Burn it

For the last decade or so, literati around the world have agonized over what to do with Vladimir Nabokov’s final novel, The Original of Laura. His son, Dmitri, was given explicit instructions to burn it. Instead he put it in a Swiss bank, and soon plans on publishing it.

Now, some argue that Dmitri has been given an unfair task; they say he’s being torn by familial loyalty and an obligation to book lovers everywhere. I don’t really see it that way, and I don’t particularly understand the argument. Authors destroy their own work all the time; in the forthcoming issue of The Weekly Standard, John Simon wrote on the Greek poet Constantine Cavafy, a man who “usually wrote about 70 poems a year and destroyed all but four or five.” The remaining poems are considered treasures. Would it have been better to dilute their impact by including unfinished or unloved works in collections of Cavafy’s work?

I do understand Dmitri’s decision–after all, it’s easier to betray a dead relative than deal with constant reprobation from the international literary community for the rest of your life–but I can’t help but be disgusted by it.