Customer Reviews

Laughter in the Dark (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics)

5 star:		(28)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This present novel is more concise and less rambling than "Lolita."

I have read some of Nabokov's other books including some of his non-fiction and of course I read "Lolita." This is probably one of his better works.

Nabokov was a devout student of literature as well as a writer. As most know, he became a professor at Cornell in later years. This is an earlier novel from 1932 published in Russian as Kamera Obskura in 1932, then translated by Nabokov to English in 1938, and then again updated by him in 1960.

This is a great novel. It is clear and concise; it is well balanced like his own idea of the perfect novel, "Madame Bovary." In short, it is an entertaining and a compelling read. I read it start to finish in one less than one evening. He has approximately ten characters in the story with about five important characters including the two main protagonists. He keeps the story simple but interesting. The story is brilliantly conceived and told.

I will not give away the plot, but it is set in Berlin after World War I, then it moves on to the Riviera and Switzerland.

As noted on page 1: "Once upon a time there lived in Berlin, Germany, a man called Albinus. He was rich, respectable, happy; one day he abandoned his wife for the sake of a youthful mistress.." Knowing that does not ruin the story and that is all you should know for now. Skip all the other comments until you read the novel.

The story unfolds with few clues about what will take place. Most important questions in our minds are left unresolved until the end. Most will sympathise with the slightly naïve Albinus, and as myself, most will become fully immersed in the story.

This is a great novel that I highly recommend.

"Once upon a time there lived in Berlin, Germany, a man called Albinus. He was rich, respectable, happy; one day he abandoned his wife for the sake of a youthful mistress; he loved; was not loved; and his life ended in disaster."

This is the first paragraph of Laughter in the Dark. Nabokov gives us the synopsis, even the end of the book, right at the beginning. Then starts the simple, yet beautiful narration of a lethal obsession. The sad story of a man who can be very reasonable about every aspect of life unless it has got anything to do with his youthful mistress. When it comes to the 18-year-old femme fatale, he is void of all logic and sense, and cruel to those whom he once loved.

It is impossible to give a summary of the book without giving away its twists and turns, and there are quite a few of them. Here is how one of the main characters react to a divergence in the story:

"A certain man once lost a diamond cuff-link in the wide blue sea, and twenty years later, on the exact day, a Friday apparently, he was eating a large fish - but there was no diamond inside. That's what I like about coincidence."

Nabokov's writing is uncomplicated, sincere and very engrossing. Once started, I couldn't put it down. When I finished the book late last night, I was so shaken that I couldn't go to sleep. I was at once entranced and disturbed by the book. Entranced by Nabokov's ability to sustain the suspense of a story he so shrewdly summarizes at the very beginning. Disturbed by the fact that such obsessions are real and in existence.

This is a nasty little gem of a novel written fairly early in Nabakov's career, when he was still writing in Russian. The copy I just read does not indicate who translated it, although I suspect it may have been his brother, who translated many of his earlier works. It also may have been Nabakov himself. Either way it doesn't matter.

It is the story of a well-to-do German, Albinus, with an inheritance, wife, child and sedate happy life. I am still not clear on what he does; he is apparently some kind of an art critic. He becomes infatuated with the beautiful but deceitful and manipulative Margot, a woman far too young for him. He leaves his wife and child for her, and as time slowly crawls by, loses everything else: his money, his happiness and his health. The young woman is assisted in her deceit by her lover, Rex, who pretends to be the protagonist's friend.

Yes, we've heard this tale before, and will hear it many, many more times, but in the skilled hands of the great Nabakov, all of this is fresh, and very, very original. Rex is an astonishing character; completely, wickedly drawn: "He [Rex] watched with interest the sufferings of Albinus (in his opinion an oaf with simple passions and a solid, too solid, knowledge of painting), who thought, poor man, that he had touched the very depths of human distress; whereas Rex reflected--with a sense of pleasant anticipation--that, far from being the limit, it was merely the first item in the program of a roaring comedy at which he, Rex, had been reserved a place in the stage manager's private box." This little commentary follows shortly after the death of Albinus' only child. Yike! How lusciously, viciously evil! And the extent to which Rex follows his "muse" as the book goes along is almost breathtaking. This is horror, true horror; way beyond the conjurings of such mediocrities as our benighted Sir Stephen.

