Always rather a hazardous business bringing two prime donne together….

Actually Edmund Wilson and Nabokov come out of the test rather well [in The Nabokov-Wilson Letters], especially when one considers how grumpy one was and how intolerably conceited the other. Wilson comes out rather better, for he wears characteristic American generosity as a halo. What Nabokov would have done without him is hard to see: arriving unknown as an exile, Nabokov was hard put to it, until the financial success of Lolita. One sees Wilson opening all possible doors to him, getting him to review books, making contacts with publishers, pushing and promoting his work.

The situation itself meant that Nabokov needed to walk warily, subdue somewhat his tendency to be snooty about everybody—especially other writers—and everything, express an approval he perhaps did not always feel for his kind sponsor's work….

However, most of the correspondence...