2. You would think that once a writer is dead, their literary career is over. That's a mistake. Death can bring with it lots of questions of what should be preserved, what published, what edited, what left to the privacy of the archive.
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3. Even seemingly obvious rules ("the author's last wish should govern estate") falls apart in practice. The world is a richer place because the last wishes of Virgil, Emily Dickinson and Kafka (to destroy major works) was disobeyed.
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4. An author isn't always the best judge of what is valuable in their work and posterity can find value in discards. The stone the builder rejected has become the cornerstone etc.
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5. A good rule of thumb might be to err on the side of preservation but be selective about publication. All of which is newly relevant as Philip Roth states says there is strong likelihood they will destroy many of his papers. A podcast discussion here:https://jeetheer.substack.com/p/should-we-burn-philip-roth?r=bh54&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&utm_source=twitter …
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Counterpoint: I think it's good to see that great writers can write crap.
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Yes. Exactly.
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This is a good word: "nettlesome." Describes so many situations.
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OTOH consider Colson Whitehead’s Zone One
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Surely the ambitions for Steinbeck and for Whitehead were different when they launched the projects. But there’s a very solid chance a “low brow horror book” by JS would be amazing or at least have amazing parts. Game can’t help itself.
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I remember being excited when Paul Auster published the hack mystery he wrote — and then I read it and it was just a bad hack mystery. Just having the name up front doesn't guarantee there will be any value.
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