Preview of Dark Laughter Summary:

Winesburg, Ohio (1919), which Anderson subtitled, "A Group of Tales of Ohio Small-Town Life," sketches the story of a large cast of characters; Dark Laughter, in contrast, probes the reflections of three people: Bruce Dudley, his boss Fred Grey, and Fred's wife Aline Grey.

Dudley, a dreamer and a journalist with ambitions to write something serious, feels he is going nowhere with his newspaper job in Chicago. His wife is...