to a brilliant but driven inventor. The hurried feel of the diary entries is, I assume, mean to convey the sense of working in such an environment, but it doesn’t make for the easiest read.
Broadly speaking, my interest in the stories waned as I progressed through the book. The early stories were refreshingly original, but perhaps this effect wore off a bit as I went along.
A collection like this was a bit of a departure for me, but I’m glad I chose it. It’s good to broaden one’s literary horizons!
The collection opens with Cat ‘n’ Mouse, which didn’t do much for me. It’s a sort of re-working of the old Tom and Jerry cartoons, with a message, as far as I could tell, of how enemies need each other to give purpose to their lives. I loved Tom and Jerry as a kid, but for me its visual humour didn’t translate well to print. The remaining stories are grouped into the themes of Vanishing Acts, Impossible Architectures and Heretical Histories.
Of all the stories, The Disappearance of Elaine Coleman is the one where the author spells out his message most clearly. It’s a decent story though, that left me thinking. I also liked the next one, The Room in the Attic. A teenage boy is introduced to his friend’s sister, who has withdrawn from life and who stays in her room in total darkness. The two develop an intense non-sexual relationship, with the boy gradually becoming obsessed with the mysterious girl.
The title story describes a town where the teenagers engage in a sort of epidemic of laughing, meeting each other in groups to pursue this new craze. It’s a comment on the need to belong and to be popular, something teenagers are especially vulnerable to. History of a Disturbance is a strange tale of a man who begins to find language unsatisfactory.
The four stories in the “Impossible Architectures” section all involve an architectural or design concept that is taken to an absolute extreme, with each story then describing the psychological and social effects that follow. Because of the similarity of approach, I found these stories rather repetitive. The Tower was maybe the best of them. A civilisation builds a tower so high that it eventually reaches Heaven. What then?
The last section opens with Here at the Historical Society which features a local history group obsessed with collecting every possible object, extending to things like elastic bands and fridge magnets. Although this seems absurd, the story poses the question of how history is presented. Once historians decide that some things are worth preserving and others aren’t, they are by definition presenting an incomplete view of the past, tailored to their own preferences.
A Change in Fashion imagines extreme shifts in fashion for female clothing, whilst A Precursor to the Cinema features a 19th century New Yorker who invents paintings that come to life. The last story, The Wizard of West Orange, was one of the less satisfying. It’s told in diary style with short, staccato sentences, supposedly from the perspective of an assistant to a brilliant but driven inventor. The hurried feel of the diary entries is, I assume, mean to convey the sense of working in such an environment, but it doesn’t make for the easiest read.
Broadly speaking, my interest in the stories waned as I progressed through the book. The early stories were refreshingly original, but perhaps this effect wore off a bit as I went along.
A collection like this was a bit of a departure for me, but I’m glad I chose it. It’s good to broaden one’s literary horizons!
February 8, 2016
Dangerous Laughter by Steven Millhauser is a difficult book to rate. It is a collection of short stories, but one has stretch the definition of "story" by quite a lot to call some of them by that name. Many are what can be called "sketches" - of an idea, of a person or of a situation. All of them are idea driven: the characters are placed there just to serve as vehicles for the ideas (in this aspect, and with respect to the weirdness of the tales, Millhauser resembles Lord Dunsany to a great extent).
These stories are weird - seriously. The author does not want to present us with a set of believable characters and describe a situation in which they develop; rather, he throws us an idea which is taken to its logical extreme by the characters involved. This method, while it provides some startling reading experiences, pales after a time and begins to feel seriously gimmicky.
---------------------------------------------
Millhauser has structured the book in four parts: the first one, a prologue of sorts, containing one story and the remaining three four stories each. Each of these three sections have a certain thematic unity, and encourages the reader to explore various aspects of the same meta-theme.
The first section is an "Opening Cartoon", the familiar Tom & Jerry animated short I used to love before each MGM movie as a kid. The story, titled "Cat and Mouse", gives a blow-by-blow description the endless rivalry between Tom Cat and Jerry Mouse. The language is simple, and one can visualise the scene with each sentence. However, as the tale progresses, both the mouse and the cat begin to introspect and bring their existential angst on to their Sisyphus-like antagonistic existence. This is a fantastic story, and pulled me into the book.
The second section, "Vanishing Acts", is about human beings and their existence in the temporal world. In a sense, this is also an existential analysis. There is a vanished girl, who slowly fades from the communal memory but comes to haunt the memory of the narrator, even though he is not sure he knows her; the asexual relationship between a boy and a girl in a totally darkened room, relying only the verbal and the tactile; dangerous infectious laughter which kills off its addicts; and a person who gets increasingly alienated from the physical world through the perceived insufficiency of language.
The third section ("Impossible Architectures") is about the relation of man to the structures he builds up. They contain the unbelievably large (a climate-controlled dome covering the whole of the United States of America, an engineering analysis of an alternate Tower of Babel), the impossibly small (miniatures so small as to be totally invisible) and the totally meaningless (a town which is a carbon copy of the one inhabited by the protagonists).
The last section, which is titled "Heretical Histories", gives us four tales of impossible historical happenings in what must be a time stream totally different from our own. The first story in this section about a historical society which is obsessed with preserving history down to the last detail, because the past is the only thing that really "exists" - the present is ephemeral and the future, nonexistent. Of the remaining three stories, one talks about a weird fashion fad where the dress grows in opacity and size and ultimately ends up concealing the woman totally and taking on a life of its own; one is about a painter who apparently discovers a way to incorporate time and motion into his creations; and the last one is about an alternate Edison, one of whose assistants invents a machine which can simulate the sense of touch.
---------------------------------------------
This book made me think a lot about my experiences as a human being - about time, objects, experiences and emotions. Lacking sympathetic characters, one is immediately drawn to the idea behind the tale. The stories are very readable and enjoyable as a sort of brain exercise. However, they felt repetitive after a while.
An enjoyable read, if you are a person who reads with the intellect.
These stories are weird - seriously. The author does not want to present us with a set of believable characters and describe a situation in which they develop; rather, he throws us an idea which is taken to its logical extreme by the characters involved. This method, while it provides some startling reading experiences, pales after a time and begins to feel seriously gimmicky.
---------------------------------------------
Millhauser has structured the book in four parts: the first one, a prologue of sorts, containing one story and the remaining three four stories each. Each of these three sections have a certain thematic unity, and encourages the reader to explore various aspects of the same meta-theme.
The first section is an "Opening Cartoon", the familiar Tom & Jerry animated short I used to love before each MGM movie as a kid. The story, titled "Cat and Mouse", gives a blow-by-blow description the endless rivalry between Tom Cat and Jerry Mouse. The language is simple, and one can visualise the scene with each sentence. However, as the tale progresses, both the mouse and the cat begin to introspect and bring their existential angst on to their Sisyphus-like antagonistic existence. This is a fantastic story, and pulled me into the book.
The second section, "Vanishing Acts", is about human beings and their existence in the temporal world. In a sense, this is also an existential analysis. There is a vanished girl, who slowly fades from the communal memory but comes to haunt the memory of the narrator, even though he is not sure he knows her; the asexual relationship between a boy and a girl in a totally darkened room, relying only the verbal and the tactile; dangerous infectious laughter which kills off its addicts; and a person who gets increasingly alienated from the physical world through the perceived insufficiency of language.
The third section ("Impossible Architectures") is about the relation of man to the structures he builds up. They contain the unbelievably large (a climate-controlled dome covering the whole of the United States of America, an engineering analysis of an alternate Tower of Babel), the impossibly small (miniatures so small as to be totally invisible) and the totally meaningless (a town which is a carbon copy of the one inhabited by the protagonists).
The last section, which is titled "Heretical Histories", gives us four tales of impossible historical happenings in what must be a time stream totally different from our own. The first story in this section about a historical society which is obsessed with preserving history down to the last detail, because the past is the only thing that really "exists" - the present is ephemeral and the future, nonexistent. Of the remaining three stories, one talks about a weird fashion fad where the dress grows in opacity and size and ultimately ends up concealing the woman totally and taking on a life of its own; one is about a painter who apparently discovers a way to incorporate time and motion into his creations; and the last one is about an alternate Edison, one of whose assistants invents a machine which can simulate the sense of touch.
---------------------------------------------
This book made me think a lot about my experiences as a human being - about time, objects, experiences and emotions. Lacking sympathetic characters, one is immediately drawn to the idea behind the tale. The stories are very readable and enjoyable as a sort of brain exercise. However, they felt repetitive after a while.
An enjoyable read, if you are a person who reads with the intellect.
January 15, 2021
Excellent collection of stories. 12 of the 13 stories were grouped into 3 parts. I think that is what attracted me to wanting to read the collection. I thought within a collection of stories they might be related to each other (i.e., character in one story also being in other stories), but they weren’t — rather they were connected via the part (or theme) only. Stories 2 to 5were under the part, Vanishing Acts; stories 6-9 under Impossible Architectures; and stories 10 to 13 under Heretical Histories. The mean rating was 3.7 so 4 stars for me. 😊
1. Cat n’ Mouse – The New Yorker (April 19. 2004)
• 5 stars. Really enjoyable read. I have no idea of how he can make a cartoon sketch seem really funny using just words, no need for pictures. There’s something about this guy’s writing, the imagery he evokes from his sentences at least to me is extraordinary. I will say it for this piece and it pretty much applies to all the other pieces in this collection. His vignettes in this short story remind me of The Itchy and Scratchy Show (the Simpsons) or The Road Runner.
