The Gay Nabokov (2000)
salon.com
salon.com
I need to re-read Lolita in the light of this. I know that the book mocks the supposed connections between an author's experience and his work but I've always felt the Humbert-Quilty relationship to be a deeply personal one that the author drew on from somewhere.
Unfortunately, it doesn't look like it's available online anywhere in any sort of decent resolution.
[0]http://bookmendc.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-gay-nabokov.html
I pulled it from the article sp332 linked
"Vladimir was a confirmed homophobe, and his gay brother was a constant source of shame, confusion and regret to him."
It's a typical projection of moral standards of our age onto another. Someone is not a 'x-phobe' if they reflect the mores of the day (or simply don't share our views on the subject).
By the same token, it's not correct to label Nabokov to label a homophobe for not sharing progressive attitudes of a society that came 100 years after.
Such labels are judgement calls - which must be made in the context of the society the person lived in.
If you want, you could say 'his views, while progressive at the time, would be considered homophobic by the standards of 2014'.
Just because most people were something doesn't mean they weren't that something.
He didn't like gays.
I do agree the moral judgement of a person holding a currently repugnant view of course must be weighed by historical and social context.
Words to describe a belief or set of behaviours, however , are context-free.
Do we claim Henry Ford wasn't antisemetic because almost everyone was in his era? No. Do we claim slave owners weren't racist in the 18th and 19th century because everyone was racist back then? No.
Same for our racist grandparents (I had a Nazi in the family until recently). "Oh that was a different time". Sure , it shapes the broader moral picture of a person. Doesn't make them less racist.
Same for homophobia. Not everyone was homophobic in Nabokov's time. The definition has nothing to do with why one may hold the view. It's just a statement that they did.
One might critisize that the word fuses a clinical term "phobia" so casually, when "anti-homosexual" might be more accurate... but that ship has sailed.
Ie your Nazi relative (if he subscribed to the Nazi doctrine) believed that Jews should be physically exterminated. Slave owners actually owned slaves (although in Africa slavery was as or more common - without any racism involved, so not sure if it's even a required condition).
Meanwhile Nabokov viewed homosexuality akin to any other sexual aberration. For example how today we may look at someone with a foot fetish, yet whose life is completely taken over by it.
He didn't disavow his brother nor advocate violence - as a libertarian he believed that people were free to do in private as they pleased.
If you want to draw a valid example - you'd have to start by calling Darwin & Lincoln racists. Ie people that you probably admire yet who shared views with majority of the educated class at the time that today would be considered racist by many.