NP: Nabokov's Laura

[Mark Kohut]

betcha TRP will be reading it.


> Date: Wednesday, November 19, 2008, 11:31 AM
> Dmitri Nabokov "has finally broken his silence about
> the contents" of the late Vladimir Nabokov's
> unfinished THE ORIGINAL OF LAURA, which is set for
> publication rather than the burning originally called for by
> the author. And he shows the index cards on which it has
> written--which have been stored in a Swiss bank vault--to
> the BBC's cameras.
> 
> He told the BBC, "My father told me what his most
> important books were. He named Laura as one of them. One
> doesn't name a book one intends to destroy. He would
> have reacted in a sober and less dramatic way if he did not
> see death staring him in the face. He certainly would not
> have wanted it destroyed. He would have wanted to finish
> it."
> 
> Dmitri says it's "the story in part of a brilliant
> neurologist who is at the same time a fat and physically
> unappealing man of deep intellect who is oppressed by the
> extreme infidelity of his much younger wife. At first,
> playfully, he starts pondering the idea of suicide."
> BBC episode
> Independent article