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It's not unusual for authors to express a desire for their unpublished works to be destroyed. Kafka wanted all his unpublished works to be destroyed - consider
by joe_the_user 3y ago
It's not unusual for authors to express a desire for their unpublished works to be destroyed. Kafka wanted all his unpublished works to be destroyed - consider these are most of his known works now, we're quite lucky his executor, Max Brod, defied his wishes.
- csdvrx 3y ago> It's not unusual for authors to express a desire for their unpublished works to be destroyed. Kafka wanted all his unpublished works to be destroyed - consider these are most of his known works now, we're quite lucky his executor, Max Brod, defied his wishes. Are we lucky, or was Kafka unlucky? I find the lack of respect about authors' wishes very shocking.
- drunkpotato 3y agoWhy? They’re dead. Not trying to be flippant, I honestly don’t get why the deceased’s desires should be elevated over the living’s. It’s a moral choice I don’t agree with and don’t entirely understand.
- hosh 3y agoThis is less about the deceased's desires over that of the living and more about creative control. Any creator will want to polish their work. It's already difficult enough to articulate and express the source of inspiration, and even polished, the material expression almost never matches its source.
- BeFlatXIII 3y ago…but destroying it deprives a future creative from putting in the polishing touches. Shoulders of giants and all.
- vidarh 3y agoI've published two novels, and I have tons of notes for all kinds of things, and frankly while there is lots I have written that I don't want to publish until/unless I rework it, and some things I don't want to publish at all, I couldn't give a shit what gets published after I'm dead other than to the extent it'd harm or embarrass anyone I care about. I don't think I have anything that'd harm anyone, but I do have things that might embarrass some. Like love poems written in my youth that has sentimental value for me, but might be embarrassing to my present or then girlfriend, for example. Frankly, all I'd ask of a literary executor would be that they 1) humor my requests while I'm alive, 2) respect the wishes of my family. Other than that, whether they actually follow through on my wishes? Put it this way, if I find myself in an afterlife, as an atheist, I doubt whether my executor stuck my wishes will be high on my list of things to care about. And without an afterlife it's not as if I'd be able to care. Or know,
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ghaff 3y agoI can see both views. On the one hand, authors aren't always the best judges of their own work and executors can hire someone who may do a good job of polishing. On the other hand, there are unfinished works that are relatively mediocre (True at First Light) or just clearly unfinished (The Last Tycoon). Of course, a movie studio is almost certain to finish off a movie if a director dies and may remove them for other reasons.
- hosh 3y agoIt’s true, a good editor or producer collaborates with the creative to get it across the finish line, flawed as it is. It works better if there is mutual respect. My point though is when generalizing and reframing this about the deceased vs living, more often than not, it is no longer about respecting (even respectfully disagreeing) with the creative and more about disrespecting the deceased.
- ghaff 3y ago>It’s true, a good editor or producer collaborates with the creative to get it across the finish line, flawed as it is. If it's a studio film, they may well fire the director and hire a new one. And, of course, screenwriters are casually script doctored with or without their consent.
- hosh 3y agoSure, because it is funded by a commercial concern and they are in the business of selling entertainment. With books, the balance of power isn’t so skewed to the publisher, though I suppose it depends on what it is. I don’t know what circumstances Tolkien’s unfinished work was released, though it seems like his son toiled away at them for years.
- ghaff 3y agoTrue, and there's typically far less money (or big expenses) involved with books. I always assumed Christopher Tolkien had some sort of "do with them what you think best" agreement with his father although I don't actually know. Not that there's anything particularly special in written word beyond Tolkien's originals.
- westhanover 3y agoDo I have permission to desecrate your corpse? You are dead after all.
- jkestner 3y agoI'm donating my body to art, so sure.
- pfdietz 3y agoDo what Steven Wright plans and donate your body to science fiction.
- NavinF 3y agoI don't see why not. My body is no different from my other possessions
- GloomyBoots 3y agoAre you fine with desecrating the bodies of others against their wishes?
- bitzun 3y agoNot GP but: Dead bodies? Sure, they're dead. Everything meaningful and special about them is gone.
- saberience 3y agoOk so you’d be fine with having sex with a dead child’s corpse then? You seem like quite a guy. I mean they’re dead right? Everything meaningful and special about them is gone.
- reilly3000 3y agoI hope you remember the night when you made the pedonecrophila strawman argument fondly, but I trust you won’t.
- itishappy 3y agoDoes this apply to inheritance too? Why should we care what happens to our kids once we die?
- drunkpotato 3y agoWhile we’re alive, we care. When we’re dead, it’s up to our children to care. Inheritance wishes are generally respected, but also can and do get overridden. I’m not saying that an author’s wishes shouldn’t be taken into account, the living still care about how they felt while they were alive, but it shouldn’t be the one and only priority that gets respected. Again, the dead can’t care anymore. Only the living can.
- hosh 3y agoThat really depends upon your beliefs and understanding of the cosmos. Not everyone agrees with that. To be fair, I have practiced shaivasana (“corpse pose”), specifically including “corpse don’t care” as a response to existential anguish arising and passing. But I also know quite a good bit about what it means to regret and long for second chances or a path not taken. I think it is quite rare for anyone (regardless of beliefs) to die without regrets. If you are able to pull that off for yourself, I’m glad for you.
