The Laughing Man (short story)
"The Laughing Man" is a short story by J. D. Salinger, published originally in The New Yorker on March 19, 1949; and also in Salinger’s short story collection Nine Stories.[1] It largely takes the structure of a story within a story and is thematically occupied with the relationship between narrative and narrator, and the end of youth.
Contents |
[edit] Plot summary
The short story is told from the retrospective point of view of an unnamed narrator recounting his experience as a nine-year-old living in New York City in 1928, but largely takes the structure of a story within a story. As a member of a Boy Scout-like troop called the Comanche Club, the narrator comes into contact with a Scout leader called “The Chief”, a young law student at New York University who acts as a caretaker in his spare time. The Chief is described as lacking in physical attractiveness but appears beautiful to the narrator who is too young, or unconditioned, to tell the difference. He is widely respected by his troop for his athletic strength and storytelling ability.
Every day, after the troop has completed its activities for the afternoon, The Chief gathers the boys for the next episode in an ongoing story that he tells them about the eponymous Laughing Man. Very much in the format of a serial adventure novel, The Chief’s story-within-a-story describes The Laughing Man as the child of missionaries who was kidnapped by bandits in China, the latter of whom grotesquely deformed his face by compressing it in a vise; as such, he was obliged to wear a mask, but somewhat compensated by being profoundly athletic and possessed of a great Robin Hood-like charm and the ability to speak with animals.
Salinger’s narrator summarizes the Chief’s ever more fantastic installments of The Laughing Man’s escapades, presenting him as a sort of comic book hero crossing “the Chinese-Paris border” to commit acts of heroic larceny and tweaking his nose at his archenemy “Marcel Dufarge, the internationally famous detective and witty consumptive”.
Eventually, The Chief takes up with a young woman, Mary Hudson, a student at Wellesley College who is described as both very beautiful and something of a tomboy. Unwilling to break the aura of machismo he has built up with his troop, the Chief introduces her into the boys’ baseball games as an “associate coach”.
As the Chief’s relationship with his lover waxes and wanes, so too do the fortunes of The Laughing Man in the stories he tells the Comanches. One day, the Chief presents an installment where The Laughing Man is taken prisoner by his arch-rival through a deception and betrayal, bound to a tree, and in mortal danger; then he ends the episode on a cliffhanger. Immediately afterward, the Chief brings his troop to a baseball diamond, where Mary Hudson arrives. The Chief and Mary have a conversation out of earshot from the boys, and then both return, together yet distraught.
Why the couple is distraught is ambiguous, as their conversation occurs away from the narrator; in any case, Salinger does not explicitly tell the reader. However, the author does provide some subtle hints when Mary Hudson comes to the baseball field for the last time: When she is first seen, she is sitting between two baby carriages. Second, the narrator nearly trips over a baby carriage after viewing The Chief and Mary fight. The implication is that either Mary has gotten pregnant, or is worried she might be pregnant, or was pregnant and received an abortion. The last interpretation might be supported by the frequent visits to the city, as mentioned by the narrator: these may be visits not to a dentist but rather a doctor.
In the final installment of his Laughing Man story, probably in concurrence to the Chief’s real life problems, the Chief kills off the laughing man, much to the Comanches’ dismay.
[edit] Film adaptation
After the debacle of his previous sale of a short story to Hollywood, Salinger was notoriously reluctant to allow his works to be adapted for the silver screen. However, he instructed the entertainment licenses department of his literary agency, Harold Ober Associates, to send his story out to producers for a potential film deal. The move was largely motivated by the potential financial deal, and the interested parties only expressed desire to adapt his only novel, the widely known and acclaimed The Catcher in the Rye.[2]
[edit] References
[edit] Further reading
- Laughing Man (Ghost in the Shell)
- Alexandria Ricke (2003). Reading and Writing in the Fiction of J. D. Salinger. University of Florida: Journal of Undergraduate Research. http://www.clas.ufl.edu/jur/200308/papers/paper_ricke.html.
