I have a reason to live again, for now....

Nabokov's last work will not be burned


Click the link, read the story. I'll wait.



Know that the reason I gave up on trying to write fiction almost 20 years ago is my irrational fervor for Nabokov's achievement.

He is my god.

In '95, when my life was over for the third or fourth time, Knopf (Random House) published, in hardback, 'the Stories of Vladimir Nabokov'. My daily prayer book. It contains all his previously published short stories, in chronological order, starting with a sweet (if poor) three-pager he wrote when 17, 'the Wood-Sprite'.

I have read it many, many, many, muh-henny times. Each time, though, leaving the last five stories, the last 44 pages of Nabby's fiction I'd ever have. My grail. My 'Kingdom of God'. My salvation. My all.

To this day I have yet to read them. They are my Valhalla.

Now, thanks once more to Mike (the smartest human I've ever known), I find a slight ledge above my current grip I hadn't noticed before.

The last bits of Nabby's literary life are known to any fan. 150-odd 3"x5" cards, carefully if almost illegibly annotated, breaking down the final work of the greatest novelist to choose English as a final language. Left, in his estate, to be destroyed by his lifelong love, and dedicatee of every novel, his wife & partner & love, his wife Vera.

Blessfully, blissfully, she chose to pass on any conflagaritory obligations. (Just thinking about Nabby makes you write worse than you normally do....)

Now, the final inheritor of Nabby's estate, their son Dmitri (the rakish, racecar driving/racecar crashing, orchestra conducting, literary inheriting (and annoyingly fine writer/editor in his own lifetime) son) has announced to the world he too will not follow his father's deathbed wishes to destroy the final, unfinished, unpolished, story.

To be fair, it's well known that Nabokov had a feverish disdain for anybody to see unfinished works. He is well known for writing, complete with asides and jokes and pauses, all and any speech he gave to any college class. (Really. They were published in book-form in the late 70's & persons lucky enough to attend his lectures attest to the almost verbatim transcription).

But readers, like vultures, care not for the bones behind the meat, as it were. Personally, I'd voluntarily lose my left arm (I use my right arm for too many things I enjoy) for a chance to read Nabby's Laura.

For some of us vampires, Nabby's corpus is the final blood we crave. The idea that somewhere, somehow, there's fresh flesh we never had access to before is literally, literarilly, intoxicating. Flesh to get drunk on.

No more mad late-night dreams of how to break into that Swiss bank-vault to get those damn cards....