It looks like Dmitri Nabokov is going to burn Vladimir Nabokov's last novel. And now I'm even less certain that's the right thing to do. Consider:

The last unpublished work of one of the 20th century's greatest writers may be close to being destroyed in fulfilment of the author's last wishes, his son has hinted.

Vladimir Nabokov requested in his will that his unfinished novel, The Original of Laura, should be destroyed on his death, saying that he abhorred the idea of his readers seeing a work he had completed "in my mind" but not on paper.

But more than 30 years since his death, nobody has dared to incinerate the manuscript, a collection of 50 index cards that is languishing in a Swiss bank vault.

Okay, so the book, if you can call it that, isn't even finished. It barely even qualifies as a manuscript in the true sense. Fair enough. Then again:

For years Nabokov, who is the only living person to have seen the entire manuscript, has tantalised his father's fans with his descriptions of it as a distillation of the writer's output and the most "brilliant, original and potentially radical" script he ever wrote.

Damn. Still, I think he should burn it. Just get it done, before we change our minds. What do fifty "potentially radical" index cards amount to, anyway? Disappointment, methinks.

But Dmitri should look on the bright side: at least he has kindling for those cold Swiss nights.

Comments

[LK]

Nabokov is doing a disservice to humanity by ordering his work destroyed. He may not be the best judge -- time will be.

[theorist]

Burn, baby, buuuuuuuurn!

[Nessa]

Thats really hard....

Austen burned all the letters she ever recieved from Thomas her supposed love. Her works are so important and I almost feel that now 200 years would have been an okay time for them to pop up had she put them in a vault and gave the key to her agent. Oops, brother ;)

Its difficult when it comes to these minds who create works that are seperated from themselves so much so that their individual wishes MAY (I am still debating this within myself) have to come second.