Thinking Outside the Box

I read with growing disappointment, as none of my favorite authors were mentioned, this article entitled  As Trash Goes, Authors' Clutter in the Right Hands Is Very Bankable in the WSJ by Barry Newman. It's a fun article to read, more fun I'm sure if your favorite authors are Faulkner, Philip Roth or Ronlyn Domingue. It discusses how the flotsam and jetsam of an authors life are treated and sold after they die.

The passage that caught my eye I have pasted below. It's not that I particularly like Rushdie, but the fact that he let Emory sort his own mess was particularly ingenious, especially in that he later used it for his own ends.

Emory University, 65 miles away in Atlanta, can. In 2006, for an undisclosed amount, Salman Rushdie sold it 200 "falling apart, crappy cardboard boxes," as he said at the collection's opening in 2010. After Emory's archivists put his "mess" in order, Mr. Rushdie capitalized on their tidiness to research his own 2012 memoir.

Thankfully, worrying about my own detritus and how it will be treated once I pass is not a concern I carry around with me day to day.