How would you interpret the phrase “laugh it up”?
Russia has the bomb. Every evening radio program was stopped for this: the crooners in front of microphones quietly folded their sheet music, the wise guys laughing it up at Duffy’s Tavern set their steins slowly on the counter, their jaws dropped, they gaped. The fine fabric of our nation, ripped open to reveal a naked vulnerability. An atomic explosion has occurred in the USSR. Truman said the thing in as few words as possible. Two nations now have the bomb.

How would you interpret the phrase “laugh it up” in the sentence “…the wise guys laughing it up at Duffy’s Tavern set their steins slowly on the counter…”?
What does the pronoun “it” refer to?
Thanks. And this excerpt is taken from The Lacuna by Kingsolver.I’m unfamiliar with the sitcom ‘Duffy’s Tavern’. Is there anyone who laughs at Russia’s failure to produce nuclear bomb in that sitcom?

Question

How would you interpret the phrase “laugh it up”?
Russia has the bomb. Every evening radio program was stopped for this: the crooners in front of microphones quietly folded their sheet music, the wise guys laughing it up at Duffy’s Tavern set their steins slowly on the counter, their jaws dropped, they gaped. The fine fabric of our nation, ripped open to reveal a naked vulnerability. An atomic explosion has occurred in the USSR. Truman said the thing in as few words as possible. Two nations now have the bomb.

How would you interpret the phrase “laugh it up” in the sentence “…the wise guys laughing it up at Duffy’s Tavern set their steins slowly on the counter…”?
What does the pronoun “it” refer to?
Thanks. And this excerpt is taken from The Lacuna by Kingsolver.I’m unfamiliar with the sitcom ‘Duffy’s Tavern’. Is there anyone who laughs at Russia’s failure to produce nuclear bomb in that sitcom?

Answer

To "laugh it up" is just an idiom meaning a group of people are laughing/joking together about something or having a good time.  It often has an ironic or derisive tone.  Like if you were the only person not invited to a party, you might bitterly imagine everyone at the party dancing and laughing it up.  In this passage, Duffy's Tavern is a bar where the patrons are having a good time (Kingsolver calls them "wise guys" . . . which does not mean they are wise; in fact, "wise" + "guys" is another idiom that means quite the opposite . . . . basically, people who think they are smarter than they are)  until they find out that Russia has also created an atomic bomb.  The author is using the phrase to create an ironic parallel, the men in the bar are laughing, joking, having a good time, not knowing that their lives are about to change completely and irrevocably . . . it metaphorically sums up the entire reaction of the United States to finding out that the Soviet Union is a nuclear power (i.e. the entire population of the U.S. is a bunch of wise guys at a bar laughing it up at this moment of history, until the announcement about the nuclear bomb is made).

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