My first impulse was to compare this to Max Brod's nearly legendary betrayal of his friend Kafka as others have, but there is quite a difference. At the time of his death Kafka did not have works such as Lolita, Pnin, and Pale Fire on his track record. Kafka was the sort of fellow who wouldn't have published most of his works even if he had finished them to his satisfaction. Brod was saving a legacy, whereas, in this situation, we would be saving a single unfinished book.

I empathize with Nabokov's last wish that his unfinished work be destroyed. A partially finished story or manuscript can bring the strongest shame and embarrassment. But then, Nabokov is dead. He will not be feeling that shame and embarrassment. Unless there is an afterlife in which we will all have a lot of explaining to do, particularly to John Lennon vis-à-vis "Real Love" and "Free as a Bird." We really didn't need those, and I can't convince myself that we need an unfinished manuscript from Nabokov. His legacy is already complete. The writer in me thinks this is a good place to stop. But then the reader in me thinks that the writer in me is selfish and a bit duplicitous.

Yet, do we believe that thirty pages worth of notes can represent the distillation of Nabokov's work? He was a masterful writer, but not an alchemist. The Original of Laura may point towards a final distillation, which would be a wonderful insight, but it is incomplete, so it cannot be the book that Nabokov meant to create. Since it will likely neither bolster nor destroy the name of Nabokov, why not honor the dead man's wishes and do away with this literary monkey on our backs? Though, honestly, with all of the hype and so much pressure from both readers and academics (and now a second copy of the original manuscript), don't we all know where this is ultimately headed?