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On Dead Authors
Deadness is the most exquisite quality an author can possess.
There is a certain flare and penchant for drama that we only allow an author after they’ve died. A particular style of storytelling is reserved for the storyteller that has become a character in a story themselves. Life is too rife with thoughts of pragmatism for us to endure, in reality, the characters from our favorite tales. The flamboyance of a Wilde or the passion of a Nietzsche would have been laughable in person. They first had to become characters in someone else’s book, namely the history books, for us to allow them their full glory.
Is it any wonder that so many of the genius authors of what are now considered classics lived in squalor and died without recognition? They were not before their time; there is no particular time for them. They existed entirely in advance of their funerals, an event marking their introduction to the only literary community to which they could truly belong. Some works take their first breath of life when their author takes their last. Any author of sufficient worth only reaches their highest heights when they are laid low. The best career move for a truly talented author is to make a manager of the undertaker and assign the position of agent to infinite posterity.
