From: Brooklyn
Category: Amis's Contemporaries
Date: 9/10/99
Time: 5:04:38 PM
Remote Name: 207.238.28.10
Hornby's no Amis, but he's no Grisham either. I've liked all his books but in descending order of appearance. He's sorta re-telling the same joke each time. But FP & HF are both classics even if they don't satisfy everyone's literary pretensions. They're all relatively smart books that don't rely on sex and violence to entertain (not that there's anything wrong with sex and violence). I agree Ed, that there's a certain despair that runs through his books. Usually caused by the perplexing state of affairs in modern living. What's funny is that the perplexion is usually caused in equal parts by the state of modern affairs and the state of the characters estranged sense of right.
As for the dysfunctional family - I'd say the term itself is redundant, though definitely relative too. Well, it's right about now that I'm patting myself on the back for planning a late vacation. Off for a week with *The Thought Gang* (50 pages to go. Hilarious book but I wonder if the parts add up to more than the sum?), *Flashman's Lady*, and *If I die in a combat zone....* (Jules, I stand corrected on Tim O'Brien). Hasta Luego
[From some Nabokov web site. Zembla I think]
Kamera obskura: (Laughter in the Dark)
"A certain man," said Rex, as he turned round the corner with Margot, "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."
Laughter in the Dark is a worked-over English translation of Kamera obskura, with the names of the main characters altered but with theme and plot more or less intact. A rather stuffy Berlin art critic (Bruno Krechmar in the Russian version / Albert Albinus in the English translation) becomes infatuated with a teenaged gamine (Margot,) leaving his wife and child to set up house with her. Through Albinus, Margot again encounters her first lover, an inhumanly nasty artist (Robert Gorn / Axel Rex.) As a result, Albinus suffers a series of misfortunes at the caprice of Rex and the not unwilling Margot. The Berlin setting, German characters, and cruel world view set Laughter in the Dark somewhat apart from the bulk of Nabokov's oeuvre.