- hosh 3y agoIt’s interesting you bring up kids. In a belief system where there is a Creator, and the Creator is a Mother, all of Creation are her children. Thus, as humans, raising and nurturing a child is as much of an act of creation as art, music, etc. And conversely, our artistic creations tend to develop a life of its own.
- nottorp 3y agoBut but... our copyright lords at the Mouse's castle have decreed that copyright lasts 75 years after the author's death. That means it's illegal to not respect the dead person's wishes. The copyright is theirs, not their descendant's.
- pfdietz 3y agoCopyright lasts for that period, but it doesn't continue to belong to the dead person.
- jzb 3y agoThey weren't deceased when they expressed the desire. You usually don't know when, exactly, you're going to die. Nobody would argue, I hope, with "I'm going on a trip, don't publish anything I'm not done with until I get back and finish it." This just happens to be a very long, one-way trip. That said, I do think once someone is dead, there's some argument whether you have to respect that. But I at least understand the desire.
- brigandish 3y agoBecause other people's wishes - especially about their own stuff - are to be respected?
- joe_the_user 3y agoAside from "they're dead, how can it hurt them" factor, there's the point that if an author well and truly wants a given work out of the public eye, they can destroy it themselves when they're alive.
- jl6 3y agoUsually we’re talking about things like the author’s private notes and rough drafts, which they may well wish to keep around while they are alive (because they are useful).
- kryptiskt 3y agoHe put them in the care of Brod, who had told him that he would refuse to burn them. If he really wanted the work burned he wouldn't have put it in the hands of his biggest fan.
- melagonster 3y agoyes, this even is not a good example in this thread. both of them familiar with this process. Kafka just played same tricks at his end of life.
- chasil 3y agoVirgil's Aeneid is the most famous example that I know... "According to tradition, Virgil traveled to Greece around 19 BC to revise the Aeneid. After meeting Augustus in Athens and deciding to return home, Virgil caught a fever while visiting a town near Megara. Virgil crossed to Italy by ship, weakened with disease, and died in Brundisium harbour on 21 September 19 BC, leaving a wish that the manuscript of the Aeneid was to be burned. Augustus ordered Virgil's literary executors, Lucius Varius Rufus and Plotius Tucca, to disregard that wish, instead ordering the Aeneid to be published with as few editorial changes as possible. As a result, the existing text of the Aeneid may contain faults which Virgil was planning to correct before publication. However, the only obvious imperfections are a few lines of verse that are metrically unfinished (i.e., not a complete line of dactylic hexameter). Other alleged "imperfections" are subject to scholarly debate." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeneid#Virgil's_death,_and_editing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeneid#Virgil's_death,_and_edi...
- nescioquid 3y agoIt was the first example I thought of, as well. I don't really mean this as an accusation, but I suspect these death-bed demands are simply a pose. Not that they are essentially insincere, but rather a final gesture of conscientiousness that should be ignored. What is lost to the world by retaining the imperfect, incomplete?
- virgildotcodes 3y agoPresumably the image that the dead person was attempting cultivate about themselves and their work.
- csallen 3y agoI think a better explanation is that authors and other creators of public works are concerned with how they will be perceived. Otherwise, they wouldn't spend months and years meticulously editing and improving their works before release. It's uncomfortable, embarrassing even, to have your unfinished work consumed and reviewed as if it were finished, and as if it were an accurate measure of your intentions and talent.
- rzzzt 3y agoAdd Chopin to the, ahem, list: https://youtu.be/x93pwAvUkAA https://youtu.be/x93pwAvUkAA
- perihelions 3y agoBrahms was successful at destroying large parts of his work product [0]. Kuhlau was too [1], thought he didn't intend to—his house burned down. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Brahms#Works https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Brahms#Works ("...once claimed to have destroyed 20 string quartets before he issued his official First in 1873...") [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Kuhlau https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Kuhlau
- TheCaptain4815 3y agoRoberto Bolaño wanted 2666 to be 5 split novels
- timetraveller26 3y agoOne interesting case, an outsider artist, is Henry Darger "In the Realms of the Unreal" > In the Realms of the Unreal is a 15,145-page work bound in fifteen immense, densely typed volumes (with three of them consisting of several hundred illustrations, scroll-like watercolor paintings on paper derived from magazines and coloring books) created over six decades. Darger illustrated his stories using a technique of traced images cut from magazines and catalogues, arranged in large panoramic landscapes and painted in watercolors, some as large as 30 feet wide and painted on both sides. He wrote himself into the narrative as the children's protector.[3]: 64 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Darger#In_the_Realms_of_the_Unreal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Darger#In_the_Realms_of_...
- Onavo 3y agoSince this is HN, what are the legal, game theoretic, and technical means to ensure that your will is executed to the letter? Bind the executor to a contract before hand? Perhaps have two additional watchdog entities setup to sue if the executor disobeys? Have a smart contract oracle escrow on the blockchain to automatically pay out to the law firm for suit if the number of ISBNs associated with your name increases?