Reader survey: Should Nabokov’s last book have been published?
August 15th, 2008 by Justin Richards in BooksAccording to the Spanish newspaper ABC, Vladimir Nabokov’s unfinished novel, The Original of Laura, will be published September of next year. Nabokov had asked that the book be burned after his death. The decision was left in the hands of his son Dmitri.
Slate’s Ron Rosenbaum, who once called for the book to be published, now regrets his decision. He refers to “a few troubling paragraphs” in the manuscript he read. Hmm.
Personally, I don’t think it should have been published. But haven’t made up my mind on whether I’ll read it. Rosebaum suggested a good compromise: stow the manuscript in a restricted archive rather than publish it as a novel.
What do you think?
August 15th, 2008 at 4:42 pm
Do you have a link to the abc story? I can’t find it on their site. Thanks, Arthur
August 15th, 2008 at 4:51 pm
http://www.abc.es/20080814/cultura-literatura/nabokov-novela-postuma-vera-20080814.html
August 16th, 2008 at 12:22 pm
This is old news. Dmitri Nabokov decided in April that he wouldn’t burn “Laura” but publish her, as reported widely in the Guardian, NYTimes etc.
The real news is the publication of four facsimiles from Nabokov’s manuscript in German weekly DIE ZEIT. No one’s seen a page from “Laura” before.
Unfortunately, only in German so far and only in the print edition. They also run an article by literary editor Malte Herwig who persuaded Dmitri to let him have the manuscript pages…
Can anyone here get hold of it and scan it perhaps?
the link: http://www.zeit.de/online/2008/33/nabokov-vorabmeldung
August 16th, 2008 at 6:07 pm
It’s old news, of course, that the book will be published. What’s new as far as I know is that it will come out as soon as September ‘09. I just wanted to give you guys that update and allow people to opine.
August 17th, 2008 at 5:17 am
Sorry, didn’t mean to criticize you, Justin, only those papers who simply regurgitated the “news” that “Laura” won’t be burned.
As for the burning issue: I’m glad Dmitri didn’t consign “Laura” to the funeral pire, as I think even in its fragmentary state it’s going to be fascinating to read.
Eventually, I don’t think Nabokov the Elder was more serious about having his books burnt than Kafka, Virgil & Co, and in those cases we’re lucky for their works to have survived perhaps even against their will…