I have just finished reading Laughter in the Dark, a book which Nabokov himself all but abandoned as one of his ‘worst novels’ - a very poor work indeed, capped by an even worse afterword by one Craig Raine, who (despite being the only person I have yet witnessed to use my favourite buzz-word of last year’s grammar paper, ‘Aposiopesis’) seems to be attempting to mitigate the reader’s distaste by providing a flavour so inane, insane and inadequate that in retrospect, even Nabokov’s slop seems sweet – or perhaps addictively umami.
If that is his strategy, it doesn’t work. Much like the novel.
The earliest of Nabokov’s novels that I am going to read (though one day, I hope to sample King, Queen, Knave and The Gift), it was written in Russian just before Despair, and translated by Nabokov in 1938. It fails to equal that enjoyable work in two respects: the lesser that Nabokov did not bother to revise and retranslate it in the 60s, as a master, the greater that save one short sequence (a blind man living with his mistress, who is betraying him with a second man the first does not even know is there) the story is totally lacking in good ideas.
A man takes a mistress, destroying his marriage, who then horribly manipulates and betrays him. A simple plot, but with potential: potential wasted as we see that the characters are superficial and unidimensional, the relationships unconvincing, the action far-fetched. Laughter in the Dark is nothing more than a penny dreadful.
It’s somehow enervating, to see such a grand master floundering in the shallow end, when one is so used to seeing his powerful strokes easily leaving all others in his wake – but bittersweet, and also…strangely endearing.
When we see a magician preparing his tricks, we can still admire his show – while something is lost when we gain understanding, there is also an increased sense of affinity, of shared craftsmanship, of affection.
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