Elliot Smith playing in the background I read Tavi's summary of Blogs versus Magazines while thinking that she still has years of time to become a better writer. In 10 years she'll still be young, while I'll be... old. In 20 years she'll still be young while I will still be... old. Hell, give her 25-30 years to still be young as 40 seems to be young in the grand scheme of things, while, yes, you guessed it, I'll still be... old. I've got about 3 years left to be young before I start getting old. So no time like the present to publish, right?
What would Salinger's blog be like? I wrote a comment on the Times article about his recently unsealed letters:
Someone should do the world a favor and burn all his unpublished writing. In an age where Nabokov's index cards for the Original of Laura are ripped from his rigor mortis-suffering hands to be published against his will at death, and the Jung family releases a limited edition newly translated Red Book exposing their great grandfather's private visions, do we really need another dead author's unpublished drafts polluting the mindscape? Why not give the man his privacy and make way for new voices?Surprised to see that 5 people recommended it.
Related to burning manuscripts (and artists who died suspiciously, i.e. Elliot Smith), I recently found out about Nikolai Gogol, a Russian realist writer who burned the sequel to his career-defining book because he was worried about the sinful nature of his work. From Wikipedia (which we all know is the definitive source of all knowledge):
...he intensified his relationship with a church elder, Matvey Konstantinovsky, whom he had known for several years. Konstantinovsky seems to have strengthened in Gogol the fear of perdition by insisting on the sinfulness of all his imaginative work. His health was undermined by exaggerated ascetic practices and he fell into a state of deep depression. On the night of February 24, 1852, he burned some of his manuscripts, which contained most of the second part of Dead Souls. He explained this as a mistake, a practical joke played on him by the Devil. Soon thereafter he took to bed, refused all food, and died in great pain nine days later.
I found a book that talked about his life and put it on reserve at the library: The Creation of Nikolai Gogol by Donald Fanger, which mentions Gogol and the Devil, by Dmitry Sergeyevich Merezhkovsky, which might offer more information if I could find it anywhere, as well as The Anguish of Mykola Hohol A.K.A. Nikolai Gogol, by George Stephen Nestor Luckyj, which is also out of print.
Word of the day: cynosure. According to Merriem-Webster, it's "one that serves to direct or guide; or a center of attraction or attention." Fanger's book called Gogol one as he seeked to define himself, and extensively the entirety of Russian culture, through his literature.
