The late author Gabriel García Márquez (1927-2014) once said that the manuscript for his last novel, Until August, “doesn’t work” and that “it must be destroyed.” Now the novel has been published against his wishes. I love the work of García Márquez and would love to read this book. But I wonder if I owe him a duty to respect his wishes.—Martin Bunzl, La Jolla, Calif.
García Márquez may have said that the manuscript should be destroyed; the fact remains that he didn’t destroy it. The decision of whether to publish was, legally, for his sons to make, and they thought that by the time the elderly author decided against publishing the book, his memory had faded too much to make him a good judge. What’s the right call? Err on the side of preservation, I’d say. Although the wishes of the dead should carry weight, the interests of posterity count too. That’s why we publish the correspondence of figures who might never have imagined any eyes on their letters aside from the intended recipients’. Even when the unapproved work is weak, it can often teach us something worthwhile. As someone who loves García Márquez’s work, you’re bound to learn something by reading it.
—Adapted from “The Ethicist” in The New York Times Magazine