When Franz Kafka was dying horribly of tuberculosis in 1924, he asked his good friend and executor Max Brod to burn all of his papers and manuscripts. Though regarded since the 1940s as one of the progenitors and masters of 20th century literary modernism, Kafka was unknown in his lifetime, having published only a few short stories. After Kafka died, Brod disobeyed his friend’s request and began to edit and publish his books; thus those icons of angst, dread and black humor, the novels “The Trial” (1925), “The Castle” (1926) and “Amerika” (1927), as well as Kafka’s “Diaries,” which Brod also edited and published, became available . The landscape of 20th century literature, indeed of European and American culture itself, would be far different without Kafka’s immense presence and influence.

Did Brod betray his friend? Or did his responsibility lie with his faith in Kafka’s genius and his belief that the world would profit from knowing Kafka’s writings? Brod justified his action by saying that he repeatedly told Kafka that he would not execute his wishes: “Franz should have appointed another executor if he had been absolutely and finally determined that his instructions should stand.” This statement may illustrate a fine bit of legal sophistry — isn’t an executor required to carry out the instructions of a will (as long as they’re not illegal)? — but who, having read and been affected by Kafka’s work, would not thank Brod for what he did, or, rather, didn’t do?

A new and similar case has arisen.

When Vladimir Nabokov died in 1977, he left 138 index cards, all that he had written in pencil to that point, of a novel titled “The Original of Laura.” Before his death, knowing how incomplete the “manuscript” was, >Nabokov requested that the index cards be destroyed. That instruction was not heeded by his wife, Vera, who died in 1991, nor by his son Dmitri, who is 73 and his father’s executor. The index cards reside in a bank vault in Switzerland. Dmitri Nabokov has been quoted as saying that “The Original of Laura” is a “distillation” of his father’s work and a “radical” approach to his method. The cards add up, however, only to about 30 manuscript pages.

The issue — to burn or not burn — has consumed a great deal of the attention of the literary press and blogosphere since January, when Dmitri Nabokov indicated that he was wavering in his attitude toward the stack of index cards, his father’s final legacy. Finally, in April, he indicated that he was coming down on the side of publication, an announcement that set off new salvos of opinion. There was a revealing (and not so revealing, he’s pretty sly) interview with Dmitri Nabokov in The New York Times Sunday, in the “Week in Review” section (here).

It’s interesting that in a kind of Siskel-Ebert moment in The London Times, playwright Tom Stoppard said, in effect, “Burn,” while novelist John Banville said “Don’t burn.” Said Stoppard: “It’s perfectly straightforward. Nabokov wanted it burnt, so burn it. There is no superior imperative.” Said Banville: “A writer on his deathbed — or, indeed, off it — is perhaps not the best judge of how his work should be treated … A great writer is always worth reading, even at his worst.”

So, here’s the moment you’ve been waiting for: I agree with Tom Stoppard. Nabokov knew that the index cards represented only a fragment of “The Original of Laura,” a fragment that he might have revised, rewritten or discarded as the novel proceeded. He was a perfectionist and could not endure to leave something imperfect behind. (Not that his last efforts were perfect; all the more reason to heed his wishes in this matter.) What do we need with the truncated form of “Laura” when we have the masterpieces of “The Gift,” “Lolita,” “Pale Fire,” the exquisite memoir “Speak, Memory” and numerous short stories fully, brilliantly fleshed out? There is plenty of Nabokov to cherish and re-read without the addition of a fragment, if not a figment, to his corpus.

The case with Kafka is different. If Max Brod had heeded his friend’s wishes and burned his papers, we would have no Kafka at all, no Josef K, no giant cockroach, no inscrutable castle, no horrific penal colony, no adjective such as Kafkaesque, a term that, as a matter of fact, Brod hated because of its simple-minded reductionism. It’s a tribute, however, to the pervasiveness of Kafka’s influence that millions of people who have never read one of his stories or novels know what they mean when they use the word “Kafkaesque.” We can thank Max Brod for that.