Nabokov's last book

Yesterday, BBC2 broadcast a Newsnight program on the story behind Vladimir Nabokov’s last unpublished novel, The Original of Laura. I’m hoping it’ll show up on BBC America or become otherwise accessible.

From “Nabokov’s final literary striptease”:

Nabokov made his wife Vera promise him on his deathbed that the manuscript would go the same way as Bryon’s diaries [i.e., burned].

The book never appeared, and the world was entitled to think that it had read the entire corpus of the dazzling stylist.

But Vera Nabokov never fulfilled her husband’s last wish. She agonised about what to do with the incomplete novel, while it gathered dust in the vaults of a Swiss bank.

She could not bring herself to commit the manuscript to the flames. On her own death, the burden passed to the Nabokovs’ only child, Dmitri.[…]

But it seems he could no more resolve the dilemma of Nabokov’s last book than could his mother.

With the decision to go ahead and publish it, something of a controversy has arisen, with various authors coming down on one side or the other. While I can understand and sympathize with those who want the author’s wish fulfilled, I am jealous of losing any of VVN’s work. Particularly when Dmitri has this to say:

“My father told me what his most important books were. He named Laura as one of them. One doesn’t name a book one intends to destroy.”