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My2cents
11-14-2011, 01:48 PM
Ever read any good ones (posthumously published incomplete novels)? I haven't until I read The Pale King by DFW. On the other hand, the fact that David Foster Wallace wrote endings that rarely if ever resolved themselves in the traditional sense may have something to do with its seeming satisfactoriness. Or it could be that when Wallace undertook a project, he did it on such a grand scale that even an incomplete novel had enough in it make interested readers happy. At any rate, The Pale King far exceeded Bouvard & Pecuchet, The Last Tycoon, The Garden of Eden, and The Original of Laura--the other notable posthumously published incompelete novels that I've read.
Desolation
11-14-2011, 02:11 PM
One word: Kafka.
cafolini
11-14-2011, 02:15 PM
One word: Kafka.

True. But Kafka might have had his motives for not finishing it. And probably they were correct.
OrphanPip
11-14-2011, 02:48 PM
Woolf's Between the Acts is quite good, but it's not entirely unfinished, it was going through the final editing stages when she killed herself.
Darcy88
11-14-2011, 04:14 PM
One word: Kafka.

I just finished The Trial yesterday. I thought it was well done but I don't see in it justification for all the praise and admiration Kafka receives. I'm assuming the fault is with me and am going to check out some of his other works before I pass judgement.
Gregory Samsa
11-14-2011, 06:18 PM
"The First Man" by Albert Camus.
"2666" by Roberto Bolano (almost complete).
Desolation
11-14-2011, 06:30 PM
I just finished The Trial yesterday. I thought it was well done but I don't see in it justification for all the praise and admiration Kafka receives. I'm assuming the fault is with me and am going to check out some of his other works before I pass judgement.

Different things work for different people...I think that's about all there is to it.

Personally, I love Kafka, and I loved The Trial for what it was...But it had some pretty huge gaps in it that made it kind of unsatisfying.

If I had to guess the appeal of Kafka, I'd say that it was his amazing ability to show the horrors of life through the mundane. That's just my guess, though.
My2cents
11-14-2011, 09:45 PM
One word: Kafka.

The King of posthumously published incomplete novels--has to be. One of these I'll get around to his novels. I haven't because Kafka's seems too melancholy for my literary tastes.
My2cents
11-14-2011, 09:54 PM
"2666" by Roberto Bolano (almost complete).

Was it really incomplete? It reads complete, and yeah I had a blast reading it.
L.M. The Third
11-15-2011, 02:45 AM
Austen's "The Watsons", although this was a work she simply put aside and never finished, many years before her death. At the moment I'm ranking it above the work she was working on before her death, "Sanditon", because the characters in the latter leaned more towards caricature.
mal4mac
11-15-2011, 01:30 PM
Dickens - Drood
My2cents
11-15-2011, 03:55 PM
Woolf's Between the Acts is quite good, but it's not entirely unfinished, it was going through the final editing stages when she killed herself.

Gives me an idea for another thread: The most interesting circumstances to a writer's death whether voluntary or involuntary or true or apocryphal. For me that would have to be Scott Fitgzerald conking out while eating chocolate.
mal4mac
11-18-2011, 10:29 AM
Gives me an idea for another thread: The most interesting circumstances to a writer's death whether voluntary or involuntary or true or apocryphal. For me that would have to be Scott Fitgzerald conking out while eating chocolate.

Dickens again - passing away due to over-exertions through acting out his creations on-stage. Death through art! Who said he wasn't a romantic...

Tolstoy's strange, King Lear like, exodus from his rich family home, to die in a distant railway station, in the Russian wastes, is also very dramatic. Was recently made into a good film...
My2cents
11-18-2011, 02:47 PM
Dickens again - passing away due to over-exertions through acting out his creations on-stage. Death through art! Who said he wasn't a romantic...

Tolstoy's strange, King Lear like, exodus from his rich family home, to die in a distant railway station, in the Russian wastes, is also very dramatic. Was recently made into a good film...

For sheer dramatics I have to go with Pushkin.
mal4mac
11-19-2011, 03:04 PM
Shelley drowned when his schooner, Don Juan, sank. Some say it was a deliberate act by one of Byron's enemies...

Does Trotsky count as a writer?

Perhaps more interesting are writers who had 'near death' experiences, but lived to tell the tale. Dostoevsky made great use of his mock execution (see "The Idiot", for example ...)

Dickens was involved in a bad rail accident in the year of his death...

Saint-Exupéry had an interesting air crash in the Sahara desert - see Wikipedia.
My2cents
11-20-2011, 09:57 AM
Shelley drowned when his schooner, Don Juan, sank. Some say it was a deliberate act by one of Byron's enemies...

Does Trotsky count as a writer?

Perhaps more interesting are writers who had 'near death' experiences, but lived to tell the tale. Dostoevsky made great use of his mock execution (see "The Idiot", for example ...)

Dickens was involved in a bad rail accident in the year of his death...

Saint-Exupéry had an interesting air crash in the Sahara desert - see Wikipedia.

Near deaths...hmm...all I could think of is Hemingway surviving a plane crash.

As to dramatic deaths, there's also Christopher Marlowe's though that's more on the ghoulish side than the cinematically romantic.