I selected one sentence: "In my view it’s always been easy to see the novel as the portrait of a
monster, to separate author and character, but any further, more explicit
description of the nature of Humbert’s monstrousness, anything more explicit
than can be found in Lolita will diminish the attention to the rest of
VN’s work; people will be arguing about his life or trying to read his mind
rather than his work."
In my opinion what RR points out is a real
threat: if until now it has been fairly "easy to see the novel as the
portrait of a monster, to separate author and character", anything
"more explicit than can be foun in Lolita" ( as he fears might be the
case of The Original of Laura if published in its incomplete and unrevised
state) might encourage more wild conjectures about VN's life or lead
the reader's attempts to read VN's mind instead of concentrating
in reading his work.
At the exact moment when there is an international uproar concerning
the Austrian "I am not a monster Fritzl" such a danger seems to be more
acute. And yet, it is possible to avoid these dangers by a very careful
editing of the Nabokov index-cards ( and by editing I don't mean suppression or
censorship, but providing a proper context for what the cards bear).
The permanent suggestion of "keeping the manuscript in a bank-vault" seems to
elude the issue altogether. The best moment for the decision is now, when VN's
son and heir Dmitri chose to take up arms and decide this momentous
issue.