2. The Disappearance of Elaine Coleman — The New Yorker (November 22, 1999)
• 5 stars. Elaine Coleman a woman in her early 30s goes missing, and nobody can quite remember what she looks like or if they have had any conversations with her. Apparently, no signs of foul play. Where is she? 😮
3. The Room in the Attic — Tin House
• 3 stars. A teenage girl lives her life in a darkened room in the attic. A teenage boy visits her every day.
4. Dangerous Laughter — The Best of Tin House 2006)
• 2.5 stars. Bizarre story about laughing clubs and weeping clubs. 😂 😥
5. History of a Disturbance — The New Yorker (March 5, 2007)
• 4 stars. Really good. A husband all of a sudden finds fault with words and sentences. After a while doesn’t even talk with his wife.
6. The Dome — American Scholar (September 1, 2006)
• 4 stars. Taking the concept of “gated community” to the extreme. Very clever and thought-provoking. When I was reading this, I was saying to myself appreciatively “How does this guy think up this stuff?!”
7. In the Reign of Harad IV — The New Yorker (April 10, 2006)
• 5 stars. Such a clever and enjoyable read. A craftsman works in King Harad’s court and makes miniatures for them (for their curios and doll houses). He keeps on making things smaller and smaller. To the point you can’t see his miniatures with the naked eye.
8. The Other Town – Tin House (Volume 7, No. 4, 2006)
• 5 stars. I am being repetitive here, but in a good way. Another clever idea. Picture living in a town and having a duplicate of your town that changes in real time as your town changes. And it’s like a museum, where you can go and visit (but you can’t stay…you need to go back to your town). In this way you can snoop around and see what your neighbor’s house looks like and can rummage through their drawers and their diaries and such!
9. The Tower – McSweeney’s (Issue 25, 2007)
• 3.5 stars. Fantastical tale. People in a town build a tower, eventually it gets so high it reaches heaven. Is this what people want? You have to read this to find out….
10. Here at the Historical Society — first published in this collection (I do believe…)
• 4 stars. There’s nothing too trivial for saving in the Historical Society. That rubber band you used yesterday comes from the past! It’s history. Don’t throw it out – donate it to the Historical Society. It’s just as important as relics that are 300 years old, you know… And we really can’t live in the present. What you see just now, this print, is no longer in the present. “For we walk through a world no longer there, towards tomorrows that are only yesterdays.”
11. A Change in Fashion — Harper’s Magazine (May 2006)
• 3.5 stars. Women start wearing dresses that are so capacious that they “exceeded the size of rooms and had to be worn in large outdoor spaces. Like backyards or public parks.”
12. A Precursor of the Cinema — McSweeney’s (Issue 15, 2005)
• 3 stars. The precursor to the cinema is from a mysterious man who doesn’t exactly work with painting and doesn’t exactly work with cameras either. Something in between.
13. The Wizard of West Orange — Harper’s Magazine (April 2007)
• 2 stars. I am glad that the last story in the collection was, to me, a dud. I suppose partly because I could not understand it, and the 35-page story was, ergo, boring. It was about a scientist who was working on a machine (haptograph) to produce the sensation of touch, so that wearing a device or stepping into device you could experience certain sensations. It was over my head.
Reviews:
A good review but at least in reviewing one of the stories he gives away the plot line…geez…why do reviewers DO THAT??!!: https://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/24/bo...
From blogsites:
• http://www.theshortreview.com/reviews...
• http://thefanzine.com/review-of-dange...
• https://imperfecthappiness.org/2011/0...
1. Cat n’ Mouse – The New Yorker (April 19. 2004)
• 5 stars. Really enjoyable read. I have no idea of how he can make a cartoon sketch seem really funny using just words, no need for pictures. There’s something about this guy’s writing, the imagery he evokes from his sentences at least to me is extraordinary. I will say it for this piece and it pretty much applies to all the other pieces in this collection. His vignettes in this short story remind me of The Itchy and Scratchy Show (the Simpsons) or The Road Runner.
2. The Disappearance of Elaine Coleman — The New Yorker (November 22, 1999)
• 5 stars. Elaine Coleman a woman in her early 30s goes missing, and nobody can quite remember what she looks like or if they have had any conversations with her. Apparently, no signs of foul play. Where is she? 😮
3. The Room in the Attic — Tin House
• 3 stars. A teenage girl lives her life in a darkened room in the attic. A teenage boy visits her every day.
4. Dangerous Laughter — The Best of Tin House 2006)
• 2.5 stars. Bizarre story about laughing clubs and weeping clubs. 😂 😥
5. History of a Disturbance — The New Yorker (March 5, 2007)
• 4 stars. Really good. A husband all of a sudden finds fault with words and sentences. After a while doesn’t even talk with his wife.
6. The Dome — American Scholar (September 1, 2006)
• 4 stars. Taking the concept of “gated community” to the extreme. Very clever and thought-provoking. When I was reading this, I was saying to myself appreciatively “How does this guy think up this stuff?!”
7. In the Reign of Harad IV — The New Yorker (April 10, 2006)
• 5 stars. Such a clever and enjoyable read. A craftsman works in King Harad’s court and makes miniatures for them (for their curios and doll houses). He keeps on making things smaller and smaller. To the point you can’t see his miniatures with the naked eye.
8. The Other Town – Tin House (Volume 7, No. 4, 2006)
• 5 stars. I am being repetitive here, but in a good way. Another clever idea. Picture living in a town and having a duplicate of your town that changes in real time as your town changes. And it’s like a museum, where you can go and visit (but you can’t stay…you need to go back to your town). In this way you can snoop around and see what your neighbor’s house looks like and can rummage through their drawers and their diaries and such!
9. The Tower – McSweeney’s (Issue 25, 2007)
• 3.5 stars. Fantastical tale. People in a town build a tower, eventually it gets so high it reaches heaven. Is this what people want? You have to read this to find out….
10. Here at the Historical Society — first published in this collection (I do believe…)
• 4 stars. There’s nothing too trivial for saving in the Historical Society. That rubber band you used yesterday comes from the past! It’s history. Don’t throw it out – donate it to the Historical Society. It’s just as important as relics that are 300 years old, you know… And we really can’t live in the present. What you see just now, this print, is no longer in the present. “For we walk through a world no longer there, towards tomorrows that are only yesterdays.”
11. A Change in Fashion — Harper’s Magazine (May 2006)
• 3.5 stars. Women start wearing dresses that are so capacious that they “exceeded the size of rooms and had to be worn in large outdoor spaces. Like backyards or public parks.”
12. A Precursor of the Cinema — McSweeney’s (Issue 15, 2005)
• 3 stars. The precursor to the cinema is from a mysterious man who doesn’t exactly work with painting and doesn’t exactly work with cameras either. Something in between.
13. The Wizard of West Orange — Harper’s Magazine (April 2007)
• 2 stars. I am glad that the last story in the collection was, to me, a dud. I suppose partly because I could not understand it, and the 35-page story was, ergo, boring. It was about a scientist who was working on a machine (haptograph) to produce the sensation of touch, so that wearing a device or stepping into device you could experience certain sensations. It was over my head.
Reviews:
A good review but at least in reviewing one of the stories he gives away the plot line…geez…why do reviewers DO THAT??!!: https://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/24/bo...
From blogsites:
• http://www.theshortreview.com/reviews...
• http://thefanzine.com/review-of-dange...
• https://imperfecthappiness.org/2011/0...
September 20, 2012
I rarely buy short story collections unless I'm already familiar with the author, and before this I had never heard of Steven Millhauser (or I thought I hadn't, anyway - it wasn't until I finished the book and read the author bio that I realized he was the guy who wrote "Eisenheim the Illusionist," which was the basis for the movie The Illusionist). I never would have read this on my own, but luckily I have an awesome relative who, for my Christmas gift one year, gave me secondhand copies of three of her favorite books. Dangerous Laughter was one of them, and I can see why it's her favorite. It might be one of my new favorites, too.
None of these stories take place in the real world. It's close to our world, but things are just slightly off. People make choices, or perform an action, or build something, and then they continue on that route, taking things to a new extreme that you had never expected: in "In the Reign of Harad IV" a king's craftsman, renowned for making miniatures, makes smaller and smaller objects, until his work passes beyond even magnified sight. "A Precursor of the Cinema" documents the career of a mysterious Belle Epoque painter who, not satisfied with hyper-realistic paintings, creates paintings that can move on their own. In the title story, a group of bored teenagers invent a game where the goal is to laugh longer than anyone else, and it results in a girl laughing herself to death.
And then there are stories where he takes a simple idea and looks at it closer than you ever even considered, and considers aspects that you had never even thought of. The first story, "Cat and Mouse" is a straightforward, almost clinically dry description of the Tom-and-Jerry-like feud of a cat and a mouse ("The cat crashes into the wall and folds up like an accordion. Slowly he unfolds, emitting accordion music. He lies on the floor with his chin on his upraised paw, one eyebrow lifting high in disgust, the claws of his other forepaw tapping the floorboards. A small piece of plaster drops on his head."), and then it suddenly goes deep into the psychology behind these cartoon archetypes, and I'm never going to see Tom and Jerry the same way again:
"[The cat] despises the mouse's physical delicacy, his weak arms as thin as the teeth of combs, his frail, crushable skull, his fondness for books and solitude. At the same time, he is irritably aware that he admires the mouse's elegance, his air of culture, his easy self-assurance. Why is he always reading? In a sense, the mouse intimidates the cat: in his presence, the cat feels clumsy and foolish. He thinks obsessively about the mouse and suspects with rage that the mouse frequently does not think about him at all, there in his brown room. If the mouse were less indifferent, would he burn with such hatred? Might they learn the live peacefully together in the same house? Would he be released from this pain of outrage in his heart?"
