Shakespeare's neglect?

In Paul Collins' "The Book of William," which Nicholas A. Basbanes reviewed in Wednesday's L.A. Times, we learn about the highly sought First Folio of 1623, a collection of Shakespeare's plays that never would have taken shape if it had been left up to the Bard. Collins writes how scholars are astonished by Shakespeare's neglect of his own work. "How," these scholars wonder, "could a man throw everything he'd done into the abyss ... and not leave his own manuscripts behind?"

Collins offers this commonsense explanation:

Scholars wonder at this; but not, I think, working writers. Anyone who must live off their words -- and I mean live off them, in fear of life and landlord from one story to the next -- is by necessity unsentimental about their old work. The stuff rather piles up. After a few years you don't even feel much kinship to it: you have moved on to the next book, the next play, the next story, the next fee, the next month's rent. An artist must keep his momentum, his ability to move on to the next profitable work. Shakespeare had a family to support and a business to run, and his business just happened to involve a great deal of writing....

At the blog Gumbo Writer, Angie Ledbetter offers some thoughts on whether or not to keep one's old work in a recent interview with Harvey Stanbrough. In response to Sylvia Plath's opinion that "nothing stinks like a pile of unpublished writing," Stanbrough argues that some writing just needs to sit around and gestate a while. I think he misses the point -- Plath was talking about finished work, not drafts -- but it's still a good issue to consider.

What do you think? Are you keeping a finished novel in the desk drawer that is going to stun readers one day, or are did it go into the recycle bin?

-- Nick Owchar

Photo: Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times

Comments

[Angie Ledbetter]

Thanks for the link.

I'm revising my ms right now. And it will never go in the recycling bin.

[Harvey Stanbrough]

Mr Owchar, I understand the need for brevity in such a short column, but just so you know, I was talking not only about "drafts" and pieces, but also about finished works of fiction, nonfiction (essays), and poetry that simply haven't yet found a home. Some haven't met with the right publisher or it simply isn't their time, meaning I've moved on to something else until the right market rears its head. And yes, of course, even "finished" works sometimes have something left to their gestation period. Thanks for the mention though. I hope your readers take your final question as a challenge.

[Lorenzo Squarf]

The greatest novel in the history of the word incorporates autobiography, fiction, literary astonishmentos, thunderbolts of insight, hilarity... and lots of other stuff... has already been written. By me. Neither the world nor I are ready to publish it. When I think of what everyone is missing I sigh. "Oh, the humanity!" And then I giggle. William Shakespeare was God come to earth cleverly disguised as a writer. Why, that deity has provided gainful employment to many thousands of otherwise unemployable individuals! English Lit students know what I am talking about as they struggle with the i before e rule. I have it on the highest authority that Big Bill had to suppress his desire to go gothic on us. Yup. He buried his snarls and growls and seethings under a patina of the perfect use of "shall" and will." Only God can do that; I, on the other hand, am fearless in the use of "gonna." Did you pick up on my utterly perfect us of the semi-colon?
-Lorenzo Q. Squarf, Flamekeeper of Western Civilization
squarf@bellsouth.com - literary agents only. Kew!