 First edition | |
| Author | Steven Millhauser |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Alfred A. Knopf |
Publication date | 2008 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (hardback) |
| Pages | 244 |
| ISBN | 978-0-307-26756-6 |
Dangerous Laughter: 13 Stories is a collection of short fiction by Steven Millhauser published in 2008 by Alfred A. Knopf . [1]
Original publication periodicals and dates indicated:
Opening Cartoon
Vanishing Acts
Impossible Architectures
Heretical Histories
New York Times literary critic D. T. Max notes the surreal qualities of the stories:
Most fiction writers try to make characters seem like real people, but Millhauser flattens them, giving his books the paradoxical effect of seeming realer than reality. For him, meticulous observation does the work of psychology.” [2]
Max distinguishes Millhauser from postmodernist writers, locating his “mid-century prose” among the modernists” and adding “Millhauser’s real subject is contemporary America” and as such, “not just brilliant but prescient.” [3]
Literary critic Ulin, David L. at the Los Angeles Times provides a thematic overview of the collection:
Dangerous Laughter: Thirteen Stories comes billed as a book about obsession, but the 13 stories here deal more with disappearance…It’s a running theme, the way reality can slide and we may truly know ourselves only in darkness, along the border between what we take for granted and what we can never take for granted: the elusive shadows at the edges of our lives. [4]
Literary critic and biographer Earl G. Ingersoll identifies the opening and closing stories—“Cat ’n’ Mouse” and “The Wizard of West Orange”— as both historically and culturally significant “bookends” to the volume. [5]
Both stories reveal Millhauser’s openness to expressions of modernity...Perhaps more than earlier collections of his fiction, Dangerous Laughter reveals the breadth and depth of the author’s fiction. [6]