That's not for you.

I was reading through a recently published collection of Charles Bukowski's poems, though he died in 1994 of leukemia.  Many of the poems in this collection had been previously unpublished, but his widow and editor took them and put them together.  The same thing happened when Michael Crichton died and his editor found a manuscript he had been working on called Pirate Latitudes.  The editor made the decision to publish it, and of course Steven Spielberg is now making it into a movie.

Now, I understand that if someone made a living as a writer, you might assume that he was planning to publish this newly discovered work eventually, but you can't know that for sure unless he told you himself.  You might think it's very tragic that the author died before he could see his work appreciated.  I, however, find it kind of disconcerting that when I die some unlucky person who has to sift through all my crap might happen upon some horrible first draft of a poem or story I've written and would try to put it out into the world.  What if I had hated that draft and decided to scrap the idea all together?  After you die, are your ideas just fair game?

If the person is famous, I think we feel it's owed to us, the audience, to read his or her last words.  I think we view the song or poem or manuscript as a gift that person was working on for us, and if he died before he could present it to his fans, then we will take it anyway because we're sure that's what he would have wanted.  "Oh, Grandma always meant to give you this brooch.  She never got around to putting it in her will, but take it.  I'm sure she would have wanted you to have it."

On the other hand, consider that some things are too personal and not intended to ever be shared.  If someone found a poem I wrote at an emotional low point (and subsequently stuffed into the back of a drawer) and then submitted it to a literary magazine, I would have to haunt them so that they could know how pissed off I am.  It's like one time when I was on a picnic with some friends.  They had a fancy picnic basket given to them as a wedding gift and it came with silverware and wine glasses and specially decorated paper napkins.  As we were passing around the food and utensils, I went to take a napkin and one of my friends took it back.  "That's not for you," he said.  We looked at him, surprised, and then we all burst out laughing because his wife said he really wanted to save those special napkins for some unknown future occasion.

That personal emotional poem I wrote 15 years ago?  That's not for you.  But that script I've been hawking the last 6 months?  That you can have.

waste

"boring," he said from his deathbed,
"I bored everybody, even
myself.
I wasted it, I was a fake, a word-
blower . . . all too fancy . . . all too
full of tricks."

"oh master," said the young poet,
"that's not true at all, not at
all."

"all too true," said the old man.
"my work was overblown
rubbish."

the young poet did not believe
those words.
he could not, he would not,
for he too was writing
rubbish.

but still he asked the old man,
"but Master, what is to be
done?"

"begin at the beginning."
said the old man.

a few days after that
he died.

he had not wanted to see the
young poet anyhow.

now that didn't matter
either.

-Charles Bukowski