February 19, 2015

Beyond Harper Lee: This Season’s Hottest Literary Rediscoveries

by

Definitely not a draft.

Definitely not a draft.

Yesterday’s announcement of the publication of a newly discovered book by Dr. Seuss has confirmed what Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman only hinted at: rediscoveries are the most exciting thing in publishing. Get gone, Gone Girl. No one cares, E. L. James! The hot new thing is minor, usually unfinished books by dead or near-dead writers!

We at Melville House have never let a trend pass us by (Remember our line of Twilight fan fiction? Oh, you don’t? Well, it was definitely real.), and over the last few days, our editors have been hard at work acquiring some remarkable new titles for our Fall 2015 list. All of these books, long thought to be lost or wholly nonexistent, are essential works of literature, which we are proud to be publishing with great dignity.

This is truly what publishing is all about.

Eirene by Homer: In this sequel to The Odyssey, Odysseus and Penelope settle back into married life. But home isn’t quite what it used to be—with all of Ithaca’s other suitors and sailors dead, and the women growing restless, temptation is everywhere for Odysseus. Meanwhile, his PTSD and violent flashbacks threaten not only the couple’s sleeping habits, but also their lives. Can the marriage survive?

Catcher in the Ivy by J.D. Salinger: After beginning a Ritalin regimen, Catcher turns his life around and is accepted into Harvard. But after a complication with his HMO, Catcher’s prescription runs out, threatening his chance to become a Rhodes Scholar.

I Definitely Hung Out with Alex Malarkey and Colton Burpo in Heaven by God: Originally written nearly 5,000 years ago, God’s first work of nonfiction in nearly two centuries (his last bestseller was The Book of Mormon, published in 1830) is a striking book that anticipated—and strongly refutes—the recent controversy over books published by authors who claim to have been to heaven. Writing with his usual flair for the dramatic, God makes a powerful case for the legitimacy of Malarkey and Burpo’s accounts. This is a hugely consquential work from one of our most beloved writers.

The Mahogany Desk by Henry James: In this once-lost manuscript, an ornate American-made desk is simultaneously attracted and repelled by decadent European furniture.

One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish by Adolf Hitler: Possibly the most uncanny coincidence in the history of letters, Hitler’s One Fish Two Fish was written 40 years before Dr. Seuss’s, yet the two books are exactly the same, down to the word. Hitler would later expand on the short work’s themes of counting and categorizing in Mein Kampf.

The Gutenberg Scientology Pamphlet by Johannes Gutenberg: Gutenberg’s intense Christian faith led to landmark printing of the Gutenberg Bible. But the printer’s faith was soon shaken when two young, fresh-faced missionaries asked him if he was happy. After he was hooked up to a primitive e-meter (which was characterized by a strange whooshing sound, followed by a dull, low-impact thud), Gutenberg converted to Scientology and produced his long-awaited follow-up: a pamphlet about how apothecaries were the root of all evil.

I’m So Drunk, Bro by Jack Kerouac: This autobiographical novel, written late in Jack Kerouac’s life, was written in just six days. Written as a stream-of-conscious rant, Kerouac lashes out at every woman around him, while desperately searching for a bro to get hammered with. Despite being relatively unknown for the last sixty years, it’s incredibly important and is seen by many as being the major influence for Tucker Max’s magnum opus, I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell.

Swann’s Way Revisited by Marcel Proust: A recently discovered box of the Proust’s manuscripts includes this final volume of In Search of Lost Time. In the book, it is revealed that the previous seven volumes were all a dream of the narrator’s maid, Françoise.

Lord Tim by Joseph Conrad: Believed to be a follow-up to Lord Jim, this novel follows a sailor who does everything right—his biggest concern is occasionally having to miss church to attend one of his beautiful, charming children’s soccer games. Lord Tim reflects Conrad’s lifelong obsession with kind, warmhearted characters who sail through life with ease.

Please Don’t Publish This—It’s an Unfinished Fragment that is Absolutely Inappropriate for Publication. When I Die, I’d Like this Non-Book to be Burned by Roberto Bolaño: A late masterpiece of metafiction, Please Don’t Publish This is the forty-fifth of forty-five essential posthumously published works by the heroic Chilean writer. Though Bolaño left no instructions for the book’s publication, it’s clear that he would have wanted to see it published in exactly this form, as a standalone work.

Spring Breakers by Philip Roth: Shortly after Portnoy’s Complaint was published to great acclaim and controversy in 1969, Roth began to draft a sequel that finds Portnoy abandoning psychoanalysis once and for all and flying to Daytona Beach, Florida, where he rents a large house and frolics with young men and women who are on their spring break. At the end of the novel (which Roth decided to shelve permanently after the success of his more serious, self-consciously literary works in the early 1980s, but which we have convinced the Wylie Agency to let us publish (thanks, Andrew Wylie!)), Portnoy becomes a local real estate magnate.

The Last Testament by God: In this final testament, a trilogy recently discovered in the back of a burned-down Sbarro, a young man discovers that life as he knows it is an illusion. To see through to reality and reach his potential, however, he must overcome his insecurities while fulfilling his destiny to free his enslaved people from their shackles. Along the way, his strength and will are tested by a series of foes, including agents and sentinels from the machine world.

The Son Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway: Jake Barnes regains the use of his penis.

 

Mark Krotov and Alex Shephard are Melville House employees. Eric Jett occasionally contributes to MobyLives and to Melville House. Mark and Alex are friends and Alex and Eric are friends but Mark and Eric are not friends. Yet.

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