Jonathan Kieran

Esquire here takes a ponderous look at the ethical implications of publishing the works of dead authors whose creations were not made public during their lifetimes.

Forget the tortured thumb-twiddling. It’s like asking whether Egyptologists “should” dig-up the graves of the ritually buried dead and parade their mummies around or establish museum displays of sacred afterlife paraphernalia.

All points are moot.

Humans will stick their filthy, greedy, grubby little fingers into anyone else’s business, living or dead, if they feel a profit can be made, so nothing is off limits with our species. Look at the Catholics and the horror of the relic trade during the Middle Ages and beyond. No, don’t look. It’s too ghastly. Hearts and parts and holy farts.

Authors who don’t want their incomplete works to ever see the light of day after they shuffle off the mortal coil need only choose two options:

DIGITAL ERASURE

and/or

BURN WITH FIRE

When you’re dead, anything you leave behind is completely out of your hands and likely into the nasty paws of another.

Then again, as the case of John Kennedy Toole’s posthumously published A Confederacy of Dunces proved, dead geniuses with rejected manuscripts and persistent mothers can win Pulitzer prizes.

It’s a pickle, I tell ya’.

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