Our class has explored how our legacy can continue after our deaths through digital technologies. Another example of this that goes beyond the historical time period of the digital age is works of literature that have been published posthumously. Many famous works, such as Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales and Dostoevsky’s The Brother’s Karamazov were apparently unfinished or part of a longer series that was never written before the author passed. Usually, works that are published posthumously are done so without altering them, but sometimes others will step in to try and finish what the author started.
An author who feels that they may meet an untimely end before they have the chance to put all of their ideas down on paper can name a literary executor in their will, who is responsible for managing a deceased author’s intellectual property, and therefore their lasting legacy.
Waterstones gives six examples of books posthumously finished by other authors. Some authors will leave detailed notes about how they want the books to be published, while other literary executors are left to guess about their intentions. This reminded me of our reading, “Beyond the Grave: Facebook as a Site for the Expansion of Death and Mourning” by Jed Brubaker, Gillian Hayes, and Paul Dourish. In that reading, they talked about the discomfort that some people feel about the “‘interactive digital tombstones” where the “deceased’s inability to moderate content presents a number of issues around representation.” Much like Facebook users who have died cannot control their digital legacy, authors are often in the same situation when their work is published posthumously.
Joseph Mitchell, photographed on Water Street, near the old Fulton Fish Market.
Photograph by Therese Mitchell / Courtesy Estate of Joseph Mitchell / The New Yorker
Recently, in an English class, we read an essay by Joseph Mitchel titled “A Place of Pasts” that was published by The New Yorker after he passed. The editors explained that the essay was an unfinished chapter from a memoir he began writing but never finished. In class, we grappled with how to read this essay. Usually, we critique what we read in order to learn from it, but we all expressed discomfort about offering criticism on a piece that was unfinished. Not only did it feel like that would be speaking ill of the dead, but it also felt unfair because the piece wasn’t the final product that the author had intended to produce.
Posthumous publishing offers many parallels between the ways that we grapple with the digital identities of the dead. Literary works, like social media profiles, can leave a lasting legacy of a person that may evolve and grow beyond their death. How we talk about these things unavoidably forces us to confront with our own attitudes about death.