I want to read two very different pieces of prose
about three years apart in writing.
The first is a small story called A Miser.
And some of the prose pieces in since The Miner's Pale
Children are more deliberately not
staying within so much as exploring different kinds
of narrative rather than different kinds of address.
A man was able to get hold of all the laughter in the world
and he packed it tightly and locked it up in his house
and hid the key.
The trouble was that nobody missed it.
He had to tell them what they were missing.
Nobody knew what he was talking about, nobody believed him,
nobody thought that what he was talking about was real.
Who could believe that after all?
Would anyone believe it if someone came up to him
and told him that they had all the laughter in the world
locked up somewhere?
Would anyone believe it even if neither of them laughed?
He tried to describe laughter to them,
he showed them how it was done.
He showed different ways in which
different people could laugh.
He told them all the things that made people do it,
everything he could remember or invent people falling down,
filth, people making terrible mistakes,
people unable to control themselves,
misfortunes of all kinds, people with something to matter
with them, no interest.
He told them that it would be good for their health
and that he would not make it expensive for them,
no interest.
There were many things about it that he didn't even
know he said, no interest.
It had been called divine he said, no interest.
But the man kept on trying because at least at night he
could always go home and take out the key
and open up some and have a good laugh to himself.
But then one night he started to laugh at himself
and that made him lonely.
He tried to invite somebody else in the laugh,
but it was very hard.
He even said he would give the laughter away,
that somebody else laughed.
So that person remembered how to laugh.
So that person was on his side.
They were laughing together.
Somebody else was laughing with him,
but that meant that somebody else had some
of the laughter in the world.
So he started making plans to steal it,
but the other person kept giving it away.