{"id":4875,"date":"2015-09-30T07:03:34","date_gmt":"2015-09-30T11:03:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=4875"},"modified":"2015-09-30T07:03:34","modified_gmt":"2015-09-30T11:03:34","slug":"the-laughing-monsters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=4875","title":{"rendered":"****The Laughing Monsters"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Freetown,

Freetown (photo: bobthemagicdragon, creative commons license)<\/p><\/div>\n

By Denis Johnson <\/a>\u2013 The Laughing Monsters<\/em> (2014) is an antic suspense novel that focuses on two friends\u2014one white, one black\u2014whose wild adventure starts in pre-Ebola Freetown, Sierra Leone, and unravels across Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Ghana. Their goal is to make a financial killing doing something\u2014selling government secrets, peddling fake uranium\u2014then retire to a life on the beach.<\/p>\n

Roland Nair, the book\u2019s narrator, is a Scandinavian\/American\/NATO spook and an admitted coward in a land where courage needs to come in more than the liquid form he prefers. His long-time friend, handsome Michael Adriko, a son of Uganda, teeters on the edge of a major breakdown. Adriko\u2019s undeniable courage and latent lethality is a good way to get both men into trouble. And does. But is Nair working with Adriko or against him?<\/p>\n

Also along for the ride is Michael\u2019s fifth fianc\u00e9e, Davidia, daughter of a U.S. military commander running a secret post somewhere in the Congo. Davidia is beautiful\u2014men\u2019s \u201cgazes followed behind her as if she swept them along with her hands,\u201d and both Nair and Adriko want her. She\u2019s patiently trying to make the best of their low-budget accommodations and travel arrangements, but even she reaches her limit and, anyway, her father wants her back.<\/p>\n

Johnson, who won the National Book Award for his 2007 novel about Vietnam, Tree of Smoke<\/em>, effectively evokes the fractured spirit of the place\u2014the do-si-do-ing for advantage of the operatives loosely connected with various spy agencies with whom they negotiate, the tunnel vision of the American military personnel, the sinister and sometimes overtly threatening village residents they encounter when they\u2019re far from transportation and cell phone coverage.<\/p>\n

\"banana

(photo: Sandi Plek, creative commons license)<\/p><\/div>\n

The author presents his characters with precision and a fine appreciation of absurdity. Here\u2019s how Nair describes one of Michael\u2019s reckless schemes: \u201cAs [Michael] expressed these ideas he followed them with his eyes, watching them gallop away to the place where they made sense.\u201d<\/p>\n

Johnson is equally good at conveying the sensory-overload of the African environment: not only the mind-baking heat and the mud and the tainted water, but the ramshackle villages and spluttering vehicles, the barmen and the prostitutes. Nair plunges into political incorrectness with an unforgettable description of an African prostitute \u201cwearing a curly blonde wig, like a chocolate-covered Marilyn Monroe.\u201d<\/p>\n

I really enjoyed the first 175 pages or so of this 228-page book, though in the final section, the gods of chaos and Really Bad Hangovers hijacked the narrative, and I felt I was losing the thread. On the whole, it is as described by New York Times<\/em> critic Joy Williams<\/a>, \u201ccheerfully nihilistic\u201d as it lays bare the \u201cgiddy trickle-down of global exploitation and hubris\u2014the farcical exploits of cold dudes in a hard land.\u201d
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