The land of laughter
The land of laughter ( Engl. The Land of Laughs is) a novel of the American writer Jonathan Carroll , who published in 1980 and 1986 translated by Rudolf Hermstein into German and as a band 241 of the fantastic library at Suhrkamp Verlag was released.
action
The teacher Thomas Abbey has been obsessed with his favorite author Marshall France and his fantasy world since he was a child. Therefore Abbey follows his footsteps because he wants to write a biography about him with the help of his own friend Saxony . However, puzzles emerge in literary detective work that increasingly leave the tangible reality and ultimately lead to a horrific insight when meeting Abbey's daughter Anna in Marshall's hometown, Galen, Missouri .
background
"The Land of Laughing" is Carroll's debut novel and is considered a typical representative of the fantastic . A city or town called Galen exists in Tennessee , New York, and Montana , respectively, in the United States , but not in said state of Missouri.
expenditure
- Jonathan Carroll: The Land of Laughter . Translated from English by Rudolf Hermstein, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt / M. 1986, ISBN 3-518-38454-6 , 241 pp.
- Jonathan Carroll: The Land of Laughter . Suhrkamp 1991, ISBN 978-3-518-37747-5 , 220 pp.
- Jonathan Carroll: The Land of Laughter . Insel Verlag, Berlin 1998, ISBN 978-3-458-16002-1 . 241 pp.
reception
At the time , Der Spiegel wrote a benevolent announcement regarding the German translation , in which it alluded to Carroll's professional activity in Vienna with an analogy to The Third Man .
When the fictional character Peter Bishop from the Fringe series visits his bookseller friend in episode 14 of season 1, a customer is about to sell a first edition of the English original. Since both the book and the series are about fantastic realities, it can be seen as a mutual metaphor or allusion.
Web links
- Criticism at X-Zine ( Memento from September 6, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
- Criticism at the Bibliotheka Phantastika ( Memento from December 16, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
Individual evidence
- ↑ DER SPIEGEL 35/1986
- ↑ Andreas Arimont: Fringe unauthorized- the unofficial compendium Season 1 : all episodes, BoD - Books on Demand, 2010, p. 95.