Collaborating With the Dead

Early this month, The New Yorker published an article entitled, “The Complicated Backstory To a New Children’s Book by Mark Twain.” The book in question has the rather unwieldy—but very 19th century—title, The Purloining of Prince Oleomargarine (c.1879). Now before you get too excited, expecting something along the lines of Tom Sawyer or The Prince and the Pauper, here are the facts: sixteen pages of notes were unearthed by a scholar at the Bancroft Library in Berkeley, notes which were not a finished story but a mere outline of a tale Twain used to entertain his daughters. Worse yet, the outline was unfinished. The scholar who uncovered it, John Bird, stood face-to-face with the find of a career. But what should he do with it? Publish it as is, perhaps in a journal article with contextual notes about the circumstances of its composition, its relation to other stories in his canon, etc.? Or actually complete and flesh out the sketch, so that everyone could enjoy a forgotten piece of the Twain puzzle—incomplete and insubstantial though it is? 

Bird decided to draft his own ending to the piece, carefully imagining what Twain would write—and what he had already written. Like an Egyptologist stumbling upon a fractured but otherwise unblemished tomb, Bird wanted to preserve what history had abandoned, so we could appreciate a promising first draft rather than an accomplished revision. Together with the Mark Twain House, Bird found a publisher and hoped the sales could benefit the House and further support Twain’s legacy (you see why we need scholars in the world!). Instead, the publisher (Random House) pulled an about face and gave the manuscript to a husband-and-wife team, commissioning them to make their own version: not just a realization of some sketches and notes, but a bona fide children’s novel of 100+ pages with new characters, incidents, and a pulled-out-of-nowhere African American protagonist.

As one of the authors remarked, “If you start delving too far into his catalogue...it doesn’t take you long to start getting the heebie-jeebies about something that he’ll have said. He can, on one page, seem progressive well beyond his years—he can seem like he’s talking right out of 2017, or 2050, even—and then the very next page he’ll say something that makes you smack yourself on the forehead and say, ‘I can’t work with this guy.’ ” Hmm. This quote begs the question, why DID you work with this guy? Why would Random House remove the scholar/steward of Twain’s legacy and hand it off to someone still groping their way to an understanding of Twain’s views and voice? Wouldn’t this project be better served by someone who could position in within his previous works, restoring something of his authentic voice and probable intentions?

Instead, both Random House and the authors decided to fashion a  bagatelle into a boulder. Since children’s literature is still predominantly white and European, why publish yet another European fairy tale along the lines of George MacDonald or Hans Christian Andersen (which Twain was clearly channeling). The story was created to amuse his daughters, without meaning to tickle the fancy of posterity—and certainly not to challenge the arbiters of political correctness. However, the fact remains that a book by Twain, even a very minor one, will command worldwide attention. People will buy it, read it, comment on it—even if those comments reflect dismay and disappointment. In a way, it’s the ultimate subversive act, to ‘steal’ the work of a canonical white author and make him speak your language (after all, he’s not around to object).

And there’s the rub: in a collaboration with the dead, how much do you owe to the author’s persona? Writers are always finishing the unfinished projects of long-dead writers: works by Jane Austen, Emily Bronte, and Charles Dickens, to name a few, are expanded, completed, and restored for an eager book-buying public. In general, the response is muted: no one hails such a reconstruction as a masterpiece, and none have entered the canon of accepted works or received the imprimatur of an academic press. So what do we make of a work that adds much more than an ending or a few missing pages, but an entire story, an entire cast of characters, and a complete modern philosophy entirely absent in the original? Is that a collaboration...or a renunciation of Twain’s beliefs?

In the early 20th century, the Russian writer Sasa Preis decided to finish a very incomplete Gogol play, St. Vladimir Third Grade. However, as a true scholar and devotee of Gogol’s work. Preis decided to scour Gogol’s published works and lift actual words and phrases for the necessary additions. Everything had to sound “Gogol,” even if the end product inevitably fell short of his genius. Preis was not one to smack himself on the forehead because Gogol might reflect a belief that didn’t jive with his own—or his century’s. No, he had to write a work that Gogol might have written, true to his own sensibility and language. Otherwise, why use Gogol’s name? Why not simply use your own?

To me, that’s where the error lies. Not that we shouldn’t collaborate with dead authors or sully their works. Why not? They won’t mind. However, this is only possible if we start with the actual work of the author. To hide behind an author’s name to advance one’s own agenda, or to bow to the mores of popular taste is, quite frankly, in very poor taste. What will we learn from such a work? Will it offer us joy and insight? Or is it simply just another children’s book and just another notch in the belt of a pair of already-successful authors? The dead can no longer speak to offer their opinion, but knowing Twain’s bent for satire and cynicism, he would no doubt find this story highly amusing. In fact, it makes a much better story than the one that actually got published. Now we just need someone to write that one...time to head back to the archives!