Fran Assa: Updike's comment made me think of Lhuzin in terms of Lolita...Both Lhuzin and Lolita have been stunted in childhood... But at the great risk of playing the quack, it occurs to me that Nabokov suffered from the double trauma of becoming a refugee, and the murder of his father; or possibly a triple whammy as, soon after the loss of his father,  his fiance was made to call off the engagement.  All this at a still tender age.  Nabokov was resilient enough to overcome these events with his sanity in place, but it may be that like Lolita and Lhuzin, he never fully grew up.  

 

JM: In fact, Updike mentions some subtle autobiographical elements that had been inserted in "The Defence." However, those he points out with clarity (i.e, which are not at all subtle) are mostly reports about Nabokov's varied experiences as an emigré in Berlin which had been included, rather pointlessly in his eyes, into certain chapters dealing with Luzhin's courtship and married life. On the contrary, in Updike's sentences, it's possible to detect a genuine admiration about Nabokov's ability to express his more recondite frustrations, pains and misgivings, without becoming confessional or self-pitying.

In my eyes, Nabokov's attachment to his Russian childhood and to the workings of Mnemosyne are no proof that he "never fully grew up" (even when we admit the hypothesis that every neurosis is the direct outcome of immaturity). 

Besides, I don't agree with you that's possible to compare Nabokov's later hardships, and mourning, to Lolita's and Luzhin's stunting obstacles and losses.