An author's troubling legacy ... Vladimir Nabokov and wife Vera in 1965. Photograph: Time Life Pictures/Getty Images
Having kept the literary world in a state of suspense for years over whether he was prepared to carry out his long-standing threat to burn his father's last novel, Dmitri Nabokov has finally announced that he is prepared to save it from destruction.
Vladimir Nabokov's The Original of Laura will now not be thrown onto the flames, the 73-year-old has told Der Spiegel magazine, arguing that his father, the creator of Lolita and Pale Fire who died in 1977, would not want his son to suffer any more over his most tortuous dilemma.
If he fails to carry out his father's last will, Dmitri is effectively betraying him, but carry it out and the world loses forever what is potentially a precious gift from the grave from one of the greatest 20th-century novelists. The moral arguments over this have been discussed on this blog before.
From his winter home in Palm Beach, Dmitri justified his decision by saying, "I'm a loyal son and thought long and seriously about it, then my father appeared before me and said, with an ironic grin, 'You're stuck in a right old mess - just go ahead and publish!'"
He told the magazine that he had made up his mind to do so.
It was, Der Spiegel states, this "conversation" with his father that "persuaded him against assuming the role of literary arsonist".
We may assume that he will be widely thanked for his decision, even if the fragments of the novel - a collection of 50 index cards that has been languishing in a Swiss bank vault for three decades - are not of the standard of his other works.
But remarks like Dmitri's that The Original of Laura is in fact "the most concentrated distillation of [my father's] creativity" and Nabokov scholar Zoran Kuzmanovich's observation that what he had heard of The Original of Laura was "vintage Nabokov", are tantalising enough to make one want to read it.
Publication of The Original of Laura is sure to satisfy much curiosity.
Dmitri has taken much stick for the indecisive way he has dealt with the issue, prompting the US literary critic Ron Rosenbaum to appeal to him in the online magazine Slate, "don't continue to tease". He wrote: "Dmitri, with all due respect, I think the time has come to make a decision... Tell us why you think it's the 'distillation of [your] father's art'... Or give us Laura... Or put us out of our misery and tell us that you intend to preserve the mystery forever by destroying Laura."
We await the "concentrated distillation", which is apparently about how to hold on to the joys of love in old age, with great excitement as well as a bit of trepidation.
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All those library index cards - imagine if they were to be thrown up in the air --
It is sad state of affairs. I only hope that the focus is not on someone's knee cap.
It's only those who feed off the corpses of canonical scribes (Hackademics, that is to say)...well, and destitute Dmitri... who have anything at stake in all this, as Nabokov's Nabokov-sanctioned oeuvre is more than enough for the genuine reader to pore over until the end of readerly time. And good show, btw, to Stephen Joyce for beating the tenure-flies off grandpa Jimmy.
Well, let's hope it doesn't disappoint when it is published.
Personally, my take on this is a little jaded by the publication of virtually all of Franz Kafka's writing, seemingly right down to the very last dot of ink found in his rooms. That we must judge truly remarkable works like The Castle, The Trial, Metamorphosis and a number of his other short stories next to some of his (arguably) unfit-for-publication output, can sometimes seem to take the edge off him as an author.
Obviously, the Nabokov situation is different. It isn't as if this is an embarrassing first-go at a novel that had been lying under his bed for sixty years.
Ah, Steven, academics. An Irish poet who is very close to me was approached and a festival by a young PhD student who told her (poet) that she (PhD stude) was planning to write her thesis on said poet's work. Poet asked pertinent question: "Which of my books have you read?" Stude replies "My tutor (the well-known academic X) photocopied a few pages from one for me. I can't remember the title." O Tempora! O mores!
Billy:
Priceless.
Geez, Billy, I don't know...next you'll be suggesting that people who write pieces for the Grauniad dismissing Rimbaud as 'over-rated' should actually have read Rimbaud's work...where will it end?
Tactical error by VN there. What he should have done is say that on no account should the work be destroyed. If his kid is anything like my relatives it would be on the bonfire before he was cold.
Ernest:
Naïve of me I know, but I do actually expect more from academics than bloggers, and for some very simple reasons. The tutor in question is a professor in a not insignificant British university and the author of a major textbook on contemporary poetry. His salary shouldn't be too hard to guess. The blogger earned 75 quid. Academics are charged with certain responsibilities in the area of education; bloggers are just expected to be opinionated and preferably to irritate the rest of us in ways that are productive of comments. They may simulate thought, but that's a by-product.
Here's a little Zen story I find apposite, somehow. Hope you enjoy.
