The Flotsam of Authorship

One of my perennial resolutions is to clear the clutter. However, if I were ever to become a famous writer (or merely just famous), I might come to regret acting on that resolution. Broker Ken Lopez sells the "flotsam of authorship" to libraries:

[Norman] Mailer sold his 1,062 boxes for $2.5 million in 2005 and died in 2007. In 2003, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein sold 83 Watergate boxes, also to the [University of Texas], for $5 million. After 20 years of marketing for the likes of William S. Burroughs (dead) and Peter Matthiessen (alive), Mr. Lopez puts prices for interesting paper piles at $30,000 to $300,000.

While the likely reason for inaction is lassitude, the article has come up with two convenient rationalizations for not cleaning up the detritus of creativity: 1) The piles of papers may be worth money some day; 2) Future researchers will be keenly interested in studying the processes of a unique mind. One such posterity-conscious author is Ronlyn Domingue [whose novel is ranked #504,217 in Amazon at this writing]:

Ms. Domingue, who is 43 and lives in Baton Rouge, has one published novel with two on the way. She writes in longhand, types it up, makes changes by hand, and dumps it all into a box in her closet marked "Archive." She has willed the box to Louisiana State University, her alma mater. "I never thought of asking for money for it," she says.

One of the advantages of being older than Ms. Domingue is that illusions about self are easier to recognize and dispel. The clutter resolution stays.  © 2013 Stephen Yuen