An eerie, surreal, and fascinating collection. Should be savored slowly, one story at a time, supplemented with lots of tea and frequent pauses to gaze out the nearest window in contemplation.
None of these stories take place in the real world. It's close to our world, but things are just slightly off. People make choices, or perform an action, or build something, and then they continue on that route, taking things to a new extreme that you had never expected: in "In the Reign of Harad IV" a king's craftsman, renowned for making miniatures, makes smaller and smaller objects, until his work passes beyond even magnified sight. "A Precursor of the Cinema" documents the career of a mysterious Belle Epoque painter who, not satisfied with hyper-realistic paintings, creates paintings that can move on their own. In the title story, a group of bored teenagers invent a game where the goal is to laugh longer than anyone else, and it results in a girl laughing herself to death.
And then there are stories where he takes a simple idea and looks at it closer than you ever even considered, and considers aspects that you had never even thought of. The first story, "Cat and Mouse" is a straightforward, almost clinically dry description of the Tom-and-Jerry-like feud of a cat and a mouse ("The cat crashes into the wall and folds up like an accordion. Slowly he unfolds, emitting accordion music. He lies on the floor with his chin on his upraised paw, one eyebrow lifting high in disgust, the claws of his other forepaw tapping the floorboards. A small piece of plaster drops on his head."), and then it suddenly goes deep into the psychology behind these cartoon archetypes, and I'm never going to see Tom and Jerry the same way again:
"[The cat] despises the mouse's physical delicacy, his weak arms as thin as the teeth of combs, his frail, crushable skull, his fondness for books and solitude. At the same time, he is irritably aware that he admires the mouse's elegance, his air of culture, his easy self-assurance. Why is he always reading? In a sense, the mouse intimidates the cat: in his presence, the cat feels clumsy and foolish. He thinks obsessively about the mouse and suspects with rage that the mouse frequently does not think about him at all, there in his brown room. If the mouse were less indifferent, would he burn with such hatred? Might they learn the live peacefully together in the same house? Would he be released from this pain of outrage in his heart?"
An eerie, surreal, and fascinating collection. Should be savored slowly, one story at a time, supplemented with lots of tea and frequent pauses to gaze out the nearest window in contemplation.
Read
March 14, 2012Dangerous 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.
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.
September 21, 2010
Thanks to a good friend, I have now been introduced to this exceptional writer. It always pleases me to find new, inventive writers who touch on my interests yet are writing in the "lit" world, as it implies to me a continuum of writing, without having to resort to either strict definitions of genre, nor this modern silliness of "there are no genres" or "lit is also a genre". I believe in porous borders.
In a way, the joy of these stories come in each unfolding to the reading eye like a paper flower touched with a drop of water, so I'll not delve too deeply. To those who would like to approach the book as an unknown, I will say: this was, quite frankly, an excellent book and well worth anyone's times, especially those who like "supernatural" or "weird" tales, but long for the sharp writing a literary author excels at.
Millhauser's strengths lie in an inventive mind, a gift for non-belabored (or far-seeing) metaphor, a solid but subdued amount of verbiage (he is no over-writer), an understanding of how little one needs to tell a story and the ability to, in some cases, strongly evoke the mind-state of young adolescence, and in other cases write in a historical mode without it sounding modern or stuffy.
The book is divided into 3 sections (with an opening "cartoon", which is one of my favorite stories - "Cat 'n' Mouse", in which the philosophical quandaries faced by Tom and Jerry/Itchy and Scratchy are examined in depth) - Vanishing Acts, Impossible architectures and Heretical Histories.
Vanishing Acts contain the most human-level stories, tales in which human beings fade away or never were (or never were what we thought they were), where ideas like identity and person-hood are tested and found wanting, or open to reveal themselves as elaborate tricks we pull on ourselves. "The Disappearance of Elaine Coleman" - in which a plain young woman comes home from work, locks her door and vanishes, is supremely touching, reminding me both of classic "disappearance" cases I used to read in Charles Fort as a kid, and, in the narrator's discovery that he both knew and didn't know Elaine, something like an old episode of the Dragnet radio show called "Helen Korday". "The Room In The Attic" is an exercise in tactility (I should note here that one of the other very nice things is that there are secret thematic passages between unrelated short stories in this collection, so the later "The Wizard of West Orange" is also about tactility, and a tiny fly on a basket of apples links "In The Reign of Harad IV" and "A Precursor of the Cinema") in which a young boy becomes friends with a girl in a darkened room. This story reminded me strongly of the non-science fiction work of Ray Bradbury, as it evokes a wistful longing and a younger age, all encapsulated in a summer. "Dangerous Laughter" certainly deserves the titular slot for the collection, an amazing tour de force about adolescent fads and the dangers of laughter - at first it seems to be a metaphor about blooming sexuality, but as that is addressed in an aside, I think more there's something here about drugs and, generally, modern society's need for novelty and sensation, and how it affects young people just learning how to be alive. A masterful story! The section finishes out with "History of a Disturbance" in which a man begins to examine too closely the language that holds the world together - it struck me as a smart mix of William S. Burroughs and Jorge Luis Borges - in many ways, Millhauser strikes me as a distinctly American Borges.
Impossible Architecture delves into another area Millhauser excels at: "ad absurdums", either in an object or a concept, larger or smaller or repeated infinitely. Those who desire characters in their fiction may balk at these pieces, which are more about spinning an idea into new and revelatory directions. In "The Dome" (which someone with knowledge should contrast to Stephen King's similar bookstop-sized foray into the same idea), a mad futurist drive for "protection" and the controlled theater of capital, linked to ideas like gated communities and the world economy, is extrapolated exponentially. The idea combines a Futurist love of technology and control with a decadent love for the artificial and disgust with the natural. "In The Reign of Harad IV" involves a love of miniatures taken too far, and reminds me of the Surrealist's love of miniatures in all forms, as a bizare, distorted reflection of reality and a placement of life into a larger hierarchy of scale. The fascination with reproduction is explored in "The Other Town", in which a small community has a deliberately replicated, yet empty, doppelganger that it maintains and which serves a number of purposes both psychological and philosophical. This seems like it could be a metaphor about any number of things - at first literature, then television or artificial representation in general, and finally, death. "The Tower", another outstanding piece, spins the concept of the Tower of Babel into a meditation on progress, culture and history - amazing stuff that any fantasy novelist would probably write 6 series books about and not get close to the complexity achieved here.
Heretical Histories charts ideas about history or histories of ideas, in the last two instances melding the character tales of the initial segment with the concept invention of the secondary section. "Here At The Historical Society" is a slight but entertaining piece in which official cultural institutions attempt to grapple with the ephemerality of modern life - like museums meet the Fluxus art movement. "A Change In Fashion" is a whimsical piece in which fashion, at a dead-end, advances in bizarre new directions that eventually merge with architecture. "A Precursor of the Cinema" is another amazing piece, about a forgotten painter and his mysterious explorations into "moving pictures" that eventually cause a riot. Quite creepy in spots, it's a story to be marveled at. "The Wizard of West Orange" is another historical tale, obliquely about Thomas Edison and his mad rush of genius that, for a short time, encompasses a machine to record and play back tactility. The story, told from the POV of a test subject, advances almost into lysergic levels of expanded consciousness, reminding me of H.P. Lovecraft's classic "From Beyond", while the sketch of Edison recalled Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam's Edison as technological wizard in Tomorrow's Eve.
A simply amazing book. Not a dud in the bunch!
In a way, the joy of these stories come in each unfolding to the reading eye like a paper flower touched with a drop of water, so I'll not delve too deeply. To those who would like to approach the book as an unknown, I will say: this was, quite frankly, an excellent book and well worth anyone's times, especially those who like "supernatural" or "weird" tales, but long for the sharp writing a literary author excels at.
Millhauser's strengths lie in an inventive mind, a gift for non-belabored (or far-seeing) metaphor, a solid but subdued amount of verbiage (he is no over-writer), an understanding of how little one needs to tell a story and the ability to, in some cases, strongly evoke the mind-state of young adolescence, and in other cases write in a historical mode without it sounding modern or stuffy.
The book is divided into 3 sections (with an opening "cartoon", which is one of my favorite stories - "Cat 'n' Mouse", in which the philosophical quandaries faced by Tom and Jerry/Itchy and Scratchy are examined in depth) - Vanishing Acts, Impossible architectures and Heretical Histories.
Vanishing Acts contain the most human-level stories, tales in which human beings fade away or never were (or never were what we thought they were), where ideas like identity and person-hood are tested and found wanting, or open to reveal themselves as elaborate tricks we pull on ourselves. "The Disappearance of Elaine Coleman" - in which a plain young woman comes home from work, locks her door and vanishes, is supremely touching, reminding me both of classic "disappearance" cases I used to read in Charles Fort as a kid, and, in the narrator's discovery that he both knew and didn't know Elaine, something like an old episode of the Dragnet radio show called "Helen Korday". "The Room In The Attic" is an exercise in tactility (I should note here that one of the other very nice things is that there are secret thematic passages between unrelated short stories in this collection, so the later "The Wizard of West Orange" is also about tactility, and a tiny fly on a basket of apples links "In The Reign of Harad IV" and "A Precursor of the Cinema") in which a young boy becomes friends with a girl in a darkened room. This story reminded me strongly of the non-science fiction work of Ray Bradbury, as it evokes a wistful longing and a younger age, all encapsulated in a summer. "Dangerous Laughter" certainly deserves the titular slot for the collection, an amazing tour de force about adolescent fads and the dangers of laughter - at first it seems to be a metaphor about blooming sexuality, but as that is addressed in an aside, I think more there's something here about drugs and, generally, modern society's need for novelty and sensation, and how it affects young people just learning how to be alive. A masterful story! The section finishes out with "History of a Disturbance" in which a man begins to examine too closely the language that holds the world together - it struck me as a smart mix of William S. Burroughs and Jorge Luis Borges - in many ways, Millhauser strikes me as a distinctly American Borges.
