Should Nabokov's Last Work Be Burned?

That is the question.

As things stand, there's a chance we may never know. What we do know is that the Laura manuscript consists of approximately 50 index cards covered in V.N.'s handwriting. Dmitri has said in the past that the text amounts to some 30 conventional manuscript pages. (To those familiar with what is perhaps Nabokov's greatest work, Pale Fire, the use of index cards as a draft medium will not seem strange. Indeed the parallels to Pale Fire's account of a struggle over the disposition of an index-card manuscript border on the uncanny.) But in any case, before he died in 1977, Nabokov made clear that he wanted those cards destroyed.

I personally am selfish and want to read it desperately. I mean, thank god for all the work that authors wanted burned that survived--Emily Dickinson's poetry comes to mind, but I'm sure there are others. Don't do it, Dmitri!

Via Bitchypoo.