Guardian Unlimited: Arts blog - books
Saving an author's papers from themselves
We should destroy them if that's what the author wanted. But oh, how very tempting it is to have a look
Kathryn Hughes 
January 22, 2008 10:30 AM
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/01/saving_an_authors_papers_from.html
Bonfire vanity ... do authors really not want their papers read? Photograph: Kobal
I'm deeply ambivalent about this business of whether we should take any notice of writers' last wishes about their unpublished manuscripts. The biographer in me pants at the thought that there might be a bit more Nabokov in a Swiss vault.
How fascinating, too, to get the chance to see a snapshot of the Great One's creative process, rather than simply being presented with the final polished work (for in N's case, the shine on his published novels was so intense that it was very hard to see beneath the brilliant surface to the engine room below.)
But the writer in me is horrified at the thought of someone publishing something that isn't ready to be seen. Most people's drafts consist of notes along the lines of "then something happens, but I'm not sure what" or, in my case, doodles in rather nasty cheap felt pen. Even a good final draft is not the same as the finished thing - there will be grammatical mistakes, sloppy repetitions and even elementary spelling errors (surely I'm not the only person who mixes up "your" and "you're" when they're in a hurry?).
No one who has spent a career straining to find a language that exactly matches what they are trying to say really wants to set before the world a piece of stammering, clumsy prose. To preserve the author's dignity, we should let their unfinished material lie in peace.
And then there's the simply business of respecting someone's - anyone's - final wishes. Nabokov said he didn't want anyone to see this unfinished work, The Original of Laura, and therefore, surely, we ought to do what he says. If your father said he wanted his diaries to be destroyed after his death, chances are you'd carry out his wishes and have a bonfire in the garden. Just because your dad happens to be the greatest writer of the 20th Century shouldn't really make any difference.
However, there's something about the way in which Vladimir Nabokov and his son Dimitri have conducted themselves over this business that makes me think that none of these normal considerations apply. Nabokov père was the most extraordinary trickster, playing games not just with language but with readerly expectation and desire. How typical of him then to leave behind this little mystery, designed to get the whole of the literary establishment in a tizz.
Common sense suggests that, if he had really wanted The Original of Laura not to be seen, he would have taken care to have it destroyed before his death (the logistics might be tricky, but surely once he started feeling really queasy he could have put in a call to Switzerland and asked the bank to burn the 50 index cards on which his novel was jotted?) The fact that Nabokov allowed Laura to live on in any form suggests to me that, at some level, he wanted it read.
And then there's the peculiar attitude of Nabokov's son Dimitri. For the past 30 years apparently he's been dropping tantalising hints about the quality of 'Laura while sounding like he was only five minutes away from taking a match to it. If you ask me, it sounds like he loves the attention.
So if it were anyone else but Vladimir Nabokov, I'd suggest doing the decent, respectful thing and letting The Original of Laura go up in smoke. But given that we're talking about the trickiest literary jester who ever lived, I think we can assume that the whole thing is a kind of Nabokovian practical joke from beyond the grave.
He knew we'd want to sneak a peek at his last work, and he knew we'd feel bad about doing so. And the chances are that he's looking down from a butterfly-strewn heaven and laughing at our silly, self-important scruples.