Dangerous Laughter

by Tobias Seamon, March 28, 2008

There’s no forgetting the first time that one reads Steven Millhauser. The author of 11 books, including the Pulitzer Prize-winner Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer, the Saratoga Springs resident is frequently compared to Borges for his ability to explore grand themes through the miniaturized or magically real. Whether describing a Saturday morning cartoon or a department store, Millhauser takes a keen insight into overlooked delights of the ordinary and then embellishes to an extraordinary extent, so that the finest specks of fabulist nuance become stepping stones towards the impossible made to seem plausible.

Released this February, Millhauser’s latest collection, Dangerous Laughter, continues his exploration of “what if.” By the end of collection, readers will feel like the youth in the title story: astounded and wondering whether they’ve been led to sublime heights, convulsive depths, or the mazy pleasures of both.
In an e-mail interview conducted over a six-week period this winter, Millhauser discussed Dangerous Laughter and his remarkable career as a writer.

While Dangerous Laughter is a collection of short stories, the three sections have the thematic feel of novellas, much like the tripartite format in The King in the Tree and Little Kingdoms. Was this intentional or did the groupings come after the fact?

When I write a story, it’s the only story I’ve ever written and the only story I’ll ever write. It bears no relation to anything else, least of all to my own work. When I’m done with it, though, I recognize that it attaches itself to other stories I’ve written. I see resemblances, connections. The stories in Dangerous Laughter were written over a period of nine years. Each story, when I wrote it, was an independent object. But as they grew in number and I began to think of arranging them in a collection, I noticed possible groupings, especially for the stories now called “Impossible Architectures.” Near the end, I wrote several stories with the sense that they would fit into a plan that had somehow taken shape behind my back.

Did you envision “Cat ’n’ Mouse” as a cartoon reel for a collection of stories, or did it just fall into place when Dangerous Laughter was being put together?

“Cat ’n’ Mouse” was written without any thought of a collection. When the accumulating stories began to fall into groups, I began to entertain the possibility of an opening story that might touch on all the others. I saw that “Cat ’n’ Mouse” has a vanishing theme, as in the first set of stories; an architectural theme, as in the second set; and even, as in the third set, an historical theme, in the sense that the story pretends to resurrect an historical artifact (a mid-century cartoon), though one that never existed.

Apart from all that, I miss opening cartoons when I go to the movies. Where did they all go to, the opening cartoons of my childhood? Since the movies no longer provide them, I wanted to provide one myself. Life is better with an opening cartoon.