Impossible Architecture delves into another area Millhauser excels at: "ad absurdums", either in an object or a concept, larger or smaller or repeated infinitely. Those who desire characters in their fiction may balk at these pieces, which are more about spinning an idea into new and revelatory directions. In "The Dome" (which someone with knowledge should contrast to Stephen King's similar bookstop-sized foray into the same idea), a mad futurist drive for "protection" and the controlled theater of capital, linked to ideas like gated communities and the world economy, is extrapolated exponentially. The idea combines a Futurist love of technology and control with a decadent love for the artificial and disgust with the natural. "In The Reign of Harad IV" involves a love of miniatures taken too far, and reminds me of the Surrealist's love of miniatures in all forms, as a bizare, distorted reflection of reality and a placement of life into a larger hierarchy of scale. The fascination with reproduction is explored in "The Other Town", in which a small community has a deliberately replicated, yet empty, doppelganger that it maintains and which serves a number of purposes both psychological and philosophical. This seems like it could be a metaphor about any number of things - at first literature, then television or artificial representation in general, and finally, death. "The Tower", another outstanding piece, spins the concept of the Tower of Babel into a meditation on progress, culture and history - amazing stuff that any fantasy novelist would probably write 6 series books about and not get close to the complexity achieved here.
Heretical Histories charts ideas about history or histories of ideas, in the last two instances melding the character tales of the initial segment with the concept invention of the secondary section. "Here At The Historical Society" is a slight but entertaining piece in which official cultural institutions attempt to grapple with the ephemerality of modern life - like museums meet the Fluxus art movement. "A Change In Fashion" is a whimsical piece in which fashion, at a dead-end, advances in bizarre new directions that eventually merge with architecture. "A Precursor of the Cinema" is another amazing piece, about a forgotten painter and his mysterious explorations into "moving pictures" that eventually cause a riot. Quite creepy in spots, it's a story to be marveled at. "The Wizard of West Orange" is another historical tale, obliquely about Thomas Edison and his mad rush of genius that, for a short time, encompasses a machine to record and play back tactility. The story, told from the POV of a test subject, advances almost into lysergic levels of expanded consciousness, reminding me of H.P. Lovecraft's classic "From Beyond", while the sketch of Edison recalled Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam's Edison as technological wizard in Tomorrow's Eve.
A simply amazing book. Not a dud in the bunch!
March 1, 2009
I had heard quite a bit about Millhauser being this great modern practitioner of the modern short story and then I read his essay about "The Ambition of the Short Story" in the New York Times Book Review and wanted to give him a shot, but ultimately I found this collection wanting.
The stories seem to make their point and then stretch themselves and then overstretch themselves and then beat you over the head with their message.
The first story, a story that people seem to be tripping oversleves to praise, is nothing more than a deftly annotated Tom and Jerry cartoon with nothing much in the way of insight. The last story is written in a style that I found utterly maddening (how can a series of journal entries both capture a rushed excitement with its clipped sentences and a deliberate act of writing down the day's events complete with dialogue and details?!)
Maybe that's the point though... Most of the stories here deal with the shortcomings of language and art to capture life's experiences. In that goal, Millhauser has succeeded - the short stories collected here fail to affect. In fact, the stories are most painful when they try to create emotion; it's a faux-emotion, a faux-mote.
Each story had its individual moment(s) of interest, but "The Tower" was the only story that held my attention throughout because the nuance and twists seemed the least cloying.
***
I think this review comes off as more brutal than I intended, but I think its accurate in my estimation of the book. I didn't hate it, but I won't be seeking out Millhauser in the near future.
The stories seem to make their point and then stretch themselves and then overstretch themselves and then beat you over the head with their message.
The first story, a story that people seem to be tripping oversleves to praise, is nothing more than a deftly annotated Tom and Jerry cartoon with nothing much in the way of insight. The last story is written in a style that I found utterly maddening (how can a series of journal entries both capture a rushed excitement with its clipped sentences and a deliberate act of writing down the day's events complete with dialogue and details?!)
Maybe that's the point though... Most of the stories here deal with the shortcomings of language and art to capture life's experiences. In that goal, Millhauser has succeeded - the short stories collected here fail to affect. In fact, the stories are most painful when they try to create emotion; it's a faux-emotion, a faux-mote.
Each story had its individual moment(s) of interest, but "The Tower" was the only story that held my attention throughout because the nuance and twists seemed the least cloying.
***
I think this review comes off as more brutal than I intended, but I think its accurate in my estimation of the book. I didn't hate it, but I won't be seeking out Millhauser in the near future.
January 31, 2009
I really liked the first few stories, a LOT. Then I was surprised when it switched into this third-rate Borges cerebral fairy tale stuff. I love Borges. Maybe part of why Borges is so good is, he knew when an idea only warranted a paragraph or two. As for this book, I would recommend getting it and reading the first few stories and then stopping and if you want to read some cerebral fairy tales, get yourself some Borges.
April 6, 2008
This batch of freaky fables is like a trip to the Museum of Human Frailty: each story a carefully composed diorama displaying realms of excess, obsession, and emptiness. Although I really did enjoy this collection (particularly the haunting "Vanishing Acts" section) I was a little disappointed in the predictable trajectory of the "Impossible Architectures" stories: one idea after another is pursued to the oblivion of its logical extreme, which got to be a bit redundant and numbing after a point.
There's a detatchment in the telling of these tales, but I think the lack of pathos contributes to their impact. The stories of disconnection and negation in "Vanishing Acts" are well served by this narrative style, evoking loneliness and a sort of gnawing dread. Like I said, haunting stuff.
I'll probably check out more Millhauser, but not "Enchanted Night". I heard that one employs the use of the term "love-lance" and I can't hang with that kind of lingo.
There's a detatchment in the telling of these tales, but I think the lack of pathos contributes to their impact. The stories of disconnection and negation in "Vanishing Acts" are well served by this narrative style, evoking loneliness and a sort of gnawing dread. Like I said, haunting stuff.
I'll probably check out more Millhauser, but not "Enchanted Night". I heard that one employs the use of the term "love-lance" and I can't hang with that kind of lingo.
November 20, 2020
Let me say that while my rating is a bit low, it really is an average of the scores I assigned to each of the 13 short stories here. Millhauser is a worthy writer, but this book too often feels undercooked.
The best story here is “The Disappearance of Elaine Coleman.” If more of the stories were like it, the collection would easily be a 3 star book, in my opinion. To even call the writing presented here “stories” is somewhat of a stretch. Most of them feel like sketches of stories; interesting ideas that don’t quite add up at the end. Definitely enjoyed this one a little less than I did the first time I read it in 2008.
The best story here is “The Disappearance of Elaine Coleman.” If more of the stories were like it, the collection would easily be a 3 star book, in my opinion. To even call the writing presented here “stories” is somewhat of a stretch. Most of them feel like sketches of stories; interesting ideas that don’t quite add up at the end. Definitely enjoyed this one a little less than I did the first time I read it in 2008.
January 16, 2010
the thirteen short stories that comprise dangerous laughter are richly imagined and refreshingly inventive. after being unexpectedly charmed by the first five stories, however, the remainder of the book, for me, veered ever too closely to the realm of tedium. perhaps reading each story as they had first appeared in print (in the new yorker, tin house, harper's, et al) may have allowed their bewitching effects to endure, but reading them all in succession within this collection lent them an air of redundancy and affectation.
without doubt, millhauser is quite the gifted storyteller and while his pieces often leave one dazzled and enchanted, they sometimes seem a touch too carefully crafted. his stories evoke the easy and natural wonder of childhood curiosity yet are executed with an such exacting command of plot & prose so as to encourage a look behind the proverbial curtain. it's as if millhauser had designed a tantalizingly amusing game, reminiscent of a carefree youth, yet encumbers it by needless rules and regulations. the facade of wonderment is so easily penetrated, and though sometimes millhauser seems effortlessly at home within the province of magic and possibility, other times he seems like an exploitative intruder, the grown-up with no business revisiting the land he outgrew so long ago.
as i've noted, i began by enjoying these stories immensely, delighted by their ease and simplicity. upon finishing the last few stories, however, i felt somewhat annoyed, as if i'd discovered that i was merely a pawn in an elaborate ruse. it very well may be that if savored slowly, say one or two a week, these stories could be enjoyed as they really ought to be. dangerous laughter is like an oversized bag of halloween candy ever too easy to overindulge in, and having done so, leaves one wishing they had taken it a bit slower from the start.
the strongest pieces in this collection include "the room in the attic," "the other town," "the tower" and "here at the historical society." "the disappearance of elaine coleman" is a veritable gem.
without doubt, millhauser is quite the gifted storyteller and while his pieces often leave one dazzled and enchanted, they sometimes seem a touch too carefully crafted. his stories evoke the easy and natural wonder of childhood curiosity yet are executed with an such exacting command of plot & prose so as to encourage a look behind the proverbial curtain. it's as if millhauser had designed a tantalizingly amusing game, reminiscent of a carefree youth, yet encumbers it by needless rules and regulations. the facade of wonderment is so easily penetrated, and though sometimes millhauser seems effortlessly at home within the province of magic and possibility, other times he seems like an exploitative intruder, the grown-up with no business revisiting the land he outgrew so long ago.
as i've noted, i began by enjoying these stories immensely, delighted by their ease and simplicity. upon finishing the last few stories, however, i felt somewhat annoyed, as if i'd discovered that i was merely a pawn in an elaborate ruse. it very well may be that if savored slowly, say one or two a week, these stories could be enjoyed as they really ought to be. dangerous laughter is like an oversized bag of halloween candy ever too easy to overindulge in, and having done so, leaves one wishing they had taken it a bit slower from the start.
the strongest pieces in this collection include "the room in the attic," "the other town," "the tower" and "here at the historical society." "the disappearance of elaine coleman" is a veritable gem.
she is not alone. on street corners at dusk, in the corridors of dark movie theaters, behind the windows of cars in parking lots at melancholy shopping centers illuminated by pale orange lamps, you sometimes see them, the elaine colemans of the world. they lower their eyes, they turn away, they vanish into shadowy places. sometimes i seem to see, through their nearly transparent skin, a light or a building behind them. i try to catch their eyes, to penetrate them with my attention, but it's always too late, already they are fading, fixed as they are in the long habit of not being noticed. and perhaps the police, who suspected foul play, were not in the end mistaken. for we are no longer innocent, we who do not see and do not remember, we incurious ones, we conspirators in disappearance.
