From Kafka To Larsson: Great Posthumous Novels

Telegraph:

From Kafka to Larsson, these authors have had some of their greatest work published after their deaths.

Read the whole story: Telegraph

Comments

[outnow]

11:44 PM on 04/18/2011

Just saw the movie, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Now, I want to read his other books. He anticipated a kind of wikileaks investigative journalism - through computer hacking activities - to achieve social justice. Indeed, if computers could talk, what a tale they would tell. The documents would send many to prison. Lisbeth, the main female character, has the ability to download such smoking gun documents at will practically.

We live in Western Civilization where obstensibly, at least, people with money earned it all honestly. The fact is that weapons running and drug dealing is a basis of many people's fortunes but their crimes take place in the third world.

You have to be a socialist these days to see that this type of activity is evil. Capitalists seem to believe that having money cleans everything up. Their evil is reflected in their sexist attitudes and abusive behavior. Governments tend to protect those who make money this way so long as they have the right connections.

A certain vigilantism is refreshing; justice delayed is justice denied, at least for Lisbeth.

[naschkatze]

12:19 PM on 04/18/2011

I am a big fan of Nordic crime writers, and imho Larsson is not in the top tier. I was hoping that he would open the door for the others which hasn't happened. No one knows here who K.O. Dahl is, for example. This leaves me wondering if the fact that Larsson's books were published posthumously didn't add to their mystique.

[scoutgirl]

11:27 AM on 04/17/2011

John Kennedy Toole = GENIUS!

[rickthaluddite]

09:15 PM on 04/16/2011

Emily Dickinson 'nuff said.

[Bruce Forbes]

11:58 AM on 04/16/2011

Ernest Hemingway's "The Garden of Eden". And Sylvia Plath's "Ariel".

[sleekone]

12:31 AM on 04/18/2011

I adore Sylvia Plath! Seems we have much in common Bruce. Nice to meet you.

Have a great week.

[naschkatze]

12:20 PM on 04/18/2011

x2

[Bruce Forbes]

05:35 PM on 04/18/2011

FB?

[ssrelso]

01:09 AM on 04/16/2011

Melville's Billy Budd, published four decades after his death, is one of his finer works, although I do not think it the equal of Moby Dick, Clarel, or Mardi. That being said, it was the discovery and printing of Billy Budd in the 1920's that led to widespread reading of Melville, who had largely been a literary failure in his own lifetime (with the exception of his first two books, Typee and Omoo, both of which were based on his experiences in the South Pacific). Without Billy Budd, few would know of the amazing heights of Moby Dick, which is probably the greatest work of North American fiction yet produced, so for that, we should venerate the posthumous publication of Budd.

Most of the ouevre of the peerless Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa (he of the heteronyms) was posthumous; I am sure there are others worthy of mention whom escape my mention at present.

[joefoss]

10:54 AM on 04/15/2011

RE: "The Last Tycoon" (1941) by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Fitzgerald's fifth novel was published posthumously--he died in December, 1940.
=Assembled from completed chapters, fragments and Fitzgerald's copious and meticulous notes by his friend and Princeton classmate, Edmund Wilson, TLT has since earned a respected place in the Fitzgerald canon.
=Indeed, some scholars and academics consider this novel, a roman a clef about legendary Hollywood producer and studio head, Irving Thalberg, as Fitzgerald's best work. They assert it reveals a deeper, more mature voice as the "Poet Laureate of the Jazz Age" considered the new issues and personalities of Depression America.