Lit Will

Over at Sully they're discussing literary wills:

And, in 1999, Hemingway's son published a "bowdlerized version" of True at First Light, the author’s last unfinished work. To combat the problem this exemplifies, some archives are moving to acquire literary estates while the writer is still alive.

On one hand, of course an author should be able to dictate what happens to his work. On the other hand, who gives a shit? While I can understand withholding personal letters/manuscripts etc for a period wherein doing so might embarrass close family members such as spouse or children, doing so after a period of time seems pointless.Great, you're protecting the thoughts of the dead. Awesome. But you have no idea what may come of perusing someone's old letters, how a single life may be changed for it. For all we know the cure for cancer is sitting in some pile of old letters somewhere. As Thomas Jefferson once said, the universe if for the living. But we seem to spend a lot of time squirming about the feelings of people long gone. Shit's whack. When I'm gone, I fully expect Big Bear and the Short Bus to turn over my entire Advice for My Godsons manuscript that I had held far too sacred to release to the public in my own lifetime to anyone who will give them $5 for it.

1) I keep hearing people on tv say something like “You know, if your father heard you say that he’d turn over in his grave.” What the hell is this? The WORST thing we can think of is someone turning over in their grave, MAYBE harrumphing loudly with their disdain? Wow. “Oh no!! What if Pop can awake from the dead, hear what I was saying, and TURN OVER in the box we stuffed him in six feet in the ground!! Man, that would be awful!!!” Assuming said person COULD actually do something, wouldn’t we be more inclined to say “If your father could hear you now, he’d get up out of his grave and walk over here and beat the living shit out of you.” Now that might get my attention. Thinking that MAYBE someone in a faraway grave turned over doesn’t really make me decide to NOT set up a pyramid scheme to rip off Brownie troops. When I was a kid it was always “When your father gets home he’s going to KILL you”, which would of course scare the hell outta me. If my mother had said “If your father could magically hear you speak 47 miles away from here, he’d be so furious he’d spin around once in his office chair”, then i mean, camon. - XMASTIME