published posthumously

Milan Kundera's 'Testaments Betrayed' to thread!

In Kafka's case, sure.
By the way, has this happened a lot?

That Hemingway crapola did his reputation no favors.

On the other hand, Emily Dickinson!

There was a big controversy when Virginia Woolf's Melymbrosia was published. It wasn't a very good book at all, and it seemed to be published just so that the historian who "discovered" it could make her name. It's not like Woolf's fiction is in high demand anyway, she has fallen out of favor. Ego should never be the justification for publishing a minor work by a dead author.

This is sticky subject for me. If authors leave things behind (and don't physically destroy works themselves a la Gerard Manley Hopkins) then they leave the possibility that those things will be read by others and potentially shared. Many of the authors who've had works published posthumously are not known for their mental/emotional stability and objective analysis of their own work (self-deprecating authors are hardly unusual). If a brilliant manuscript is found with instructions for it's destruction, I think it needs to be left to the author's estate to determine whether or not the instructions should be taken seriously and literally, but I think it would be a shame to lose it forever. I suppose I'd rather err on the side of preservation and publication than on the side of authorial privacy (I cringe at the thought of making that judgement call though--this one's a utility principle argument).

I contend that there's a strong argument for publishing minor/subpar works by dead authors for scholastic purposes. T.S. Eliot's Inventions of the March Hare poems, for example, reveal much about his development as a poet, his longstanding preoccupations/prejudices, his early experimental forays, etc. They should be treated like diaries or personal letters that have been made available for inclusion in biographies and academic works--that is, I don't think that Melymbrosia and Inventions of the March Hare should be sitting in the trade paperbacks next to Mrs. Dalloway and The Four Quartets as though they are intended for casual pleasure reading and so that someone unfamiliar with the author would be led to assume that they are representative of the author's work as a whole. I think it's perfectly reasonable for them to be published with thorough introductions in a critical edition so that scholars don't need to handle the original manuscript in order to study it.

'so that someone unfamiliar with the author would be led to assume that they are representative of the author's work as a whole"

I think this is what bothers me the most. I was thinking of this after reading the chronological list of Barbara Pym posted somewhere else. Should the books published after her death be included in there?

Especially if we're talking about an author who wasn't a solitary genius (Emily Dickinson) but someone who made a living writing and knew what they wanted published and what they didn't.

The worst thing is people who take it on themselves to finsh other's books. It is appropriation and can lead to someone unfamiliar thinking they're reading, say Raymond Chandler, when really they're reading an imitation.

If you REALLY don't want anyone to see it, unless you very suddenly are hit with the terminal illness, you will drag it to the furnace on your bleeding stumps. Failing that, deep down you sorta want to share. It's up to an editor to decide whether it's shlock -- with the possible exception of diaries, which one might be leaving behind for a tiny number of intimates' benefit.

I thought that - maybe if you write it down, you expect that someone will read it. But I don't think it holds. Maybe you write it down to get an idea out of your head, it drifts to the bottom of your desk drawer or whatever and is forgotten. Later, you die, later still you're famous and it is published.

So it's not that you REALLY don't want anyone to see it, just that it's kind of crap, not going anywhere. And then someone officiously releases it to the world and it dilutes your image.

If the author didn't want it published, for whatever reason, maybe it's better left unread. But manuscripts that an author tried to get published that were rejected - well, that's a different story. John Kennedy Toole's Confederacy of Dunces for one. One of Barbara Pym's books published posthumously was the same rejected in 1963 that kept her from attempting anything else for so long. That's rather a nice vindication, I think. I hate it though when some literary executor finishes up a dead author's work in progress and passes it off as fully genuine. Those should come with a big warning label.

Whoah, whoah, I didn't make myself clear -- I mean, what I said holds if it's in reasonably finished shape. Sorry. Yeah, the trunk novel with 2.5 chapters moldering under the sweat socks would get tossed by the smart editor.

YES. Unless the author expressly wishes for you not to. A true authors doesn't wrirte anything without the understanding that this may be published, whether by a later executor or a past lover, now estranged and broke. It depends on the subjetc matter. If its good, publish it, if its not, leave the poor man be.

What about JD Salinger?

I hear he has a manuscript in a vault in NYC.

I understand his not wanting to feed the vultures when he does not need the money or the aggrevation.

I presume the book will be published once he kicks it.

A Happy Death by Camus I think was published posthumously and he didn't particularly like it I don't think but it's great and serves as an important companion to The Stranger. I don't know. I think you have to respect their wishes but there are worse crimes.