My uncle wrote fiction on the west coast of North America for many years. When he died his wife looked through the two large wooden filing cabinets in his stone basement office. She was at a loss about what to do. It was full of scraps, starts, middles, ends. A few selections seemed almost completed. Each project was in a separate file and each attempt, edit, was dated and in order. Taking a step back one afternoon I sat over a coffee and thought ... in one sense he seemed incapable of making decisions but that a lot of the work was actually very comfortable in a shattered state and seemed determined to remain so. Quite a bit also appeared destined to be perfomed on stage. 

 

I said to his wife let's put a random selection up online. That's not really publishing it and besides he's dead so what the hell he can't object. She laughed and said well its a right old confusuion. He always called it terrifying. A lot of it is probably very offensive. I mean it was back then and I can't imagine now.

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I asked the advice of a friend who knew my uncle, a writer of very good fiction living in the northwest. He said, "His stuff always gave me the feeling that under the surface life is an out of control madness but it never seemed to bother him. A madness of complete confusion all cultures hide. So, humorously, I'm not surprised the cabinets were like  ... that."