Should posthumous publication against an author’s wishes be allowed?

6 comments on “Should posthumous publication against an author’s wishes be allowed?”

1. Mark says:
   March 20th, 2009 at 10:10 am

   Posthumous publication against an author’s wishes should not be allowed. Doing so is not only disrespectful of an individual’s privacy, but a selfish act on the part of the living. Never mind mind what readers might have “missed”, from an accomplished writer. We were never meant to see it in the first place.

2. Matt S. says:
   March 20th, 2009 at 10:20 am

   Good point, Mark. Now go burn all of your Kafka (You can keep The Metamorphosis, though). Nuh-uh, no complaining! Burn it.

3. Heather says:
   March 21st, 2009 at 12:04 am

   If we are to say that posthumous works are wrong, or at least unethical, wouldn’t that also mean that archaeology is essentially bad? I think digging up a grave – even if it is a pyramid – would somehow be worse than publishing material posthumously…on the violation scale, that is.

4. Roland says:
   March 21st, 2009 at 9:48 am

   Heather: I’m sure there are actually people who would take that position on archaeology, out of a similar desire to preserve popular myths.

   I’ll try some Voltaire: “To the living one owes respect. To the dead one owes only the truth.”

5. Pat S says:
   March 23rd, 2009 at 1:42 am

   I’d like to read Bereavement Diary, and the China notebook as well. If it were an unfinished philosophical essay — maybe, maybe not.

   I can see that a posthumous work of fiction or philosophy might be untrue to an author — not what it was meant to be or would have been, but for death — but notebooks, or a journal?

   These are not aiming (above all) for objective or aesthetic truth. These are most true the less they are tampered with.

   If it is true that Barthes would have been embarrassed by publication — death (one hopes) relieved him of embarrassment, self-censorship. If one has held back during life — this is a service death renders a thinker, a writer. A huge service — I don’t think it can be underestimated.

   Barthes himself made understanding Barthes a public concern — and he dealt in understanding. Works more rather than less controlled by his ego are one means, but much better if they aren’t the only way.

   Do we mean that we will be embarrassed for him? What a thought! That would be a real presumption. If there is anything to Barthes at all, his unedited, uncensored writing will put to shame a reader’s vanity.

   If an observation is true to his self, it doesn’t matter if it’s large or small, dignified or undignified — it’s a shallow pettiness on our part to dismiss it as “silly.”

   Whether it interests you or not is another question.

6. Pat S says:
   March 23rd, 2009 at 11:16 am

   Of course, I mean “overestimated.” But I hope no one is so shallow, petty, dismissive as to point this out.

Discuss