The girl's character is no less skillfully drawn. Banal, uneducated and dull--yet pretty--she is attracted to only the superficial: fame, pleasure, and money, and tolerates Albinus only for the period of time she is able to use him to get these things. She is as faithful as a cat, and as moral as a snake. But oh, does her black hair glisten in the sunlight, and does her thin body shimmer as it exits the blue Adriatic.

Finally we have Albinus. Not ugly, somewhat stolid, a little naive, his premarital romances had been "feeble." And alongside, "There had been hundreds of girls of whom he had dreamed but whom he had never got to know; they had just slid past him, leaving for a day or two that hopeless sense of loss which makes beauty what it is . . ." We know, soon, that he is the type of person to fall prey to such . . . things.

This is all marvelous, marvelous stuff, and written so early in his career. Amazingly, it doesn't even begin to match his almost unparalleled mastery of the novel form he would later exhibit in novels such as Lolita.

I'm not sure how to say this. If you love to watch tennis, you go to Wimbledon. If you love to drink beer, you go to Bohemia. If you love beautiful women . . . well, there are many places. And now that I am out of metaphors, I will simply say this: if you love literature, you must--you MUST--go to Nabakov.

Just when one has reached the age of relative comfort and has accepted life's compromises with one's youthful and unearthly dreams and yearnings, along comes a great big delusion. In the case of Albinus, the struggle to resist this phantom called beauty didn't last long. He collapsed at its feet, as if it completed him and immortalized him. Utterly blind to its ruthless demands and sad, greedy realities, Albinus let beauty, embodied in the supple Margot Peters, bring down every bit of his integrity until he became, literally, a pathetic, helpless supplicant at her feet. This theme has recently been reprised in the award-winning movie, "American Beauty."

What I find interesting in this classically simple and beautifully executed novel is the underlying theme of our relationship to art and beauty. Does beauty make fools of us all, even the most intelligent among us who, one would think, should know better? Or are those people the most vulnerable of all, as they see all the way to the depths of beauty and art and lose themselves in their mystery? In contrast, hardened cynics and inherently nasty people, as epitomized in the character Axel Rex, take their due of life's sweets and laugh at the foolishness of those mere mortals who somehow try to capture and control them. They are nothing to be preserved, but are merely wild and fleeting, like a summer day or a rare butterfly fluttering through the dahlias. Yet it is all too human to quake and tremble and collapse when sensual delight finds its way into one's life. This is the story of such a disaster and the evil it releases.

Let's also leave "Lolita" on the shelf when reading this work. This one came first. It should be appreciated in its own right. Comparisons are for literature professors. Discrete enjoyment is for readers.

"Once upon a time there lived in Berlin, Germany, a man called Albinus. He was rich, respectable, happy; one day he abandoned his wife for the sake of a youthful mistress; he loved; was not loved; and his life ended in disaster."

Readers interested strictly in the bottom line might well stop there, with the synopsis of the entire story delivered in a single, short paragraph. Readers with the good sense to continue, however, will find themselves basking in the artistry of narration that is Laughter in the Dark . I think that this is among the best of Vladimir Nabokov's novels--which is high praise indeed, considering the oeuvre of this remarkable writer.

Albinus behaves badly, forsaking the wife and daughter who did love him for the gamine of eighteen who did not. Even so, Nabokov's narration makes it difficult not to pity the man in the face of Margot's manipulation and the dreadful treatment dished out by her lover Rex. Albinus understands only when it's too late.

Giving his carnal appetite higher priority than his responsibilities as a husband and father, Albinus supposes that as long as he provides financial support, all will be well (enough) and that he will still maintain his place in respectable society. His failure to see his actions through to their end leaves him vulnerable to disaster and his lust leaves him vulnerable to exploitation. What else but tragedy could follow?

