JM: John Updike, in his criticism of VN's novel writes, in "Grandmaster Nabokov" (TNR,1964): "The four chapters devoted to little Luzhin are pure gold, a fascinating extraction of the thread of genius from the tangle of a lonely boy's existence...By abruptly switching to Luzhin as a chess-sodden adult, Nabokov islands the childhood, frames its naive brightness so that, superimposed upon the grown figure, it operates as a kind of heart..."

Nabokov described (among other traits in Luzhin) many of the behavioral stereotypies found in the "Asperger's Syndrome," long before these were clinically recognized or associated to autism. Poor Sasha, not even the rich and loving Mrs. Luzhin could help him. As for the Easter patterns, possibly related to "rebirth" in another level of Luzhin's life-cycle, we find chess, "the game of the gods," mingled with religious symbolism and, quite mysteriously, marriage. Like the wooden golden egg won in a tombola in Berlin, would marriage be related to some kind of spiritual degradation?.