Sonora Jha’s ‘The Laughter’ book review: A savage chortle

Express News Service

Sonora Jha’s book has a definitive personality. It is someone standing in the shadows of an ancient arch looking out at a decidedly un-ancient campus square with a sardonic half-smile on their lips, and murder in their heart.

On the surface of it, The Laughter is about Oliver Harding, an old-school academic, a world-weary and cynical Chesterton scholar with a pronounced, if hitherto, subtle eye for women, both of the faculty and the student kind.

At the start of the story, we watch him develop some decidedly prurient feelings for Ruhaba Khan, a Pakistani professor, his junior colleague at a Seattle college. She is polite but aloof in the beginning. Then her visiting nephew, Adil Alam, is thrown into this particularly strange mix, and she begins to turn friendlier to our protagonist. Just friendly, mind you.

Adil starts to look upon the older man as a friend and well-wisher. He starts to go out trekking with Harding, walks his dog, and in time, begins to confide in him. Thus, opening the box of tumultuous emotions––the inevitable baggage carried by most youngsters of his age––for the academic to look at, examine and sadly, judge. Harding, of course, is cultivating Adil’s company for just one obvious reason: to get closer to his aunt, the object of the ageing professor’s fantasies.

It doesn’t take the discerning reader too long to see through his supercilious and seemingly liberal veneer, and recognise the feelings of superiority, disdain for people not like him, contempt for terms––diversity, sexual identity, cultural misappropriation––that he feels are trending in ephemeral fashion on college campuses. Is Harding a closet racist? Jha keeps the jury out on that for quite a while, even as the reader makes up their mind soon enough. By the time things move to a cataclysmic consecution––be warned, it’s a slow burn of a denouement––the reader is disillusioned by several people on and off the campus in the story.  

Jha employs a forceful, satirical style, with its savage leitmotif subtly in sight, but not so overpowering as to overtake matters. The story is a direct, unflinching look at campus matters in an American  university, matters that most non-Americans, and even some Americans, would flinch from. Everything is put under the unforgiving microscope: politics of race, identity and religion; problematic stances on terrorism, Capitol Hill (the story is set around the time Trump wins the US presidency), hijab, wokeness… you name it and it’s there, poking an offended head from out of the crowd gathered in the less-than-hallowed halls of academia. The novel calls it as it is, refusing to pass any judgement, leaving the reader to absorb it all, take a deep breath and then take a call.

There is a wry vein of humour loosely threading itself through the tale, but overall, irony looms large. 
It is palpable when the author has Harding look at a Black girl and take note of her ‘unique’ name—“Conscience or Essence or something”; when she has Harding describe himself as a man of pallor; when she has him tell us about the “shamers” and how they make up new nouns as they go along. There is irony in the man’s arrogant yet naïve dismissal of the protesting students across America. “They were wailing for a critical focus on the evolution of systems of oppression,” he states, castigating them as young people who want to take down all that is good and wise and learned.

But let’s move away from Harding. There’s much irony also in an encounter Ruhaba has with a little girl at a Whole Foods outlet, juxtaposing the latter’s surprise at setting eyes on a ‘Muslim’, with Ruhaba’s practised way of defusing the situation. There’s much irony when Jha has Ruhaba say, “I know no other culture in the world that can see every colour but gray.”Irony is rife in the title of the book. This is not a joyful or exuberant kind of laughter; it carries a manic tinge to it. Let’s face it, this is sheer untrammeled angry laughter.
 

