The Laughing Monsters is the first book of Denis Johnson, who
died in 2016, I read. I decided to read a novel by Johnson after I read an
article about the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in the Guardian. In 2012, Johnson’s novel, Train Dreams, was one of
the finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and the panel reached the
extraordinary conclusion that none of the finalists was worthy of the award.
I picked up The Laughing Monsters because that
was the only novel of Johnson available in the local library.
Describing the plot of The Laughing Monsters would be an
exercise in futility, but let me attempt. The novel, set in four parts,
involves two protagonists. The first is Roalnd Nair, a raven-haired Danish-American
agent working for the NATO Intelligence Interoperability Architecture (NIIA).
The second protagonist is Michael Adriko, who, although the novel does not
spell it out, is a mercenary fighter, who holds Ghanaian passport and likes to
tell everyone that in 2005 he saved the life of the then Ghanaian president by
taking a bullet in his groin meant for the president; however he is most probably
from Uganda or even Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo). Nair and Adriko
are friends, though probably not trustworthy, and fought together year ago in
Jalalabad, Afghanistan. As the novel opens, Nair has arrived in Freetown,
Sierra Leone, to trace Adriko. Adriko has ‘disappeared’ while fighting with the
US army against one of the militias in DR Congo. Why should the US military
bother about a mercenary fighter who has gone AWOL? The American interest in
Adriko is not clarified, but it is hinted that they are probably worried that
Adriko, who, above everything else, is also a conman, might have hatched a
devilish plan to sell enriched uranium to murky characters the exact
connections of which are kept vague. Mossad might have been involved in some
manner in this whole business. Adriko might have been trained, originally, by
Mossad. Why should the Americans send a NATO agent on the trail of an African
mercenary who has run away from their army in DR Congo, especially as they must
have known that Nair, no saint himself, is an old mate of Adriko? I have no
idea. What follows is a kind of picaresque, as Nair and Adriko go from Sierra
Leone to Uganda, from Uganda to DR Congo, and back to Freetown, Sierra Leone. The
romantic interest is provided by Davidia St Clair, an American, who is the
daughter of the camp commander of the United States Special Forces Group (10th
Division) from which Adriko is currently—as he quaintly puts it—detached.
Davidia, who is clearly not dumb, is pretty clueless about Adriko’s
shenanigans and intentions, and is even willing to believe his story that he
wants to take her to the village of his clan in Uganda (or is it in DR Congo?)
for a traditional African wedding. When Nair establishes contact with Adriko in
Freetown, it is inevitable that he would start lusting after Davidia, even
though he has a girlfriend who also worked for the NATO in Amsterdam. As the
novel ends, Adriko and Nair are back in Freetown, and Nair, having hatched is
own scheme, which I couldn’t tell you much about, as I did not fully understand
this sub-plot myself, except that it involved a character called Hamid (no idea
which party he works for, or, indeed, what might be the interest of this
unnamed party in Nair, although the interest must be considerable seeing as
Hamid is prepared to pay Nair handsomely for double-crossing—whom exactly:
Adriko? NATO? CA?), is richer by 100 K US dollars, and is fondly dreaming about
future (involving more cons and Adriko) in nearby African countries.
The Laughing Monsters starts as a promising spy story, but then
morphs into a surreal travelogue of Nair’s confused journey through Uganda and
DR Congo. There are some bravura scenes in the novel, such as the one towards
the end when Nair reaches the village Adriko comes from and where Adriko plans
to marry Davidia (who has, of course, been whisked away halfway through the
novel, out of the narrative, never to return again). Here Nair runs into
Adriko, having lost contact with him earlier when the Americans ambush them
(having finally cottoned on to what the two might be up to). The village has
been reduced to nothing, as much because of the endless rapacity of the
Congolese army and militia alike, as because of the rapacious extraction of
gold and other minerals (no doubt by the multinationals, although that is left
to the reader to figure out) that has rendered the water and soil toxic. The
children are dying and the remaining adults are barely alive, semi-deranged
ghosts, who, according to a missionary woman (who could be said to be equally
deranged in her own way), should get the hell out of there. However, the
village priestess, also known as the queen, who calls herself La Dolce, and
who, Adriko claims is the cousin of his late father, refuses, and, demanding a
sacrifice, squares up to Adriko, having descended from her throne, which
happens to be a wooden chair, up in the trees! However, such scenes are far and
few between, and do not have any direct connection to what you thought at the
beginning was going to a taut spy-story. That is a major
short-coming of the novel: the context and the story are so underdeveloped that
such set-pieces, as also some other (such as the one when Adriko, while driving
in a stolen Suzuki at a speed that refuses to come below breakneck, mows down
an African woman, and neglects to stop).
Nair, the protagonist from the perspective of whom the story
unfolds, is a kind of anti-hero you’d encounter in a Graham Greene or John le
Carre novel: sardonic, cynical, droll, and who is very aware of his character
deficiencies (he sends semi-passionate, revelatory e-mails to his girlfriend in
Amsterdam and then sleeps with possibly underage African women, whom he
unsentimentally describes as ‘sluts’ and ‘whores’). Nair’s loyalty to Adriko is
inconsistent (although he can’t be loyal to Adriko seeing as he has been
assigned to trace Adriko and find out what Adriko has been up to), at any rate
he does not let it come in the way of trying to get into the knickers of
Adriko’s girlfriend. Half-way through the novel Nair is either drunk or so
confused that he can’t figure out whether he is writing to Davidia or his girlfriend
(Tina). He does in the end decide not to betray Adriko and hand him over to the
Americans, which, insofar as you can make out, was the plan at the start of the
novel. Nair is obviously a character that is morally ambiguous. Fully able to
recognise the virtuousness of human nature, Nair knowingly makes choices that
are amoral. In the end it is a character for whom you have neither sympathy nor
much of respect.
Adriko is depicted as a true buccaneer, and a
larger-than-life character. He, however, comes across as more of comic con man
than someone who has hatched up a fiendish scheme to sell enriched uranium to
rogue traders.
The female protagonists in the novel have the depth of soggy
cardboard. Davidia, who has “very high and very round” breasts, and rolls her
hips in a “very African” manner, is supposed to be smart, free-thinking, and
educated. You wonder what this woman is doing with Ariko in Sierra Leonne in
the first place. The meek manner in which she allows herself to be taken back
to her papa suggests that the fifth fiancée of Adriko (as Nair helpfully points
out on more than one occasion) mistakes infatuation for true love, but
thankfully comes back to her senses. The love-triangle involving her, Nair and
Adriko is half-baked and unnecessary. As for Tina, Nair’s girlfriend, largely a
passive recipient of Nair’s monologues, which he e-mails her, her only positive
act in the novel is of sending a
cameraphone picture of her bare (and substantial) breasts to him.
What stops reader’s interest dissipating is Johnson’s keen
ear for dialogues and his talent for vivid descriptions. There are passages in
the novel that are create a mood of unease not unlike that in Conrad’s Heart
of Darkness. The dialogues are sharp, crisp and pithy, and a joy to
read.
The Laughing Monsters is not a tedious novel to read; it is
even a moderately enjoyable novel; however I suspect it is not Johnson’s best.
