This morning we read a review in the Post of a new collection of short stories by one of our favorite authors, Steven Millhauser. The collection is entitled “Dangerous Laughter,” and we will immediately look for it on the shelves of our Northeast Library.
The reviewer, Jeff Turrentine, quotes from a short story in the book entitled “Here at the Historical Society,” in which a local museum alters its mission to address what the narrator calls the “New Past.”
The revamped museum now has staffers “who count the needles of every fir tree and the specks of mica in every roof shingle, others who study the patterns of grass blades flying up behind a power mower and settling onto the cut grass. We record the sounds of dishes and silverware in the kitchens of our town, the exact fall of the shadows of fence posts and street signs. We investigate the bend in a blue rubber band wrapped around a morning newspaper lying on a sun-striped porch.”
Nice.
