Is the World Entitled to Art?

As you’ll notice from the adoring Lolita posts from the end of last year, I’ve recently become a huge Nabokov fan. I’m not rabid, or well-read, enough to yet call myself a “Nabokovian,” but I could see it happening eventually. And so I’ve been mildly to warmly interested in the recent debate surrounding the late author: an unfinished manuscript of his last work before his death exists in a vault somewhere, but Nabokov’s son, Dmitri was tasked with the death-bed request to burn the manuscript before anyone could read it. Dmitri has not yet made a decision, and is stuck between meeting his dead father’s wishes to burn the manuscript and keep it a secret forever from the world, and some other option—publishing it for mass consumption, bequeathing it to the Ivory Tower for study, even just keeping it in a vault forever and ever.

It’s really a fascinating debate, and I don’t envy Dmitri’s position. At first blush, my reaction was “Set the work free!” As a fan, of course I want to read the manuscript. Despite the fact that Nabokov considered his work unfinished, unpolished, and thus unfit for public consumption, I’ve no doubt that it’s perfect in its genius as it came straight from his pen. I admit I haven’t even read all his works, but I can empathize with any Nabokovian who has read all his work and has been all but drooling for just one more morsel dropped from the table. How easy (or possible) is it to for any literati at all to be objective about this situation?

But, Chris (of course!) brought objectivity and level-headedness to the argument, showing me a side of the story I hadn’t considered: why do we (the world—the readers, the viewers, the experiencers, the fans) think we are entitled to the art created by artists? What right do we inherently have to what they produce?

I recently read an article in Slate about Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel in which the headline compared him to J.D. Salinger. Both are artists who have contributed heartbreakingly small collection of brilliant works to the world, and have now all but vanished, having ceased to make their work public or even to make work at all. Writes Taylor Clark about Mangum:

“And if Aeroplane really is Jeff Mangum's final statement to the universe, maybe we should be happy with that—not because of some tired line about going out at your peak (which he likely didn't reach), but because his story is a kind of modern fable. Many fans see his disappearance only in selfish terms: They've been deprived of more great music for no good reason. They can't understand why Mangum would shun success just to shuffle through his days, and, indeed, when musicians abandon this much promise, the culprit is usually drugs or debilitating accidents or people named Yoko. So he must have gone nuts, right? Well, no. After all, what if Mangum is just being honest? What if he poured his life into achieving musical success only to discover that it wasn't going to make him happy, so he elected to make a clean break and move on? We should all be so crazy.”

Is it selfish to desire, even to demand, that artists of genius not withhold themselves from the world? Or is the artist the selfish one?

Like I imagine it is for others, it’s extremely difficult for me to empathize with the artists at all. I live (and participate) in a world where most of us are clambering for attention, recognition, and even fame. I’m a mediocre artist in a world full of mediocre (and lesser) artists screaming in a crowded room of screamers. The internet has made things worse a million-fold. We have the ability to broadcast our thoughts, art, and “art” to billions of people all over the planet—and so we do, largely to our own detriment, contributing to “information overload” and the general watering down of what’s left of our culture.

So when a “real” artist chooses to cease contributing his work to the world, is it because of, or despite, the noise?

Is the world entitled to the art created by the artists it itself created? Or is the artist more entitled to do whatever the hell he wants? Burn the manuscript, or publish it?

Nabokov is dead. His published work will never die. His unpublished work (that we know of, at least) has a death sentence. If it’s pardoned, it will then live in perpetuity, and in possible imperfection, if what Nabokov had to say was true. If the sentence is carried out . . . we’re only left with speculation and disappointment—but some of us will also have the satisfaction that we’d given something back to Nabokov, whose already given so much to us, by granting his final wish.