Celebrity Death

My mind was recently blown by finding out that Herman Melville lived for forty years after Moby Dick was published, during which it sold a whopping...less than 3,000 copies. With Mukluks out to Sully, HERE'S an article on the odd posthumous fame of artists, including Henry James:

Today he is The Master. He is the source of dread for AP English students everywhere, with his syllabus-ready, 600-page novels where all that happens is a woman crosses a room. And yet near the end of his life, his novels were not selling so well. Edith Wharton had to pay his publisher to pay James an advance, as he was considered such an unmarketable writer. And after his death, his books were almost entirely out of print in the U.K., and only available in the U.S. as an absurdly expensive set. If you wanted one James book, you had to buy them all — and the man was astonishingly prolific. Thus it remained for decades, until a post-World War II revival.

The time between life and post-life can make or break an author's legacy, and of course there may be a clear-cut reason great authors are lost to history:

The artist might not always know what to do with her or his own output, but less likely to know is the artist’s descendants. Often it’s the disappointing son or brother or friend left in charge of the great artist’s legacy, and so very, very often, they screw it up.

There is no doubt in my mind that Brothatmie!! will perfectly handle what will be my never-read-in-my-own-lifetime-but-future-classic, Hey, Seriously Guys It's Not Funny Anymore, Who Shit in the Sink?

Speaking of Brothatime!!, it just flashed though my head that one time when we were kids he used the phrase "does a Baptist Church own a school bus?" in a "does a bear shit in the woods?" way, which is still my favorite of the genre. I don't know if he made it up, and maybe it's only funny if you grew up in the sticks like we did, but it still kills.