A number of the characters in the short stories that comprise Steven Millhauser's Dangerous Laughter: Thirteen Stories don't look at others straight on or are even hidden in darkness. That seems appropriate. Millhauser's work tends to present a view of parts of life and the human experience that most others don't see or for which they lack the imagination.
This is seen from the outset of the book. Like the movies used to, it begins with a section called "Opening Cartoon." But Millhauser's "Cat 'N' Mouse" story gives a different perspective on the never-ending battle between Tom and Jerry and actually considers what each of them may be thinking. The balance of the collection consists of three themed sections, each with four stories related to or perhaps inspired by the titles of the section, "Vanishing Acts," "Impossible Architectures," and "Heretical Histories." Yet each section still tends to examine people, ideas, and life from a somewhat uncommon perspective or one we might overlook.
That is undoubtedly part of the reason The New York Times Book Review named Dangerous Laughter one of its 10 best books of 2008, a fairly heady accomplishment for a collection of short stories. Not only are the stories well written, Millhauser skillfully handles a wide range of styles. Some stories are cast somewhere in a ground between science fiction and fable. Others take aspects of modern society to another level while still others are based in more traditional tales to which Millhauser adds a somewhat different take.
Some of the strongest are those told from the first person, such as "The Disappearance of Elaine Coleman." Its narrator isn't bothered just by the fact that the title character disappeared from her apartment. Instead, realizing he went to school with the young woman, he struggles with his own and the community's "failure of memory" and how that may affect being able to find her.
I felt that we were guilty of some crime. For it seemed to me that we who had seen her now and then out of the corner of our eyes, we who had seen her without seeing her, who without malice had failed to give her our full attention, were already preparing her for the fate that overtook her, were already, in a sense not yet clear to me, pushing her in the direction of disappearance.
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