Now we're going to start taking orders from dead people? I think not. It doesn't matter a whit what VN wanted-- they guy's dead, gone, not here. We're people, we don't take orders from ghosts. Sure, we respect a lot of ghosty stuff-- the Bible, the Constitution, the Magna Carta.. Lots of things that were thought up and written down by people who came before.
But this is a case of here and now. If D sets fire to the ms, he goes down in history as a book-burning pinhead. If he sets the ms free, then the literary world gets to ooh and ah and deconstruct for years, decades, centuries.
My old high school history teacher, Sheldon Bryer, would ask-- "Whose ox is being gored"? and in this case, it's a good question? Who is harmed by letting the cat out of the bag? VN is dead, it wouldn't hurt him. Reputation? Everyone knows this is a totally unfinished piece, a protobook, raw, unpolished. It's not going to hurt his reputation.
So-- It can't hurt him, it can't hurt his reputation. Anybody see any potential foul here? I don't.
The world has lost a lot of great stuff to fire. Either this is great, and it would be a shame to lose it, or it's not great, and we're no worse from taking the time to read it.
Bear in mind that I don't *like* VN's stuff. I think he is vastly over rated. But so? Literature is one of the most human of human endeavors. People eat, people have sex, people make houses. SO do dogs, cats, and ants. But no one else, no other species, takes thoughts and puts them down on paper for others to read. Whales might be smart, but not one could write Moby Dick.
If what's sitting there in the dark is literature, then we all lose if it's destroyed, even those who don't read anything more than the sports pages of a second rate newspaper.
D's choice is clear: let the cat out of the bag, or go down in history in company with book burning vermin.