Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Incomplete, but publishable

The son defying the wishes of the father... imagine that.
The Guardian of London reported that Dmitri, 73, told the German magazine Der Spiegel: “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.’ ” For three decades the fragments of the novel, “The Original of Laura,” on a collection of 50 index cards, have been in a bank vault in Switzerland, where Vladimir Nabokov, the author of “Lolita” and “Pale Fire,” died in 1977. Dmitri Nabokov, his father’s literary executor, once described it as “the most concentrated distillation” of his father’s creativity. In an interview with the BBC, Dmitri Nabokov said he found “very disturbing” the thought that no one would ever read the manuscript.

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