‘Twas the film THE ILLUSIONIST that introduced me to Pulitzer Prize winner Steven Millhauser, whose short story “Eisenheim the Illusionist” served as the source material. It’s not all that often that a movie inspires me to check out an author on whose words were the springboard.
Thus, the new-in-paperback DANGEROUS LAUGHTER: 13 STORIES. “Eisenheim” isn’t among them, but it has a baker’s dozen of spiritual brethren in this collection of literate but loony tales of duplicate towns, a library wizard and the perils of merriment.
Right off the bat, Millhauser’s mastery at shaking up the mundane reveals itself with the quirky “Cat ‘N’ Mouse.” It begins like a novelization of umpteen TOM AND JERRY routines, before slowly growing existential as the characters ponder their acts of cartoon violence. “Is he perhaps too much alone?” the mouse wonders. “Is it possible that they might become friends? … Haven’t they much in common, after all?”
Next, “The Disappearance of Elaine Coleman” concerns the vanishing act of a young woman from a locked room, but perhaps more mysterious is that no one seems to have any solid memories of her. “The Room in the Attic,” perhaps the most intriguing story of the bunch, details a friendship between our narrator and a fellow student whose sister lives in total darkness in the attic. Our narrator makes frequent visits to her room, where she toys with him and plays games, and he become ever more curious as to what she looks like, what may be wrong with her.
“The Dome” examines the troubles that occur when mass-produced domes become all the rage among the middle class, encasing their homes in a safe, secure environment … for a while. In “The Tower,” the titular site stretches from Earth to Heaven, with each successive generation of inhabitants charged with climbing as high as they possibly can.
The members of “Here at the Historical Society” take it upon themselves to preserve the past completely, right down to every cobweb, to every needle of a fir tree. Artist Harlan Crane is the subject of “A Precursor of the Cinema”; his 19th-century paintings appear to move, thanks to a new paint that animates the medium’s molecules.
In DANGEROUS LAUGHTER, Millhauser presents a number of scenarios that would crumble in other’s authors’ hands. He specializes in examining the skewed, in a style that more resembles an account than a story; in other words, these tales are not dialogue-driven, but his “reports” are rendered with a fly-on-the-wall fascination. They’re not for everybody, but those who will “get it” will get it good. —Rod Lott
