Laughter in the Dark

Vladimir Nabokov

Here's the opening paragraph of a confident novelist: "Once upon a time there lived in Berlin 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 ... we might have left it at that had there not been profit and pleasure in the telling"

Profit and pleasure there certainly is to be had in the telling, though it's a cruel story. Margot, the young mistress, is vulgar and snakelike; Albinus a foolish wretch by the end. The characters are sketched rather than inked in in colour but Nabokov could not write poorly if he tried. And yet he was never happy with Laughter in the Dark and disowned it after publication.

Nabokov toys with Margot's exact age (Craig Raine in the afterword speculates she is something like sixteen) and the gap between her and Albinus is substantial. There's a theory that Nabokov regarded Laughter in the Dark as a trial run for Lolita, and it's a theory that works. However the novel deserves an audience of its own.