"Thus life has been an endless line of land
receding endlessly� And so that�s that,
you say under your breath, and wave your hand,
and then your handkerchief, and then your hat."
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Razumnaya writes that�"The Original of Laura�..."is Vladimir Nabokov�s latest previously unpublished prose work to descend upon the market. One is wary of saying �last� rather than �latest,� as Nabokov�s �Butterflies,� ...was similarly trumped up to be �the last important unpublished fiction by Nabokov.� Dmitri Nabokov, the writer�s son, translated the Russian texts for Nabokov�s �Butterflies.�� He now figures as the editor of his father�s unfinished and deeply incomplete final novel...Dmitri Nabokov�s introduction...in a tone that one has to understand, for lack of other plausible interpretation, as triumphant...His mannered description of Nabokov�s death��My mother and I sat near him as, choking on the food I was urging him to consume, he succumbed, in three convulsive gasps, to congestive bronchitis,��astonishes not only with its affectation but also with the parricidal relish of the moment...Dmitri Nabokov�s judgment to preserve and publish �The Original of Laura� as a popular edition lends itself but to trivial gains....The unfinished novel, whose prose, prurient and unpruned, makes the sum of Nabokov�s output less, not more, impressive. Laura is no �maddening masterpiece� ...�Laura,� an unfinished work of indisputable scholarly interest, is ill-suited for being published as a lavish gift edition. Likewise, it seems strange of its publisher to proffer it coyly as a kind of literary a game for grown-ups, since �Laura� is a book about dying�not in the manner of Lolita, as in Martin Amis�s clear-sighted synopsis:�"�once the book begins, Humbert�s childhood love Annabel dies, at thirteen (typhus), and his first wife Valeria dies (also in childbirth), and his second wife Charlotte dies (�a bad accident��though of course this death is structural), and Charlotte�s friend Jean Farlow dies at thirty-three (cancer), and Lolita�s young seducer Charlie Holmes dies (Korea), and her old seducer Quilty dies (murder: another structural exit). And then Humbert dies (coronary thrombosis). And then Lolita dies. And her daughter dies..."The striking feature of Dmitri Nabokov�s edition of �Laura� is the wresting of authorial control, by a son, from a father whose deep obsession with control was manifest throughout his literary career, including this final unfinished novel..."
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JM: Considering the present discussion on "Nabokov and Cruelty" I must ask: who has been cruel to whom?�Must reviewers�follow "neosincerity" ( I loved the falsehood in this�designation by Art Spiegelman -�but I still don't know what it means), or distribute unwanted�truths?