What
happened to published books that no longer can be found? What happened to unpublished or incomplete
manuscripts? A book speculates on the literary world that could have been.
It
is mind-boggling to think of all the ways completed works can get lost, not to
mention how some incomplete works never got finished. Look at what could do a book in:
·
Fire
·
Flood
·
War,
Revolution
·
Rodents
and parasites
·
Poor
storage (acid, sun, near moisture or heat)
·
Insanity
(leads to self-destruction of work)
·
Fear
(insecurity forces a book away)
·
Anger
(frustration or revenge drives one to destroy a book)
·
Prison
(confiscation)
·
Religious
persecution
·
Fear
of arrest
·
Book
burning and censorship
·
Storm
ravaged it.
·
Accidentally
thrown out.
·
Misplaced
and lost.
·
Political
unrest.
The Book of Lost Books: An Incomplete History of All the Great Books
You’ll Never Read
by Stuart Kelly is a wonderful attempt to delve into the lost writings of
famous writers.
Kelly
notes in his introduction: “From Shakespeare
to Sylvia Plath, Homer to Hemmingway, Dante to Ezra Pound, great writers had
written works I could not possess. The
entire history of literature was also their history of the lost literature.”
The
book explores what could have been if all the writings of Homer, Sophocles,
Ovid, Chaucer, Shakespeare, and others had survived the elements and circumstances
that forever destroyed some of their creations.
All
kinds of things could cause a manuscript to never get published, including:
The
author believes it shouldn’t see the light of day.
A
friend, family member, or lover suppresses it.
The
writer dies and the work goes missing.
The
author loses interest when it fails to get it published.
The
author can’t, for personal, legal, or physical reasons allow the book to be
published.
The
author gets ill or dies before its completion.
It
becomes politically, impossible to publish under the existing agreement.
Loss
through accident, fire, water, theft, civil unrest.
The
writer loses his mind – insanity, dementia or brain trauma.
How
many books were published but no longer exist?
How many completed manuscripts never saw the light of day? How many partial manuscripts never got
completed? These numbers are well into
the millions and probably exceed the total of existing books in print. There’s as much a history of the lost and
unpublished as there is of the published and preserved.
How
much different would the world be if we had access even to a fraction of these
lost or incomplete works? I guess that
depends on how much of a difference you feel books and literature impact our
lives.
On the other hand, to speculate on such things may be futile. Besides, we still have the possibility to
create all kinds of new works. Our
ability, theoretically, to write a book today that could have been written
centuries ago exists in each of us.
Sure, language and the world around us has changed immensely, but the
principle themes or concepts that could have been written about in the 14th
century could very well be written today.
The human condition has not changed.
We still depend on food and water, we still fight each other, we still
have governments, battle disease, seek purpose, have religion, love nature,
and copulate like animals.
We
should feel inspired to write the books that mean the most to us. What was published or lost or never published
is all in the rear view mirror of humanity.
Today’s writer starts with a clean slate to create, capture, and shape
the times we live in and to help us find relevance, hope and passion for the
world we navigate.
It’s
tantalizing to think of what could have been but the more interesting thing to
contemplate and ponder is what could be.
Can our writers of today shape a better world for tomorrow? The past is irreversible and the present is a
mere transition from what was to what will be.
It’s our chance to create anew and reinvent, to promulgate a world
better than it would otherwise be.
Perhaps
what’s lost permanently needs to remain there.
But what awaits us are unlimited possibilities when millions of writers
offer their words, ideas, and creations.
The graveyard of books that no longer are or never came to be is large,
but the universe of books-to-be and what they could do to shape our lives is
unlimited.
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