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The Fate of Nabokov's Laura, Part IIDmitri turns to his dead father for advice on whether to burn the manuscript.

By Ron Rosenbaum
Posted Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2008, at 7:57 PM ET

(Continued from page 3)

And so the imagined shade of V.N., demonstrating indulgent and affectionate fondness for his son's "present situation" (it's not clear what exactly that means, but it could refer to financial or heath problems or just the worldwide outcry to save Laura), gave him ghostly permission to raise some funds with it.

That's putting it far too vulgarly, of course. For one thing, selling Laura might be best for the manuscript. I'm sure there are respectable scholarly institutions, museums, and foundations that would pay considerable sums to take on the guardianship of the last fictional creation of the greatest novelist of the past century, perhaps limiting access to scholars and—alas—probably excluding the "sleuths and stirrers" responsible for their windfall.

But still I found myself a little surprised by Dmitri's revelation. It certainly could be interpreted as an opportunistic communion, what with his father's spirit so genially granting Dmitri the right to discard his original wish and giving him permission to enrich himself.

But then I had an argument with my girlfriend over Dmitri's motivations, and she insisted she sensed something else going on. "It's not about the money," she insisted, "There's more to it."

And after a couple of days thinking about it, I decided she might well be right. This incident could be just as much—or more—about Dmitri creating for himself (and us) a fond image of a loving father lovingly indulging his son. It might be about him, the way he'd like to see his father as a parent. How faithful this vision is to the original we can never know. But who could begrudge the son this image?

So it's a ghost story, but it's also a kind of love story. I await the next ALL-CAPITAL-LETTER E-MAIL.

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Ron Rosenbaum is the author of The Shakespeare Wars and Explaining Hitler.
Photograph of Vladimir Nabokov by AP Photo.
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