December 8, 2020
Millhauser's prose is prodigious. These stories capture time and mood so effectively, closing the book is like waking up some place new. Stories aren't as much fun to read as they are to think about or ponder awhile and each are hard to forget. You'll want to talk about the stories, so read it with somebody close, somebody who loves the feel of the fabric of history and isn't afraid to give it a tug and see what might have been.
February 23, 2015
My cursor hovered over the five-star for a second there. Close to it, man.
I happened upon this book in one of the best ways: aimlessly browsing a used-book-store. Picked it out and it instantly felt right, you know -- in a way I haven't had in awhile; knowing that this is the exact right time to read a certain book. I'd never heard of Steven Millhauser. The cover weirded me out. But the writing style. God.
Reading Millhauser is like...like. It's like reading the short stories of a modern American Borges. Still alienating in their grand strangeness, brilliant and unsettling and sweeping, but culturally relatable. A comfort zone that jabs a finger into your side reallyreallyreallyfuckinghard. Magic realism is one of my favourite genres, particularly in short stories; Millhauser takes it and spins it realistically, bitingly, into venues that tip their hat to North American concerns. The effect is stunning.
Conceptually, this collection hinges on visibility. What and how do we see, and more importantly: how and why are we seen? Exceptionally sequenced, artfully conceived, and gorgeously written. The only reason I didn't hit five stars were the first and last stories -- while interesting, they lacked the one-two-KO punch effects of the others (though that last passage of "The Wizard of West Orange" was heartstopping).
MAN you know when you find a new author and it permeates you? This hasn't happened in ages for me. I am so so excited for more of you, Steven Millhauser.
I happened upon this book in one of the best ways: aimlessly browsing a used-book-store. Picked it out and it instantly felt right, you know -- in a way I haven't had in awhile; knowing that this is the exact right time to read a certain book. I'd never heard of Steven Millhauser. The cover weirded me out. But the writing style. God.
Reading Millhauser is like...like. It's like reading the short stories of a modern American Borges. Still alienating in their grand strangeness, brilliant and unsettling and sweeping, but culturally relatable. A comfort zone that jabs a finger into your side reallyreallyreallyfuckinghard. Magic realism is one of my favourite genres, particularly in short stories; Millhauser takes it and spins it realistically, bitingly, into venues that tip their hat to North American concerns. The effect is stunning.
Conceptually, this collection hinges on visibility. What and how do we see, and more importantly: how and why are we seen? Exceptionally sequenced, artfully conceived, and gorgeously written. The only reason I didn't hit five stars were the first and last stories -- while interesting, they lacked the one-two-KO punch effects of the others (though that last passage of "The Wizard of West Orange" was heartstopping).
MAN you know when you find a new author and it permeates you? This hasn't happened in ages for me. I am so so excited for more of you, Steven Millhauser.
May 19, 2009
Stories about obsession and excess that usually involve taking some idea or concept to fantastic extremes. Building an actual tower to heaven, laughing contests that threaten people's health and sanity, maintaining an exact replica of a town that serves no purpose other than looking at, building miniatures so small that no one can see them, and building a giant dome to cover an entire country are some of the ideas that are explored here.
My favorite was the first story which is basically a description of old Tom and Jerry cartoons that details the carnage they engage in, but also describes their weariness of the fight.
Odd and interesting stuff, but there weren't really any characters that engaged me, and after a while, the repetetive themes got predictable.
My favorite was the first story which is basically a description of old Tom and Jerry cartoons that details the carnage they engage in, but also describes their weariness of the fight.
Odd and interesting stuff, but there weren't really any characters that engaged me, and after a while, the repetetive themes got predictable.
July 24, 2015
I'm a fan since his 1982 novel, Edwin Mulhouse--I have a first edition-- and he's among the most interesting of contemporary writers. He doesn't usually bother with the kind of usual realism so popular among people who give out literary prizes--i.e. another b.o.r.i.n.g. hetero divorce. And his stories usually defy categorization. They are almost always intriguing, as they are here. But one of them has that quality of great stories that should last forever, the kind of story that lifts the hair on the back of your neck--"A Precursor to the Cinema." Read it.
July 11, 2008
more/less a bunch of stories that explore human obsessions, the best of that bunch being the ones where those obsessions are about transcending our own physical/mental limitations. the plots are sweeping and very compressed, very reportorial and sometimes very parable-like. there is often no character per se--society at large, or the character of a given community, is the main character. so there's a story about a society building a tower all the way up to heaven. there's another story about a town that has an exact replica town on its north side. there's a story also about how fashion frees itself from the limitations of the body, and women just start wearing dresses as big as houses. (i've realized this "gag" if you will on women's fashion is distinctly male. i don't know any women who think of modern fashion as the disavowal of the body, at least not modern fashion. it's all about the semi-permeable membrane, man! i have been corrected on this several times! for more dude-friendly information about how fashion works, read tigersprung.)
anyway these stories have their charm. he runs his premises through all implications and possibilities and difficulties, with pretty amazing details: off the top of my head, how "the other town" handles its re-creation of the regular town's plants and trees and so on, through a mix fake tree branches and real ones, and *everybody seems totally cool with this*, it is just batshit insane. you can sense the humor millhauser works with here: he's reporting utter absurdities really flatly. it's definitely the guy's "thing."
but anyway: this no character thing is kinda tough! i like characters. i am definitely a particular-towards-the-general kinda guy, in short stories especially. a real old-tymer. at times i felt like i was reading a wikipedia page summary of some small-town phenomenon. other times millhauser feels the need to moralize, even if it's like this "fake" or performative or character-based moralizing wrap-up type thing, where the fact that the character is moralizing is indicative of something. whatever it is, it almost ruins a few of these stories: "elaine coleman" ends with the suggestion that society "kills" people by forgetting them. it's just a little too much for me. same thing with "history of a disturbance," which is way too on the head with the whole "words fail us" thing, even too with "the room in the attic", which is this man recounting his relationship as a boy with this young girl he only knew in the dark--how the mystery of never seeing her was what made the relationship so intriguing, and how not excited he was, scared even, of ruining his relationship with her by seeing her in the light. i get it, and i understand the need to sum things up with a fantastic conclusion but, i don't know: am i the only person in the world who thinks all george saunders stories or at least most of them would be better off without that last paragraph? i hate when it's like i'm sitting on some old dude's knee, listening to him whisper short stories into my ear, feeling his breath condense to spit in my ear, then looking at his face, which is smiling back at my face and telling me now it's bed time. i've seen this guy's book jacket photo. it's really just not my thing.
the best stories here though are just...they're so good. "wizard of west orange" and "in the reign of harad iv" are fantastic, character-driven, etc. characters with singular obsessions, devoted to some task that's completely worthless as an end in itself, yet they do it anyway, it brings them that much pleasure. kind of like writing goodreads reviews.
anyway these stories have their charm. he runs his premises through all implications and possibilities and difficulties, with pretty amazing details: off the top of my head, how "the other town" handles its re-creation of the regular town's plants and trees and so on, through a mix fake tree branches and real ones, and *everybody seems totally cool with this*, it is just batshit insane. you can sense the humor millhauser works with here: he's reporting utter absurdities really flatly. it's definitely the guy's "thing."
but anyway: this no character thing is kinda tough! i like characters. i am definitely a particular-towards-the-general kinda guy, in short stories especially. a real old-tymer. at times i felt like i was reading a wikipedia page summary of some small-town phenomenon. other times millhauser feels the need to moralize, even if it's like this "fake" or performative or character-based moralizing wrap-up type thing, where the fact that the character is moralizing is indicative of something. whatever it is, it almost ruins a few of these stories: "elaine coleman" ends with the suggestion that society "kills" people by forgetting them. it's just a little too much for me. same thing with "history of a disturbance," which is way too on the head with the whole "words fail us" thing, even too with "the room in the attic", which is this man recounting his relationship as a boy with this young girl he only knew in the dark--how the mystery of never seeing her was what made the relationship so intriguing, and how not excited he was, scared even, of ruining his relationship with her by seeing her in the light. i get it, and i understand the need to sum things up with a fantastic conclusion but, i don't know: am i the only person in the world who thinks all george saunders stories or at least most of them would be better off without that last paragraph? i hate when it's like i'm sitting on some old dude's knee, listening to him whisper short stories into my ear, feeling his breath condense to spit in my ear, then looking at his face, which is smiling back at my face and telling me now it's bed time. i've seen this guy's book jacket photo. it's really just not my thing.
the best stories here though are just...they're so good. "wizard of west orange" and "in the reign of harad iv" are fantastic, character-driven, etc. characters with singular obsessions, devoted to some task that's completely worthless as an end in itself, yet they do it anyway, it brings them that much pleasure. kind of like writing goodreads reviews.
