Sticks and Stones

Before his death, Vladimir Nabokov, one of the greatest writers in English of the 20th Century (as demonstrated by the fact that, like Joyce, Borges, Kafka and Proust, he never won a Nobel Prize, but that’s another post for another day), gave express wishes that the unfinished manuscript of his latest novel, ‘The Original of Laura’, be burned. Thankfully, as yet, these requests have not been carried out, and the decision now rests with his son Dmitri, who says he is “torn”. It is my belief that the manuscript should be published and distributed, and this is based on three main factors.

First, unlike Stoppard (who hasn’t won a Nobel Prize: a rarely correct decision from the Nobel jury), I feel that the author’s wishes are, quite frankly, irrelevant. To be blunt, he’s dead.

Kafka famously asked for his unpublished works - practically his entire corpus - to be burnt after his death, and his literary executor, Max Brod, unhesitatingly ignored his wishes, luckily for us.

Virgil likewise asked that his masterpiece, the Aeneid, possibly the finest work of extant Latin literature, be destroyed after his death; the Emperor Augustus himself stepped in to ensure that this did not happen - one of the few occasions on which we can be thankful for supreme autocratic power. I for one feel no guilt or compunction in reading such literature, which the author explicitly requested be burnt, nor would I in this case.

Second, from what I’ve read about the would-be novel, it looks truly fascinating. Even if the novel doesn’t quite live up to Nabokov best, a standard set by such works as Lolita and Pale Fire, it is always rewarding to read the work of a genius, and the premise of this novel is the proof. Dmitri, the son, who has the final say on this matter, described it as “the most concentrated distillation of [my father’s] creativity”. That’s a pretty large claim to make, and even if it is only partly true, makes it a matter of critical importance that the book be published. As I have said, Nabokov is one of the most highly regarded and important writers of the last century, and if this last work lives up to even half of its promise, then burning it would be nothing short of a travesty.

And finally, I am just very uncomfortable with the whole idea of burning literature. It is a symbol of suppression and ignorance, and should be a practice restricted to religious fundamentalists and other fascists.

Who can compute the quantity and quality of the literature burned by the Christians and later the Muslims in the Great Library at Alexandria?

Modern day book burning tend, thankfully, to be restricted to copies, rather than unique versions, but in this case we are discussing snuffing out a work of literature entirely, never to be read by anyone, to be lost to posterity completely.

In the interests of full disclosure, I probably ought to mention that I have somewhat selfish motives in wanting this book, however incomplete, to be published: I really want to read it. But I want others to be able to read it too, and can merely express my heartfelt desire that Dmitri Nabokov not deprive the world of this work of literature.