EDNote: I am not attempting to open the floodgates for listmembers'
opinions on this question. If more opinions come in, I will most
likely accumulate them into a digest form. ~SB
-------- Original Message --------
My vote would be to not burn, though I hasten to say that I would not
blame Dmitri Nabokov for an instant if he were to put the match to
it. I base my vote on my feeling that, upon death, a human being
really and truly and totally ceases to exist. We, casually, think of
someone who has died as being in a certain state of being, a state we
call death; but I would maintain he is in no state at all. By this
reasoning, the dead have no preferences.
At the same time, I don't believe that the 'public,' whatever that is,
has any kind of right to this or any other literary work. So if
Dmitri wishes to burn The Original of Laura, I have no argument with
that decision.
Pax,
Jamie McEwan