Point of View

Vladimir Nabokov narrates Laughter in the Dark from a single, generally objective perspective in the third person past tense. First-person dialog is relatively sparse and not well differentiated by character. Nabokov is privy to characters' thoughts and emotions, and frequently in tense situations intermingles characters' true thought processes with the with the words with which they are fumbling to get out of trouble. The chief character, Albert Albinus, is a well-to-do, middle-aged art critic of marginal intellectual power. Nabokov sounds always slightly superior to him, dashing off the names of painters and their works. He never condones Albert's affair with the grasping teenage femme fatale. Margot Peters, whom he treats rather more harshly and less affectionately that his most famous creation, Lolita in the novel of the same name. Parallels between them are impossible not to notice.

Gentle but highly moralistic brother-in-law Paul is treated with...