Who knows what lies in the cards?

Completely inadvertently, I am poised to finish Pale Fire just four days before the release of the much-grumbled over and anticipated The Original of Laura (Dying is Fun), Nabokov’s posthumous fragmentary novel, so it’s impossible not to equate John Shade’s scribbled cards with Nabokov’s own M.O.   Further, I can’t escape the inkling that this is one last trick by the playful master, given that the last card of the manuscript  “. . . is a poignant list of synonyms for ‘efface’—expunge, erase, delete, rub out, wipe out, obliterate… ”  If so, his son Dimitri is probably not amused.  Ethical questions aside (this case clearly demonstrates that a hungry market and audience could give a rip about respecting the wishes of the object of their veneration, an aspect of human nature Nabokov might well have anticipated), Nabokov fans can’t help but be thrilled.  The parenthetical subtitle says a lot.  Here is, I believe, one of the cards published in Die Zeit.   –E. Scripsi