Two monks on pilgrimage reached a river where they met a young woman who wanted to cross. One of the monks picked her up onto his shoulders, carried her across the water, and put her down on the other side. She thanked him and went away down the riverbank.
The monks went their way, the one who had not carried the woman in a sulk. After a mile or two he said: "Brother, our spiritual training teaches us to avoid any contact with women, but you picked that one up on your shoulders and carried her!"
"Brother," the second monk replied, "I left her back on this side of the river, why are you still carrying her?"
"[Bloggers] may simulate thought..."
How very AI....
Apropos Billy's story of the poet and the PhD student - could the poet not ask to be the external examiner on a study of her own work? Should be a fee, and (presumably) not much research involved....
Dimitri, I hope you read GU blogs, I am your father's spirit. I tried reaching you at Palm Beach but you'd gone somewhere warmer. Whatever. The other voice, the one telling you to publish, was a bogus shade. I'm the real thing, and I'm telling you, don't do it. Don't publish. The title's awful. And one more thing, really very very important... ah... wait... I'm fading fast... can't come back... last chance... listen... the cards... I didn't actually...
Stimulate, damn it. But now that you mention it...
Interestingly, the tutor's textbook has a reasonalby long discussion of the poet's work, and several of his section headings are quotes from her books. So she's contributing to his income, anyway.
Billy: "bloggers are just expected to be opinionated and preferably to irritate the rest of us in ways that are productive of comments."
God, I'm perfect for this, aren't I?
I realise now it sounded in my last comment like I was addressing Billy Mills as God. However, I want you all to forget that part and focus on 'perfect' instead.
God can either be clean-shaven or bearded. A God with a 'tache is unfeasible.
You're right. But why is that? There must be something deeply non-divine about moustaches.
Re the actual thread - long since forgotten - the first thought that flashed through my head on reading this story of Nabokov's son and his 'moral dilemma' was: I wonder how much he'll be getting for this golden goose of a manuscript?
Too cynical? Or just cynical enough?
I can't believe DN needs the money. VN's books still sell (I rebought Ada recently) and presumably the royalties would go to his son. It's clear from 'Speak, Memory' that VN had a deep respect for his parents and I'm sure this attitude would have been transmitted to DN. Going on what I've read, I don't think VN would have approved of his work going out in an unfinished state. So you would think that the case for destruction was pretty strong. The responsibility for destroying a great writer's work is a heavy one, however, and VN's wife couldn't bring herself to do it: how much harder must it be for the son? The thought of succeeding generations blaming you for your actions can't be a pleasant one. When I think (as I've said before) of that idiot Moore burning Byron's memoirs I could happily spit on his grave.
It's been said that the bearded bloke doesn't care about his appearance, the shaved bloke cares enough, and the moustachioed cares a bit too much.
Wrong. I am god and I have a 'tache. Nothing is sacred.
I suppose you're talking about some kind of pantheistic gaia type twaddle. Wordsworth specifically rules this out:
'A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Except for 'taches,
And other poncy facial hair. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods...'
And he should know.
No, MM. Straightforward god, with a thunderbolt and hellfires at my disposal. You've been warned.
Billy: There is no God. Only Death. Remember?
You are Death and I claim my €5. Please send it by post. I don't want you knocking on my door just yet.
To pretend to care about the topic. Burn. It's the only way to both respect the father and keep the intrigue alive.
That said though, publication of the index cards, in a little card-ex box, sounds like it could be an interesting conceit, in line with the Johnson and Queneau stuff recently discussed.
Store the damn index cards among V.N.'s papers as a scholarly resource (i.e., spare the furnace), but keep the "novel" *away* from the V.N.-embarrassing state of publication. What's so difficult?
fmk: my god posts were a d enial of my own existence. I'd prefer to deliver the fiver by hand. All in good time. (pretend I inserted smiley here)
To an Irish 'tache.
Once you garnished the lip of Ian Rush,
you were Hitler's logo under his nose
you covered the body of Basil Brush,
but you kept your message under the rose.
The cool-eyed striker who was different class
the psychopathic god, a stranger to love,
the vulpine clone of Terry Thomas,
were you all of these, or none of the above?
Hirsute dilemma! Can we never know
the schedules of the psychic syllabus
which inform our choice of facial fungus
and keep us in this moral imbroglio?
I think not. Therefore, Hibernian friend,
Take up your razor, and let's make an end.
For more details of Dmitri Nabokov's decision see:
a href="http://etc.dal.ca/noj/volume2/articles/05_StringerDNabokov.pdf"
Note to minions: eternal damnation awaits MM.