Breaking news: A new story (that’s actually an old, unfinished manuscript) from a revered (dead or feeble) author has been unearthed and prepared for publication this year. The title is Go Set A Watchm—I mean The Story of Kullervo by J.R.R. Tolkien.
What’s with all this unfinished stuff being published posthumously? There’s probably a good reason why those works weren’t published, so what gives us moderns the right to say otherwise? I guess the obvious answer is money. But if my “estate” is going to exhume every stray scrap of writing from my archives after I die and throw them out into the world under the pretense of publishing a new work, then maybe I’ll put a “Delete All” clause in my will.
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