In a message dated 11/24/2005 8:24:42 P.M. US Eastern Standard Time,
chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu writes:
Dear Don
and List,
I trust VN's judgement. If he wasn't ready to show
'Laura'
to the world, then too bad for us. If it had been finished and
published,
would the crits have tucked it into the 'Late Nabokov'
pigeonhole along
with
'LATH' and 'Transparent Things' rather than
enthroning it alongside
'Lolita'?
We'll never know. I feel that burning
'Laura' would leave the academics
(and the tabloid journos) one less bone
to chew over. As for the ordinary
reader,
she still has a legacy of
incredible richness in the work that VN saw fit
to release.
There's more
than enough in his oeuvre to satisfy sympathetic seekers of
aesthetic
bliss,
as well as forensic allusion-hunters working along the fringes
of
literature
with dustpan, broom and microscope. So let's burn 'Laura',
along with the
Spanish
pulp story by von Wotsisname. It's far too late
to incinerate 'Lolita',
thank goodness.
Best,
Tom
(Rymour)
I couldn't disagree more with this and other calls to destroy
"Laura." It all sounds like spite for a current state of critical
affairs. We need to take the long view. Nabokov's works will
last for as long as men read, and to deprive posterity of this work, however
incomplete, is to thwart literary history. Would any of us prefer the
nonexistence of incomplete works by Kafka, Dickens, and others, or the fragments
we have of great classical literature? And who are we to
decide?
I have the greatest sympathy for Dmitry's difficult decision.
One can imagine the imperiousness with which his father demanded "Laura's"
destruction. But, if even his mother couldn't do it, I think he is
justified in deciding not to as well.
Christopher Guerin