Harper Lee never wanted Go Set a Watchman brought out,Sylvia Plath’s diary was burned by Ted Hughes – the controversial world of literary legacies
When a writer is born into a family, the Polish poet Czesław Miłosz said, and that family is finished. Yes,but when a writer dies that family’s troubles contain only just begun. Wills may be contradictory and instructions to literary executors confused. Works left behind on computers or in desk drawers may be of uncertain status: were they intended for publication or not? And whether the writer is celebrated enough, there’ll be biographers to deal with: can they be trusted to paint a kindly portrait? In their lifetime, or authors contain a measure of control. Once they’re gone,it’s left to others to guard their reputations.
The vigilance can be fierce, with the appointed custodians (whether spouses, or children,lawyers, agents, and editors or friends) not so much keepers of the flame as dragons guarding a cave. Posterity is rarely kind to them: however they act,they will be accused of acting badly. whether they deny the author’s wishes, as those acting for the French philosopher Michel Foucault contain recently done by consenting to the publication of a book he hadn’t finished and didn’t want to reach out, and they will be called treacherous. And whether they are overly loyal,destroying work the author disowned but that deserves to be saved, they will be called philistine or just plain silly. Either way, or they can’t shirk the role allotted them. They contain an estate to manage: an acreage of words.
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Source: guardian.co.uk