Someone
gave me a copy of an interesting and visually appealing book about the
buildings that were designed but never actually constructed for New York City,
called Never Built New York, by Greg
Goldin and Sam Lubell, with a foreword from Freedom Tower architect Daniel
Liebeskind. It inspired me to think
about the many millions of book ideas people have developed but never turned
into a published book. What might our
book landscape really look like if writers acted on the ideas that filled their
minds?
In
the case of Never Built New York, the
back cover copy perfectly captures the notion of what could have been, that the
city would certainly have been different if any or all of these drawn-up
projects came to be:
“New
York towers among world capitals, but the city we know might have reached even
more stellar heights, or burrowed into more destructive depths, had the ideas
pictured in the minds of its greatest dreamers progressed beyond the drawing
board and taken form in stone, steel, and glass. What is wonderfully elegant and grand might
easily have been ingloriously grandiose; what is blandly unremarkable might
have become delightfully provocative or humanely inspiring.”
It’s
always hard to play the “what-could-have been game” in any aspect of life, but
it does cause me to wonder aloud, what would the world and the book industry
be like today if books that were conceived but never completed and published
had seen the light of day?
What
if there was a book that exposed secrets about something or someone important
had been published? What if a novel
filled with some unique ideas actually got green-lighted? What if a book that espoused some unique
philosophical theories actually circulated?
Would any of these change how the world is or how we live our lives?
If
one believes that books can and do influence society, on a collective and
individual level, then one has to support the notion that some number of
unpublished books, if they’d been published, would’ve contributed greatly to
how the world functions. New theories,
new facts, new ideas new stories – this is what the book world feeds off of.
But
perhaps there’s a reason why all of these book conceptualizations that seemed
so fascinating upon their creation didn’t come to fruition. Perhaps there were legitimate reasons,
including:
·
The
author lacked the ability to write a book that lived up to their ideas.
·
A
better book ended up getting published thus, negating the need or marketplace
for the other book.
·
Something
changed, from the time of concept to the time the book should’ve come out and
thus, it was determined that views, needs, or lives had changed so much that
the book would no longer be relevant if published.
·
The
writer came up with a better idea that sidetracked his or her ability to pursue.
·
The
initial idea for a book may have come from an error or a lie, in which case,
the writer felt the book’s foundation was undermined.
Other
issues could be at play:
Someone
threatened or incentivized the writer not to publish it.
·
The
author fell ill, became disabled or died and couldn’t bring the idea to
fruition.
·
The
writer had a conflict of interest that didn’t allow him or her to actually pen
the book he dreamed up.
·
Fire,
flood or some other calamity caused the writer to lose the manuscript, leaving
the depressed author to abandon the project.
·
The
book was written but the publisher, who kept the rights to the book, decided to
kill the book.
There
are as many reasons why books don’t get completed as there are why they
do. Sometimes authors lose interest on
the topic or cover that the execution is harder than drafting the
idea. Or they determine the book won’t
be as good they’d hoped or it won’t be commercially viable. Somewhere between their lightbulb moment and
the time they killed the book, they were fueled by their aspirations and
ideas. But somewhere along the way they
decided to cease work on it.
That’s
the creative process at play.
But
if some of these books actually had been published, undoubtedly they would’ve
inspired not only people’s lives but
other writers to create more books. So
with the loss of the unpublished books come generations of other would-be
writers with books that could-have-been but never-were.
It’s
like trying to imagine what the world would be like if the tens of millions of
aborted fetuses since Roe vs. Wade were instead allowed to be born -- and then to
wonder about the millions of babies the unborn would have spawned. No doubt some of them would’ve been writers,
too.
The
thing with books, though, is if one writer decides to abort his or her book
idea, another writer can freely publish it, assuming he or she conceives of it. Plus, the writer who decides not to publish a
book idea at one point in his career may decide later on to publish it or to
use parts of it for a new, better book.
Maybe
the world is for the better without the books that almost were but didn’t actually come to be. Not every idea is worthy of
publication and some books just aren’t needed.
But I can’t help but wonder, like the book about buildings that never came
to be, would we be living in a much different place if even a handful of the
book ideas came to fruition?
Maybe
this will lead to a new book – or will this idea just go away just as millions
of others have?
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