I know it's late, but I haven't been around. Sorry.

Silverfoot, you're still talking in terms of worth. This has nothing to do with whether a dead writer's scribblings have value to the world and everything to do with whether the world has a right to that value. It doesn't have anything to do with whether or not they might save a dead writer's reputation, or keep his message alive, or whatever, either. What it comes down to is that you're talking from him what he doesn't want you to have. It's tealing, pure and simple.

Ahh, I remember this thread, and my beliefs have been somewhat modified.

In AS Byatt's fine novel "Possession," there's talk of biographers exhuming a dead writer's grave to get at some love letters. The book as a whole shows how fandom can descend into ghoulishness.

We all like the biographical stuff, to some degree, the inside scoop. Attraction, and some revulsuion at our attraction. Hypothetically, imagine if Neil died and someone published his love letters to his wife. It would be a hideous desecration, but I would be tempted to read them.

Basically what I said before was "What can it hurt? The guy's dead, he's beyond caring." Now I think, "The guy's dead, soul gone off into oblivion, all the more reason to protect his legacy."

Posterity is the atheist's afterlife. And certainly a big part of any writer's afterlife.

I get to thinking about poor maligned Robert Heinlein. The Starship Troopers movie made me feel ashamed, as if on the other side I'll have to report to Heinlein and say "Bob... they screwed up Starship Troopers... They think you were some kinda Nazi."

I have "Requiem," a posthumous Heinlein book. Mostly old hard-to-find early stories, but also including a "never before published" poem, "The Witch's Daughters," and it's one of the WORST poems I have ever read. It's easy to imagine Heinlein doodled this bit in the margins of a notebook, then some predatory jerk decides to print it.

The important thing is, an author (or any kind of creative artist) has to maintain control of his work. In the Encyclopedia of Fantasy I see that Gaiman wisely locked up his version of Sandman in his contract with DC, nobody else can use Morpheus. Bill Watterson fought his syndicate kicking and screaming for years until they finally gave him control of "Calvin and Hobbes."

Ah, fuck it. It doesn't matter what the person wanted. if it's fiction it should be published, if it's non fiction it should be published as long as it doesn't tell gross lies or evil true secrets about anyone alive.

after they are dead.

Max Brod (Kafka's friend whom he asked to burn all his writings upon his death) claimed that the reason Kafka asked him of all people to dispose of his works was because he (Kafka) knew that Brod wouldn't do it. believable? i'm not sure.

Hemingway said that publishing scraps of writing from a person's youth was akin to publishing the contents of his wastebasket.

i've given explicit instructions to my friends and family that my journals are to be burned, unread, upon the event of my death (if it's sudden and i'm unable to burn them myself). i've also written similar things in my journals themselves, to the effect of "if you're reading this and you're not me, don't be an asshole; stop reading and take a fucking flame to these things).

anything that i'd completed, however, i would prefer to be published after my death. even stuff i hadn't finished, if there was enough of it. but the stuff that i really want no one to see, ever, i'll have to dig up myself and dispose of, just in case.

Yeah, but nobody wants to read YOUR journals...Just kidding. I personally don't give two tugs of a dead dog's cock what happens after I die.

quote:

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Originally posted by phool:
Yeah, but nobody wants to read YOUR journals...

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hee. well, i hope not. but i mean, i wouldn't even want my family or closest friends to read my journals after i die. so i can only imagine how much Kafka or Cobain would be horrified to have their journals published.