It is a paradox that Vladimir Nabokov's life and career dramatically involved him in the most powerful socio-historical currents of the twentieth century: Marxist revolution, exile, politics, the sexual revolution, and the poshlost of the universities and media--and he disdained them all! Nabokov was an aristocratic snob and an aesthetic elitist--and without doubt one of the greatest literary artists of our time.

There will probably never be a definitive biography of Nabokov. The razzle-dazzle complexity of his life and his own lyrical confessions--first in Conclusive Evidence (1951) and in the revised version of Speak, Memory (1966)--are ultimately irrelevant as guides to his work. "I should never have tried to become an autobiographer," he said; "heart-to-heart talks, confessions in the Dostoievskian manner, are ... not in my line." Problems begin with his birthdate, and he has not been lucky in his first biographer, Andrew Field. Nabokov: His Life in Part (1977) caused...