June 26, 2018
Millhauser se ha convertido en uno de mis relatistas favoritos, y me ha bastado leer tan solo dos de sus recopilaciones para convencerme de ello. La recopilación de El lanzador de cuchillos me pareció superior a esta Risas Peligrosas. Aquí, para mi gusto, Millhauser cuaja algunos de los relatos menos sobresalientes y personales que le he leído, especialmente en la sección Arquitecturas Imposibles, donde se puede rastrear con facilidad la influencia de Borges o Kafka en varios cuentos. Pero es que no es normal alcanzar constantemente la excelencia, me hago cargo, como sí hace en "La habitación de la buhardilla", "Un precursor del cine" y "El mago de West Orange", a cual más abracadabrante, o en "La desaparición de Elaine Coleman" o "Historia de un trastorno", verdaderamente perturbador, uno de mis favoritos. El único inconveniente que tiene Millhauser como escritor es que está en posesión de un mundo tan personal y cerrado, que es probable que el lector que asuma la lectura de su obra completa lo acabe encontrando reiterativo. Esto, claro, no es más que una suposición, pero me parece bastante plausible.
Por otra parte, Millhauser se está convirtiendo en el mayor paladín de los narradores de lo obsesivo que conozco. No sé por qué me obsesionan los protagonistas que anulan sus vidas en pos de una obsesión, pero lo hacen. Cuanto más descabellada es la obsesión,cuanto más liberada de las ataduras terrenales se encuentra, es curioso, más pura me parece, más nítidamente queda cartografiada la profundidad de la obsesión. Y en esto Millhauser es un maestro. En Risas Peligrosas, con la obsesión por las risas de los protagonistas del relato homónimo, la obsesión por la vacuidad de las palabras del protagonista de Historia de un trastorno, la obsesión del protagonista de El Mago de West Orange por el haptógrafo, esa máquina imposible que replica, aumenta y amplía hasta límites alucinógenos el sentido del tacto, la obsesión de Millhauser por lo obsesivo vuelve a alcanzar cotas asombrosas de hondura y originalidad.
Y tengo que mencionar, para quien pueda interesar, mi descubrimiento reciente de otro escritor de lo obsesivo, Tom McCarthy, que con sus novelas Satin Island y, especialmente, Residuos, ha pasado a formar parte de esta reducida nómina de escritores de lo obsesivo. El amoral protagonista de Residuos, concretamente, con su obsesión, llevada a límites demenciales, por replicar la realidad para tratar de aprehenderla, me parece uno de los obsesos más memorables que ha dado la literatura.
Sea como sea, rezo para que alguna editorial tenga a bien publicar los libros de relatos de Millhauser que por desgracia todavía permanecen inéditos en castellano.
Por otra parte, Millhauser se está convirtiendo en el mayor paladín de los narradores de lo obsesivo que conozco. No sé por qué me obsesionan los protagonistas que anulan sus vidas en pos de una obsesión, pero lo hacen. Cuanto más descabellada es la obsesión,cuanto más liberada de las ataduras terrenales se encuentra, es curioso, más pura me parece, más nítidamente queda cartografiada la profundidad de la obsesión. Y en esto Millhauser es un maestro. En Risas Peligrosas, con la obsesión por las risas de los protagonistas del relato homónimo, la obsesión por la vacuidad de las palabras del protagonista de Historia de un trastorno, la obsesión del protagonista de El Mago de West Orange por el haptógrafo, esa máquina imposible que replica, aumenta y amplía hasta límites alucinógenos el sentido del tacto, la obsesión de Millhauser por lo obsesivo vuelve a alcanzar cotas asombrosas de hondura y originalidad.
Y tengo que mencionar, para quien pueda interesar, mi descubrimiento reciente de otro escritor de lo obsesivo, Tom McCarthy, que con sus novelas Satin Island y, especialmente, Residuos, ha pasado a formar parte de esta reducida nómina de escritores de lo obsesivo. El amoral protagonista de Residuos, concretamente, con su obsesión, llevada a límites demenciales, por replicar la realidad para tratar de aprehenderla, me parece uno de los obsesos más memorables que ha dado la literatura.
Sea como sea, rezo para que alguna editorial tenga a bien publicar los libros de relatos de Millhauser que por desgracia todavía permanecen inéditos en castellano.
December 29, 2014
Bizarre, profound, and gorgeously written, the thirteen stories in Steven Millhauser’s collection will transport the reader to a world that is strikingly similar to our own, but where impossibly strange things are dangerously possible. A lonely, ignored woman literally vanishes into thin air after preparing a cup of tea one night. In the titular story, a group of teenagers experiment with laughter as a potentially deadly new drug whose high they cannot resist. A miniaturist becomes obsessed with creating invisible, pristine pieces of art. A tower rises higher and higher into the sky until it finally pierces Heaven itself. A historical society courts controversy by obsessively recording the details of the present (or, as they refer to it, the New Past). In each installment Millhauser skirts the line between fantastic and mundane, sane and insane, to create a collection rich in depth and profundity.
“A book is a dream machine. Its purpose is to take you out of the world.” If this was indeed Millhauser’s intent, he succeeded with aplomb. Each story is grounded in the real world’s sensibilities, but Millhauser’s wild imagination and prose style weave in just the right amount of oddness. I can see that for some, his quirks and outlandish twists could be seen as irksome, but I found myself enthralled with every story and each new take on his themes.
“For we are no longer innocent, we who do not see and do not remember, we incurious ones, we conspirators in disappearances.”
If the stories in the collection’s last segment, “Heretical Histories,” are a touch weaker than the rest, they still stand head and shoulders above the majority of other offerings in the fiction section this year. The stories in Dangerous Laughter are a towering achievement, and Millhauser pulls them off with panache – making this very likely the best new book of 2008.
Also recommended: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, The Garden of Last Days, and Purple America.
“A book is a dream machine. Its purpose is to take you out of the world.” If this was indeed Millhauser’s intent, he succeeded with aplomb. Each story is grounded in the real world’s sensibilities, but Millhauser’s wild imagination and prose style weave in just the right amount of oddness. I can see that for some, his quirks and outlandish twists could be seen as irksome, but I found myself enthralled with every story and each new take on his themes.
“For we are no longer innocent, we who do not see and do not remember, we incurious ones, we conspirators in disappearances.”
If the stories in the collection’s last segment, “Heretical Histories,” are a touch weaker than the rest, they still stand head and shoulders above the majority of other offerings in the fiction section this year. The stories in Dangerous Laughter are a towering achievement, and Millhauser pulls them off with panache – making this very likely the best new book of 2008.
Also recommended: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, The Garden of Last Days, and Purple America.
June 22, 2009
Steven Millhauser, you had me at old-timey, "How do you do, madame?"
After a disappointing collection by what I thought was a reliable author, I picked up another set of short stories based purely on the appeal of its cover. According to the info. on the back, the image was culled from The Advertising Archives. Very Mad Men. Dangerous Laughter really took me by surprise. I know I probably shouldn't say this because the summer has barely begun and because I'll be damning myself with a barely ripe prophesy, but this is probably the most memorable book I'll read of 2009.
Millhauser's narrative style hails from the Enchanter's School of Storytelling, of which Nabokov, Calvino, and Borges are graduates. His stories are ambitious, not content merely to juggle between the fantastic and the ordinary, but to spin your grandma's Civil War commemorative plates, set fireworks off in your eyeballs, and convince you that "Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board" isn't just some stupid slumber party game, it actually works. His stories are deep thinking, wild-haired, crazy-eyed maniacs, and yet they have the best possible manners. You could teach a creative writing class with these stories because Millhauser has an unwavering grasp of the fundamentals. They are structured without sacrificing the elements of suspense or surprise. You get on board, not really caring where you're going but wanting to get the hell away from wherever you are. You feel the momentum build, collecting steam. You wonder how he's going to do it, how he's going to bring it all to a satisfying ending, one that isn't readily predictable but necessarily appropriate, one that for all intents and purposes has the common sense and good manners of a well brought up story, escorting you to the door before stealing your breath away. I was downright dazzled.
Standouts: Dangerous Laughter (my personal fave), The Dome, The Wizard of West Orange
After a disappointing collection by what I thought was a reliable author, I picked up another set of short stories based purely on the appeal of its cover. According to the info. on the back, the image was culled from The Advertising Archives. Very Mad Men. Dangerous Laughter really took me by surprise. I know I probably shouldn't say this because the summer has barely begun and because I'll be damning myself with a barely ripe prophesy, but this is probably the most memorable book I'll read of 2009.
Millhauser's narrative style hails from the Enchanter's School of Storytelling, of which Nabokov, Calvino, and Borges are graduates. His stories are ambitious, not content merely to juggle between the fantastic and the ordinary, but to spin your grandma's Civil War commemorative plates, set fireworks off in your eyeballs, and convince you that "Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board" isn't just some stupid slumber party game, it actually works. His stories are deep thinking, wild-haired, crazy-eyed maniacs, and yet they have the best possible manners. You could teach a creative writing class with these stories because Millhauser has an unwavering grasp of the fundamentals. They are structured without sacrificing the elements of suspense or surprise. You get on board, not really caring where you're going but wanting to get the hell away from wherever you are. You feel the momentum build, collecting steam. You wonder how he's going to do it, how he's going to bring it all to a satisfying ending, one that isn't readily predictable but necessarily appropriate, one that for all intents and purposes has the common sense and good manners of a well brought up story, escorting you to the door before stealing your breath away. I was downright dazzled.
