Dangerous Laughter Thirteen Stories Author:Steven Millhauser From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author hailed by The New Yorker as 'a virtuoso of waking dreams'? comes a dazzling new collection of darkly comic stories united by their obsession with obsession. In Dangerous Laughter, Steven Millhauser transports us to unknown universes that uncannily resemble our own. — The collection is divided into three par... more »ts that fit seamlessly together as a whole. It opens with a bang, as "Cat 'n' Mouse"? reimagines the deadly ritual between cartoon rivals in a comedy of dynamite and anvils - a masterly prologue that sets the stage for the alluring, very grown-up twists that follow.
Part one, "Vanishing Acts,"? features stories of risk and escape: a lonely woman disappears without a trace; a high school boy becomes entangled with his best friend's troubled sister; and a group of teenagers play a treacherous game that pushes them deep into 'the kingdom of forbidden things.'
Excess reigns in the vivid, haunting places of Part two's "Impossible Architectures,"? where domes enclose whole cities, and a king's master miniaturist creates objects so tiny that soon his entire world is invisible.
Finally, "Heretical Histories"? presents startling alternatives to the remembered past. "A Precursor of the Cinema"? proposes a new, enigmatic form of illusion. And in the astonishing "The Wizard of West Orange"? a famous inventor sets out to simulate the sense of touch - but success brings disturbing consequences.
Sensual, mysterious, Dangerous Laughter is a mesmerizing journey through brilliantly realized labyrinths of mortal pleasures that stretch the boundaries of the ordinary world to their limits - and occasionally beyond.« less