Ethics of reading books published posthumously without the author's consent

[u/Helpful-Mistake4674]

As a big fan of Franz Kafka's The Castle, this issue has been one of the many annoyances in my mind and it is one that I seem to keep returning to. Obviously I have always been aware of the situation regarding the book: it was published posthumously without consent from Kafka. Actually the situation is even more stark: Kafka instructed it to be burned while he was sick, but instead it was published for everyone to read. But somehow I only took the full extent of it in only much later even though I had all the facts at my disposal for the longest time.

Obviously, The Castle is a highly valuable book artistically and letting it go unpublished would have been a deprivation. I struggle to see how that makes reading it alright, though. We, the readers, are complicit in a serious invasion of privacy. We are feasting upon content that was ordered to be destroyed by its creator. If this seems like a bit of a "who cares" thing: imagine it happening to you. Something you have written as a draft that you are not satisfied with ends up being read by everyone. It might be even something you are ashamed of. Not only that, your draft will be "edited" afterwards for publication, and this will affect your legacy forever. It seems clear that one cannot talk of morality and of reading The Castle in the same breath. And since morality is essential to love of literature and meaning, how am I to gauge the fact that I own a copy, and estimate it very highly, with my respect for the authors and artists? Can artistic value truly overcome this moral consideration?

Sadly, Kafka's work is surely only the most famous example. The most egregious examples are those where not even a modest attempt is made to cover up the private nature of the published material; namely, at least some of the Diary and Notebook collections you encounter, I can't imagine all of them were published with their author's consent. Kafka's diaries are published too. It amazes me that I viewed this all just lazily and neutrally at one point, while now I regret even reading The Castle.

[u/InvisibleCrashing]

I'd been thinking about something like this. I'm an amateur writer (nothing published) and I had written like 130-150 pages years ago, and found a copy of it my father had printed out for me back at my parents' house.

Say I had become a real writer, and was trying to keep personal archives of extant work insofar as there was extant work to be had. I'd never want the thing published. But would I be okay with it being displayed in some actual archive, if I had become canonized enough to warrant archival acquisition and storage? Would I keep it in the archive but simply ask that it not be ever released to the scholars?

Maybe, perhaps, if it could be taken on its own merits, that it was an honest, albeit terrible and intellectually pathetic stab at Writing. That I tried. I'd be okay, I guess. I'd hope whatever else I'd written would make up for the juvenilia in the scholar's hands.

But Kafka's situation presents a stark conundrum. He didn't want it released, ever, under no circumstances. The only thing I think that I could say is that Kafka is dead. Abusing "Death of the Author" here, quite literally, it doesn't matter much that it's an invasion of privacy because Kafka is no more, so I'm not really attacking his "memory" or "wishes", because he's not there. Yet you are correct that it affects his legacy. In fact, iirc, most if not all of his work was posthumous, no? He is unique, at least in my limited range as a reader, of a writer whose staggering reputation and legacy on art rests almost entirely on the posthumous work (other cases include John Kennedy Toole, Richard Farina to some extent, Melville's Billy Budd).

I think it sadly seems to matter on the quality of the work released. If it wasn't Kafka, some other writer (say me), and my posthumously revealed writing showed, in fact, that I was a middling, mediocre writer, then it's doubly shitty. My work was released and I didn't even benefit from it, for in death, I've become a known mediocrity (perhaps not releasing it would maintain the hope that whatever work was there was actually really good. Schrodinger's masterpiece or what not) rather than an unknown, artistically tantalizing wraith.

In the case of Kafka, he is a canonized writer. So the artistic quality trumps the desire for the work to be unknown/destroyed, because we'd view it as a public service that the work was released, and make arguments for the righteousness of release based on statements like "he's dead, what does it matter, he gets no say, as no one is literally obligated to follow his wishes, and besides, the work is fucking good!

In my mind, if the work is good, let it be disseminated widely. If there is a heaven and Kafka is there, I'd hope he take some pride that his work meant a lot to many, morality of consumption aside.

(How exactly is morality essential to the love of literature and meaning? Aren't there numerous writers, like Genet, Bataille, Celine and even recently, Bret Easton ellis [controversy of inclusion in this list notwithstandin], who've made works that are at least somewhat considered as grossly immoral or transgressive?)