Standouts: Dangerous Laughter (my personal fave), The Dome, The Wizard of West Orange
August 16, 2010
Thanks, February 2008, for publishing the funniest thing I've read all year. From Steven Millhauser's short story "Cat 'N' Mouse":
"The mouse is sitting in his chair with his feet on the hassock and his open book facedown on his lap. A mood of melancholy has invaded him, as if the brown tones of his room had seeped into his brain. He feels stale and out of sorts: he moves within the narrow compass of his mind, utterly devoid of fresh ideas. Is he perhaps too much alone? He thinks of the cat and wonders whether there is some dim and distant possibility of a connection, perhaps a companionship. Is it possible that they might become friends? Perhaps he could teach the cat to appreciate the things of the mind, and learn from the cat to enjoy life's simpler pleasures. Perhaps the cat, too, feels an occasional sting of loneliness. Haven't they much in common, after all? Both are bachelors, indoor sorts, who enjoy the comforts of a cozy domesticity; both are secretive ; both take pleasure in plots and schemes. The more the mouse pursues this line of thought, the more it seems to him that the cat is a large, soft mouse. He imagines the cat with mouse ears and gentle mouse paws, wearing a white bib, sitting across from him at the kitchen table, lifting to his mouth a fork at the end of which is a piece of cheese."
"The mouse is sitting in his chair with his feet on the hassock and his open book facedown on his lap. A mood of melancholy has invaded him, as if the brown tones of his room had seeped into his brain. He feels stale and out of sorts: he moves within the narrow compass of his mind, utterly devoid of fresh ideas. Is he perhaps too much alone? He thinks of the cat and wonders whether there is some dim and distant possibility of a connection, perhaps a companionship. Is it possible that they might become friends? Perhaps he could teach the cat to appreciate the things of the mind, and learn from the cat to enjoy life's simpler pleasures. Perhaps the cat, too, feels an occasional sting of loneliness. Haven't they much in common, after all? Both are bachelors, indoor sorts, who enjoy the comforts of a cozy domesticity; both are secretive ; both take pleasure in plots and schemes. The more the mouse pursues this line of thought, the more it seems to him that the cat is a large, soft mouse. He imagines the cat with mouse ears and gentle mouse paws, wearing a white bib, sitting across from him at the kitchen table, lifting to his mouth a fork at the end of which is a piece of cheese."
June 21, 2008
I first encountered Millhauser in Harper's and The New Yorker. Encountering his work in a magazine is like unexpectedly finding a portal into an alternate universe. A man writes a letter to his wife in which he explains why he's elected to stop speaking because of the inadequacy of language. A miniaturist pursues his art past the threshold of the visible. Suicide becomes a popular fad in a suburban town.
Reading an entire book of MIllhauser's eerie stories in some way dampens the pleasure of his weirdness. The tricks are different (at least somewhat) in each story, but you're more expectant, prepared to read about worlds where women's clothing designers liberate themselves from attention to the human form, or domes are constructed over entire houses, neighborhoods, and finally countries; where a tower is constructed that at last reaches heaven, but it takes longer than a human life to ascend it.
Millhauser's best work ignores the conventions of contemporary fiction, causing us to look differently at our world and our perceptions of it. But it's best if consumed in small doses, like a delicate liqueur.
Reading an entire book of MIllhauser's eerie stories in some way dampens the pleasure of his weirdness. The tricks are different (at least somewhat) in each story, but you're more expectant, prepared to read about worlds where women's clothing designers liberate themselves from attention to the human form, or domes are constructed over entire houses, neighborhoods, and finally countries; where a tower is constructed that at last reaches heaven, but it takes longer than a human life to ascend it.
Millhauser's best work ignores the conventions of contemporary fiction, causing us to look differently at our world and our perceptions of it. But it's best if consumed in small doses, like a delicate liqueur.
September 24, 2015
I thought I was trying a new author when I picked up this book. I was wrong: Millhauser is popular! This collection is full of stories that I had already read in McSweeney's or heard on NPR's Selected Shorts (two of them, no less!).
Like most experimental short fiction I found this to be hit-and-miss. Some of the stories were funny, some were genius, and others just seemed unstatisfying and pointlessly weird. I imagine that different readers, however, would assign those same labels to different stories in the book.
All in, this is a really good collection if you don't mind a departure from traditional form. Especially recommended for people who enjoy thought experiments (a la Calvino's Invisible Cities), or people who collect every-day items, or people who notice details a lot, or people who wonder what it would be like for their home to be covered by an enormous transparent dome.
Like most experimental short fiction I found this to be hit-and-miss. Some of the stories were funny, some were genius, and others just seemed unstatisfying and pointlessly weird. I imagine that different readers, however, would assign those same labels to different stories in the book.
All in, this is a really good collection if you don't mind a departure from traditional form. Especially recommended for people who enjoy thought experiments (a la Calvino's Invisible Cities), or people who collect every-day items, or people who notice details a lot, or people who wonder what it would be like for their home to be covered by an enormous transparent dome.
March 10, 2009
The first story is amazing. The rest are quaint. I feel like I'm reading Robert Louis Stevenson or old 40s SF (think John Wyndham). Meanwhile there's a whiff of ambition to sound like DeLillo. People think if you're not into them you don't like the intellectualism or "distance" but when the narrator recites a 14-item list of what "we of the Historical Society" provide in their archives, it's just filler to set the pedantic, sly style of the narration. And the intellect gets bored reading filler just for the sake of style.
I was relieved to read another review which distinguishes between reading one of these stories in a magazine, which is a treat, to reading a whole schlock-ful of them. But why can't they be more like the first story??
I was relieved to read another review which distinguishes between reading one of these stories in a magazine, which is a treat, to reading a whole schlock-ful of them. But why can't they be more like the first story??
July 17, 2018
This was a good contrast to "Voices in the Night," a lot of the stories were more traditional, told from the perspective of the individual and less from the sort of group-think of a town. Still, it had all the stuff you love about Millhauser. In so much of his work, he seems to examine the subtle creep of the absurd. Where you end up in a story is so far from where you started, yet the end still feels inevitable.
There were a few stories that felt like filler, which bumped it down a star for me. I didn't make it through the last story, which is saying something, because I so rarely walk away from a book. Still, a handful of these stories are really going to stick with me, and I'm prob going to nerd out about them anytime I have the opportunity.
There were a few stories that felt like filler, which bumped it down a star for me. I didn't make it through the last story, which is saying something, because I so rarely walk away from a book. Still, a handful of these stories are really going to stick with me, and I'm prob going to nerd out about them anytime I have the opportunity.
March 13, 2010
Aside from the opening story, which I found a bit cliche, there are some really creative ideas in Millhauser's stories. Like other reviewers here I did sometimes feel like he belabored the point of his stories, but he usually did so in such an inventive engaging way that I didn't often mind.
That being said, one thing that I did kind of miss from the stories was any real sense of emotion, there was always a level of detachment that nagged at me after several stories. The exception to this was the story "The Disappearance of Elaine Coleman".
That being said, one thing that I did kind of miss from the stories was any real sense of emotion, there was always a level of detachment that nagged at me after several stories. The exception to this was the story "The Disappearance of Elaine Coleman".
December 15, 2015
If Borges were bloodless, these are the stories he would write. This was the first book I've read in recent memory where the author seemed like he was bored writing it. I made it about 70% through before I gave up. Most of the stories do not have a single line of dialogue, which makes for a surprising amount of tedium in a short story book. The same list that recommended this book recommended "Tenth of December" by Saunders, which I devoured. I'm not sure if I'm unfairly comparing it to that or if it's just plain monotonous, but I don't know that I'll be repairing to Millhauser any time soon.
February 28, 2010
Summary:
Steven Millhauser’s Dangerous Laughter is a collection of 13 short stories, separated into 3 “categories” or “studies:” 1) Vanishing Acts 2) Impossible Architecture and 3) Heretical Histories. The collection also begins with a short story called “Cat and Mouse,” which Millhauser classifies as his “Opening Cartoon.” The whole effect of this sub-divided compilation with cartoony introduction is to make the collection come across similarly to a 1950s late-night Hitchcockian television series. The first category, Vanishing Acts, contains four stories which attempt a discussion on unhappiness and loneliness, the result of these feelings being the slow disappearance of someone (the self). The second category, Impossible Architecture, contains another four stories and, while the idea of smallness and invisibility still registers, the main theme here is this idea of creating amazing, masterful designs – impossible scientific feats – which, rather than satisfy the creators’ appetite, instead leave them feeling less satisfied than they were before they started. There is a constant need for “more” and “better.” The final category, Heretical Histories, contains four stories which take an alternative approach and view of the study of history – history in general, fashion/social culture history, art and cinema history, and scientific history.
The Good:
What I like most about these stories is that they border on terror. There is something strange and disturbing about each story, even though many seem to be simple stories about a different time or place, or a different sort of people. There is a sense of “something wrong” in each of the stories. For instance, in the cover-story, “Dangerous Laughter,” we see a group of teenagers who meet to have “laughing parties.” A safe, even cute idea, at first, but one begins to wonder what these children lack, what are they missing that they must seek each other out and force themselves to laugh themselves almost into insanity? These laughing parties turn into crying parties, which become the new vogue, and the shy girl who was forced to “come out” at a laughing party, and who became the reigning champion of the laughers, gets left behind. It is the eerie touches to everyday life that I find most intriguing. The girl in “The Room in the Attic” who may or may not be whom we are expected to believe she is – and, if she is not, what does that say about her entire family? The pioneering families and communities in “The Dome” who, by seeking to make their lives just a bit easier, just a bit better, come to isolate themselves completely from one another, to exist in a world unknown and unidentifiable, where even the grandest schemes of nature become playthings. And the poor villagers in “The Tower,” who become so disillusioned by their great adventure into the Heavens that they actually begin to seek the only opposing adventure, into the depths of Hell. The idea behind each short story in this collection is truly inspired and wonderful. I imagine someone like Hitchcock or Poe or even Dennis Cooper could push these stories into the stratosphere, but Millhauser holds back. Millhauser explains just enough, describes just enough. Is it enough?