<br /> Sonora Jha’s book has a definitive personality. It is someone standing in the shadows of an ancient arch looking out at a decidedly un-ancient campus square with a sardonic half-smile on their lips, and murder in their heart.</p> <p>On the surface of it, The Laughter is about Oliver Harding, an old-school academic, a world-weary and cynical Chesterton scholar with a pronounced, if hitherto, subtle eye for women, both of the faculty and the student kind.</p> <p>At the start of the story, we watch him develop some decidedly prurient feelings for Ruhaba Khan, a Pakistani professor, his junior colleague at a Seattle college. She is polite but aloof in the beginning. Then her visiting nephew, Adil Alam, is thrown into this particularly strange mix, and she begins to turn friendlier to our protagonist. Just friendly, mind you.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-8052921-2’); });</p> <!-- WP QUADS Content Ad Plugin v. 2.0.82 --> <div class="quads-location quads-ad200503 " id="quads-ad200503" style="float:none;margin:0px 3px 3px 3px;padding:0px 0px 0px 0px;" data-lazydelay="0"> <!-- WP QUADS - Quick AdSense Reloaded v.2.0.82 Content AdSense async --> <ins class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block;" data-ad-format="auto" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7550963679842137" data-ad-slot="1823845571"></ins> <script> (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});</script> <!-- end WP QUADS --> </div> <p>Adil starts to look upon the older man as a friend and well-wisher. He starts to go out trekking with Harding, walks his dog, and in time, begins to confide in him. Thus, opening the box of tumultuous emotions––the inevitable baggage carried by most youngsters of his age––for the academic to look at, examine and sadly, judge. Harding, of course, is cultivating Adil’s company for just one obvious reason: to get closer to his aunt, the object of the ageing professor’s fantasies.</p> <p>It doesn’t take the discerning reader too long to see through his supercilious and seemingly liberal veneer, and recognise the feelings of superiority, disdain for people not like him, contempt for terms––diversity, sexual identity, cultural misappropriation––that he feels are trending in ephemeral fashion on college campuses. Is Harding a closet racist? Jha keeps the jury out on that for quite a while, even as the reader makes up their mind soon enough. By the time things move to a cataclysmic consecution––be warned, it’s a slow burn of a denouement––the reader is disillusioned by several people on and off the campus in the story.  </p> <p>Jha employs a forceful, satirical style, with its savage leitmotif subtly in sight, but not so overpowering as to overtake matters. The story is a direct, unflinching look at campus matters in an American  university, matters that most non-Americans, and even some Americans, would flinch from. Everything is put under the unforgiving microscope: politics of race, identity and religion; problematic stances on terrorism, Capitol Hill (the story is set around the time Trump wins the US presidency), hijab, wokeness… you name it and it’s there, poking an offended head from out of the crowd gathered in the less-than-hallowed halls of academia. The novel calls it as it is, refusing to pass any judgement, leaving the reader to absorb it all, take a deep breath and then take a call.</p> <!-- WP QUADS Content Ad Plugin v. 2.0.82 --> <div class="quads-location quads-ad200503 " id="quads-ad200503" style="float:none;margin:0px 3px 3px 3px;padding:0px 0px 0px 0px;" data-lazydelay="0"> <!-- WP QUADS - Quick AdSense Reloaded v.2.0.82 Content AdSense async --> <ins class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block;" data-ad-format="auto" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7550963679842137" data-ad-slot="1823845571"></ins> <script> (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});</script> <!-- end WP QUADS --> </div> <p>There is a wry vein of humour loosely threading itself through the tale, but overall, irony looms large. <br /> It is palpable when the author has Harding look at a Black girl and take note of her ‘unique’ name—“Conscience or Essence or something”; when she has Harding describe himself as a man of pallor; when she has him tell us about the “shamers” and how they make up new nouns as they go along. There is irony in the man’s arrogant yet naïve dismissal of the protesting students across America. “They were wailing for a critical focus on the evolution of systems of oppression,” he states, castigating them as young people who want to take down all that is good and wise and learned.</p> <p>But let’s move away from Harding. There’s much irony also in an encounter Ruhaba has with a little girl at a Whole Foods outlet, juxtaposing the latter’s surprise at setting eyes on a ‘Muslim’, with Ruhaba’s practised way of defusing the situation. There’s much irony when Jha has Ruhaba say, “I know no other culture in the world that can see every colour but gray.”Irony is rife in the title of the book. This is not a joyful or exuberant kind of laughter; it carries a manic tinge to it. Let’s face it, this is sheer untrammeled angry laughter.<br />  <br />