The Laughing Monsters by Denis Johnson: More Butch Cassidy than Le Carré

Whenever critics and readers decide to engage in trade-offs about great American writers denied the attention they deserve, Denis Johnson is invariably mentioned. And rightly so: as the author of Resuscitation of a Hanged Man (1991) and the short-story collection Jesus' Son (1992) he should have been famous long before his mighty, if gloriously chaotic, Vietnam saga Tree of Smoke won him the 2007 National Book Award. Yet even before that, there had been his wonderful performance piece, The Name of the World in 2000, a campus novel with a difference in which the narrator is living a posthumous life in the wake of the car accident deaths of his wife and daughter.

Make no mistake, Johnson is an original. His novella, Train Dreams (2011), a daring lament to the American West, is a masterpiece which should have won him the Pulitzer Prize but was short-listed in a year that the jury decided not to award it. Defiantly cerebral, Johnson is an existentialist who enjoys mind games and state-of-mind games. His new novel The Laughing Monsters is a slap happy variation of Catch-22. It may be intended as a thriller and although far too messily-executed to honour that genre which takes complex plotting seriously, it is a light-hearted jaunt which succeeds in making a serious moral point about the way in which international spies have become the most recent colonialists in the ongoing rape of Africa.

From the opening sentence it reads like a movie script, and if ever a novel announced itself as more future movie than book, this is it. In fact the best way to approach this novel is by imagining the movie it should be, and could be, providing that its redeeming strength as a novel, its humour, is respected. This is a crazy book, pushing the off beat towards the unhinged. Johnson has two cards to play, his shimmering and cryptic prose, alongside what is a convincing feel for Africa. At least, he convinced me as a reader who has been to Sierra Leone and Liberia.

When the narrator, Roland Nair, begins his story: “Eleven years since my last visit and the Freetown airport still a shambles, one of those places where they wheel a staircase to the side of the plane and you step from European climate control immediately into the steam heat of West Africa.” It sounds about right.

In common with African roads, the narrative is a bumpy ride, gleefully going nowhere with the occasional flourish of something interesting or shocking or even mildly plausible, possibly about to happen.

By the third sentence, Johnson makes clear that Nair is not a particularly nice guy, “inside the building, the usual throng of fools” and that he is also on a mission “but I didn’t see Michael’s.” The next injection of truth is when the cab driver asks for 200 dollars but Nair hands over “a couple of one-euro coins.”

Nair and Michael meet up and chance comments suggest they have shared a history. Michael appears to be the more interesting mass of contradictions and is armed with stories to tell: “Did I ever tell you about the time I saved the Ghanaian president’s life?” Michael is a bald Ugandan soldier of fortune given to getting engaged. When Nair finds him, Michael “always laughing, never finished talking” is eager to parade fiancee number five, Davidia, a glamorous African-American college graduate whose father is a high ranking US military big shot. Nair immediately covets her, because Nair is like that.

He is also Scandinavian but has “black hair and gray eyes, or blue, according to the environment. If I wanted my appearance to impress, I’d stay away from the sun and keep a very white complexion to go with my raven locks, that would be my look. But I like the sun on my face, even in the tropics.”

So the semi-likable, self-obsessed Nair, with hair, and Michael, with none, are handsome and up to no good. The dialogue between them is snappy, telling banter that reveals just enough detail to keep the shambles of a plot viable. More Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid than Joseph Conrad the narrative is light years removed from Graham Greene and John le Carré. Neither of whom would have much time for a character such as Nair who enjoys claiming to be Danish, cannot speak the language and travels on a US passport.

It is very clear that Johnson had fun writing this goofball yarn, readers might share a smirk from time to time, it is almost amusing and there are some vivid set pieces, such as when Nair goes to wash out the car after Michael has been shot, and notices how the water with which he is rinsing away the blood fades from red to pink. Elsewhere, Nair watches as a casket-maker balances two small coffins on a bike. They were made for children poisoned by water contaminated by First World misdeeds.

That kind of guy

It is surprisingly haphazard. It becomes clear that heavy drinking, sex-binging Nair sustains contact with Amsterdam via emails sent to Tina, with whom he apparently has, or had a relationship of sorts – as already noted, yes he is that kind of guy. He may be about to sell a map of the US military’s fibre-optics cables throughout seven West African countries, including Mali, to Arab buyers. Equally, he may be about to tempt a Mossad agent with a sample of uranium, hinting at the promise of more waiting in a non-existent crashed plane. Nair has no illusions, he has returned to Africa to make money.

Michael is slightly distracted as he is planning on visiting a village he likes to think of as home and participate in a pre-marriage rite that should confirm he is marrying the right girl. “I’m being communicated with by a spirit”, he claims. It proves more complicated than that, but never mind.

Reading The Laughing Monsters is a labour of loyalty to Johnson. It is a parody of the spy thriller genre with a lurking sensation that Johnson is merely indulging himself: "As I made for the elevator" recalls Nair, "the lights died in the hallway. I took the stairs. Candles at the front desk, in the lobby, the big dining room." This is Africa where the electrical supply tends to ebb and flow. "In the bar, the smell of burning paraffin, the stench of cologne overlaying human musk. Voices from the dark – laughter – candlelit smiles. I ordered a martini, and it tasted just like one."

In truth had any other writer written this, aside from perhaps Robert Stone, it might never have been published and the only reason for reading it is that Johnson is a gifted and admittedly, eccentric writer. There are far too many good spy thrillers out there waiting to be read to take this seriously.

But you can never tell with Johnson, who else would have a character, Michael, say to his fiancee: “Such eyes. How did they fit such enormous eyes into your beautiful face? They had to boil your skull to make it flexible to expand the sockets for those beautiful eyes.” It is a grotesque statement from a besotted lover. But then Johnson allows Nair to follow it by observing to himself, “he was trying to embarrass her, I guessed. She didn’t blink.” And the otherwise thinly-drawn Davidia responds with surreal presence of mind, saying “thank you, such a compliment.” As I’ve suggested, this could make a good movie, as a novel though, it saunters along, oblivious to narrative cohesion.

Often given to bouts of nostalgia, Michael points to the Happy Mountains of his youth, famously renamed by the soured 19th century missionary James Hannington, the Laughing Monsters. Hannington was later killed in Uganda while preaching about salvation. Whatever about the hills, the Laughing Monsters of the title are, most obviously, Nair and Michael.

Eileen Battersby is Literary Correspondent