The Bad:
While each of these stories is inspired, as I said above, I couldn’t help but to be left feeling slighted. I imagine these visions in the head and hands of Edgar Allan Poe, for instance, and the horror I imagine, the true sense of terror – and not just the anticlimactic tease the reader is allowed here – is almost unimaginable. I can’t determine whether Millhauser held back on purpose or not. If he did, I could understand reasons for doing so. Many of these stories are believable in many ways and the slight creepiness, the eerie but unidentifiable makes it all the more real because, in life, some things do just “weird us out.” We find ourselves in situations that make us uncomfortable, with people who make our skin crawl, and there may not always be evidential reason for it, but the feeling remains. This could be what is happening with Dangerous Laughter. Still, I can’t shake the part of me which feels that, brilliant ideas are here, but the story-telling prowess is just lacking. The brilliance with which this collection could shine is dimmed by the fact that, when it comes down to the language, the words, well, the beauty of the stories just aren’t translating. I also think Millhauser left too many loose ends, where nothing gets explained. Who is the girl in “The Room in the Attic?” What happened to Earnshaw in “The Wizard of West Orange” to change his disposition so drastically? How can one really just disappear, even with practice, as the main character eventually does in “History of a Disturbance?” So much wonder, such brilliant places Millhauser doth go – but it’s almost as if he wipes out the path to and from, and we’re left standing a crossroads, with no street sign to indicate the way.
The Final Verdict: 3.5/5.0
While I was underwhelmed by the majority of these stories, I was also intrigued by most. The writing did not necessarily inspire or move me, but many of the themes and ideas did. I found MIllhauser to be echoing Poe and Hawthorne on many levels, though his mastery of story-telling and the written word are not quite in the same league. There is an element of terror to these exploratory/fantastical stories that could have been greatly developed but which were ultimately underdeveloped and, therefore, left me feeling a bit detached and cold. Still, a part of me can’t help wondering if this was intentional, as much as I want to stray from this inquiry (because I would be disappointed if it were the case). Yet, Millhauser writes in “History of a Disturbance” these words: “Always I had the sense that words concealed something, that if only I could abolish them I would discover what was actually there.” Perhaps this is Millhauser’s point, after all. That the words don’t matter so much as the story does – the “what happened,” “how did it happen,” and the why did it happen?” I would tend to agree, except that, in written form, stories and words tend to need one another equally, and Millhauser makes a habit of leaving out the “how” and the “why” altogether in Dangerous Laughter.
Steven Millhauser’s Dangerous Laughter is a collection of 13 short stories, separated into 3 “categories” or “studies:” 1) Vanishing Acts 2) Impossible Architecture and 3) Heretical Histories. The collection also begins with a short story called “Cat and Mouse,” which Millhauser classifies as his “Opening Cartoon.” The whole effect of this sub-divided compilation with cartoony introduction is to make the collection come across similarly to a 1950s late-night Hitchcockian television series. The first category, Vanishing Acts, contains four stories which attempt a discussion on unhappiness and loneliness, the result of these feelings being the slow disappearance of someone (the self). The second category, Impossible Architecture, contains another four stories and, while the idea of smallness and invisibility still registers, the main theme here is this idea of creating amazing, masterful designs – impossible scientific feats – which, rather than satisfy the creators’ appetite, instead leave them feeling less satisfied than they were before they started. There is a constant need for “more” and “better.” The final category, Heretical Histories, contains four stories which take an alternative approach and view of the study of history – history in general, fashion/social culture history, art and cinema history, and scientific history.
The Good:
What I like most about these stories is that they border on terror. There is something strange and disturbing about each story, even though many seem to be simple stories about a different time or place, or a different sort of people. There is a sense of “something wrong” in each of the stories. For instance, in the cover-story, “Dangerous Laughter,” we see a group of teenagers who meet to have “laughing parties.” A safe, even cute idea, at first, but one begins to wonder what these children lack, what are they missing that they must seek each other out and force themselves to laugh themselves almost into insanity? These laughing parties turn into crying parties, which become the new vogue, and the shy girl who was forced to “come out” at a laughing party, and who became the reigning champion of the laughers, gets left behind. It is the eerie touches to everyday life that I find most intriguing. The girl in “The Room in the Attic” who may or may not be whom we are expected to believe she is – and, if she is not, what does that say about her entire family? The pioneering families and communities in “The Dome” who, by seeking to make their lives just a bit easier, just a bit better, come to isolate themselves completely from one another, to exist in a world unknown and unidentifiable, where even the grandest schemes of nature become playthings. And the poor villagers in “The Tower,” who become so disillusioned by their great adventure into the Heavens that they actually begin to seek the only opposing adventure, into the depths of Hell. The idea behind each short story in this collection is truly inspired and wonderful. I imagine someone like Hitchcock or Poe or even Dennis Cooper could push these stories into the stratosphere, but Millhauser holds back. Millhauser explains just enough, describes just enough. Is it enough?
The Bad:
While each of these stories is inspired, as I said above, I couldn’t help but to be left feeling slighted. I imagine these visions in the head and hands of Edgar Allan Poe, for instance, and the horror I imagine, the true sense of terror – and not just the anticlimactic tease the reader is allowed here – is almost unimaginable. I can’t determine whether Millhauser held back on purpose or not. If he did, I could understand reasons for doing so. Many of these stories are believable in many ways and the slight creepiness, the eerie but unidentifiable makes it all the more real because, in life, some things do just “weird us out.” We find ourselves in situations that make us uncomfortable, with people who make our skin crawl, and there may not always be evidential reason for it, but the feeling remains. This could be what is happening with Dangerous Laughter. Still, I can’t shake the part of me which feels that, brilliant ideas are here, but the story-telling prowess is just lacking. The brilliance with which this collection could shine is dimmed by the fact that, when it comes down to the language, the words, well, the beauty of the stories just aren’t translating. I also think Millhauser left too many loose ends, where nothing gets explained. Who is the girl in “The Room in the Attic?” What happened to Earnshaw in “The Wizard of West Orange” to change his disposition so drastically? How can one really just disappear, even with practice, as the main character eventually does in “History of a Disturbance?” So much wonder, such brilliant places Millhauser doth go – but it’s almost as if he wipes out the path to and from, and we’re left standing a crossroads, with no street sign to indicate the way.
The Final Verdict: 3.5/5.0
While I was underwhelmed by the majority of these stories, I was also intrigued by most. The writing did not necessarily inspire or move me, but many of the themes and ideas did. I found MIllhauser to be echoing Poe and Hawthorne on many levels, though his mastery of story-telling and the written word are not quite in the same league. There is an element of terror to these exploratory/fantastical stories that could have been greatly developed but which were ultimately underdeveloped and, therefore, left me feeling a bit detached and cold. Still, a part of me can’t help wondering if this was intentional, as much as I want to stray from this inquiry (because I would be disappointed if it were the case). Yet, Millhauser writes in “History of a Disturbance” these words: “Always I had the sense that words concealed something, that if only I could abolish them I would discover what was actually there.” Perhaps this is Millhauser’s point, after all. That the words don’t matter so much as the story does – the “what happened,” “how did it happen,” and the why did it happen?” I would tend to agree, except that, in written form, stories and words tend to need one another equally, and Millhauser makes a habit of leaving out the “how” and the “why” altogether in Dangerous Laughter.
May 12, 2021
There are some bright spots in here, but for me this was like a 2.5 more than a 3 even.
I think the issue, for me at least, is that I often love Millhauser’s IDEAS with his stories but unfortunately dislike, almost as frequently, his execution. Maybe I’m just not totally onboard with his style—and that probably is just a subjective thing. I disliked his sort of “distanced narration” (which is present in nearly every story), sort of in the manner of a dispassionate, apathetic journalist or something. The result for me of this style of POV/form is that I often felt very, very bored with what was happening. It doesn’t help that Millhauser is often long-winded; many of the longer pieces in here could very much be boiled down to a briefer story and they’d likely be stronger, tighter.
But I think that at least some of this is also the point: this grating juxtaposition of the mundane with the fantastic, or at least an inversion of the mundane in various ways. Some stories in here are perfectly balanced and pull all the feats off well and deliver on their strong premises, but most I felt were bogged down and suffered from that frequent “distance” created in the narration. If I had a character to grab onto in some of these “weird” worlds, I think I would be more apt to enjoy the ride.
I think the issue, for me at least, is that I often love Millhauser’s IDEAS with his stories but unfortunately dislike, almost as frequently, his execution. Maybe I’m just not totally onboard with his style—and that probably is just a subjective thing. I disliked his sort of “distanced narration” (which is present in nearly every story), sort of in the manner of a dispassionate, apathetic journalist or something. The result for me of this style of POV/form is that I often felt very, very bored with what was happening. It doesn’t help that Millhauser is often long-winded; many of the longer pieces in here could very much be boiled down to a briefer story and they’d likely be stronger, tighter.
But I think that at least some of this is also the point: this grating juxtaposition of the mundane with the fantastic, or at least an inversion of the mundane in various ways. Some stories in here are perfectly balanced and pull all the feats off well and deliver on their strong premises, but most I felt were bogged down and suffered from that frequent “distance” created in the narration. If I had a character to grab onto in some of these “weird” worlds, I think I would be more apt to enjoy the ride.
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