Dark Laughter
Dark Laughter,novel by Sherwood Anderson, published in 1925.
John Stockton, a Chicago reporter, drifts apart from his wife Bernice, and decides suddenly to leave his routine life. He travels in an open boat down the Illinois and Mississippi rivers, dreaming of the epic Mark Twain might now write, “of song killed, of laughter killed, of men herded into a new age of speed, of factories, of swift, fast-running trains,” and his story is accompanied by a chorus of “dark laughter” and song by the unrepressed blacks, contrasted with the spiritual sterility of machine civilization. In his childhood home, Old Harbor, Ind., as Bruce Dudley, he becomes a factory hand, painting wheels with old Sponge Martin, an expert craftsman, happily married, and satisfied by his pattern of life. The shop's owner is Fred Grey, a World War I veteran who met his wife Aline in the bohemian quarter of Paris, where she was under the influence of postwar disillusion....
[The entire page is 207 words long]
Join eNotes
Over 3,500 study guides, question and answer forums, literature criticism, reference content, and much more!
Oxford University Press Titles
