Vladimir Nabokov's son, Dmitri, caused a big ol' sensation when he decided to publish his father's unfinished final novel, The Original of Laura, rather than burn the manuscript, like his dad had asked him to on his deathbed. But Dmitri now says that Nabokov's dying wish was mostly just a lot of huffing and puffing from a sick old man.

It's been three decades since your father's death. Why did it take you so long to decide the fate of "Laura", and how did you come to your final decision? How difficult has it been?

In the words of one blogger, 30 years is tantamount to eternity in the given context, which would absolve me from any disobedience of my father's wishes. More seriously, it did not take me 30 years to come to a decision with regard to burning the manuscript. I had never imagined myself as a "literary arsonist." I also recalled, parenthetically, that when my father was asked, not very long before his death, what three books he considered indispensable, he named them in climactic order, concluding with "The Original of Laura" - could he have ever seriously contemplated its destruction?

Why would your father have wanted "Laura" destroyed?

In a calmer moment, if he were no longer in a race against death to complete the work, I think, sincerely, that he would not. By the same token, if one wants to finish something before dying, one perseveres to the utmost, rather than destroying it. This should be an obvious answer to a rather fatuous question some have posed: Why didn't he burn it well ahead of time and have done with it? [NYT]