Nabokov's genius is evident in his ability to draw the reader into a story after having given it away in the first paragraph. His prose is almost perfect, a harmonious balance of rhythm and economy: I didn't want to put the book down, though I did force myself to go slowly, to savor the text.

Not a happy story by any means, but one in whose reading there is profit.

While Laughter is a great standalone read, it pales in comparison to Lolita. Far and away, Lolita is one of the best books ever written. Laughter and Lolita share a very similar dynamic being that both fall in love with younger girls that don't share the same affection. Both Humbert and Albinus also share a penchant for resolving their problems with a gun wrapped up in a scarf. But, Laughter lacks the dismal humor that Lolita captured. And the story line was somewhat unclear and too many characters were underdeveloped. By no means is this a bad read, on the contrary its quite good. Just compared to the best book ever written (Lolita), Laughter is missing a certain finesse that Lolita embodied.

This is one of my all-time favorite books, and favorite Nabokov novel (though nothing comes close to his memoir, "Conclusive Evidence" -- now sold under the inferior title, "Speak, Memory; I loved that one so much I named my blog after it.)

This book includes the usual Nabokov wit in every sentence, but it's also a deliciously fun read. Nearly all the characters are kind of bad, but not blood-curdling Humbert Humbert sort of way. These are people who fail despite themselves.

And it won my heart with the first sentence. Try it out:

Once upon a time there lived in Berlin, Germany, a man called Albinus. He was rich, respectable, happy; one day he abandoned his wife for the sake of a youthful mistress; he loved; was not loved; and his life ended in disaster.

Gutsy opening, huh? But it's all in the telling.

That is, if you define "perfect" as follows: A work in which nothing can be subtracted without lessoning the work, and a work that seems to lack nothing in the way of addition. A work that is exciting to read, meticulously written, and satisfies in every aspect from beginning to the memorable climax. And it's just plain fun, in a dark sort of way.

Witty, satirical, and intelligent, Laughter in the Dark would be a masterpiece by almost any other writer, hence the 5 star review. I must say, however, that it is not Nabokov's best work. Although less perfect in execution, Pale Fire (my vote for most original novel in the English language) and Lolita are more important and thought provoking. They are Nabokov's real masterpieces.

But I decided to rate the book against the masses, not against Nabokov's own work. Many times I have told friends that they should own and read this book. I even gave them a money-back guarantee: if they didn't enjoy the book, I would buy it from them. While this offer is, of necessity, not available to the throngs of ...buyers, I still have never felt more secure in recommending a book.

In praise of freedom of expression Nabokov writes, "In an Anglo-Saxon thriller, the villian is generally punished, and the strong silent man generally wins the weak babbling girl, but there is no governmental law in Western countries [as there was in the former Soviet Union] to ban a story that does not comply with a fond tradition, so that we always hope that the wicked but romantic fellow will escape scot-free and the good and dull chap will be finally snubbed by the moody heroine."

I suspect that Nabokov composed LAUGHTER IN THE DARK with a mind-set similar to the one quoted above, after all one of the joys of artistic creation is to flout convention, and if one is an exceptional artist, as Nabokov surely is, to flout and rout convention for good.

Which is precisely the attraction of the novel: not merely does LAUGHTER IN THE DARK persuade the reader to scoff at poor Albinus, who is ,if not the hero of the novel, its most sympathetic character; it coaxes and cajoles the reader to admire its villians, Margot and Rex, who contrive at first to rob Albinus blind and second to kill him, albeit accidentally.

An added attraction is the manner in which the story is presented: in a prose style converse to that of LOLITA's Humbert Humbert, i.e. minimalist insofar as it compares to the rest of Nabokov's oeuvre.

I read "Lolita" years ago and then just found my way back to Nabokov though this lovely book. The plot is intriguing, the writing is PERFECT, and the whole book just sweeps you away. It's a great book for people who have read "Lolita" and want to know where to go next. I enjoyed this even more, personally.