ABSTRACT
Dark Laughter, written by Anderson at age forty-nine in 1925, when Chicago and the whole United States had already pulled themselves together and taken a calm deep breath, as if to forget the chaotic period of their origins. The idea is the same that lends fascination and power to this book, Dark Laughter, written by Anderson at age forty-nine in 1925, when Chicago and the whole United States had already pulled themselves together and taken a calm deep breath, as if to forget the chaotic period of their origins. Those pages on Mark Twain, author of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, poet of the good life of the heartland on the big river, are like the lightning flashes of Anderson's national discovery. There is vitality in America as in Old Europe. There is eternal nature, there are songs, the river, love, laughter, the Negroes: dark laughter.
