Literary critic: Often the heirs

Answer choices

1. A

   No Impact5% picked this

   Some writers whose work becomes both popular and respected after they die received no literary

   This answer just tells us that some authors don't become famous during their lives, but after their death their work becomes popular. This has nothing to do with whether or not a successful writer should destroy manuscripts that aren't going to be published (these writers aren't "successful" until after they're dead).

   5%
2. B

   No Impact: correspondence vs. manuscripts5% picked this

   Writers who achieve a certain degree of fame can expect that some of their personal correspondence will become

   This is talking about how a successful writer will probably have people who want to publish some of the personal letters they wrote, after they've died. If anything, this would strengthen the author's argument. It's establishing that there will be a desperate craving among the living for any other writing this now-dead writer left behind. That would be all the more reason to get rid of manuscripts you find embarrassing.

   5%
3. C

   Correct74% picked this

   Most successful writers’ judgments of their recently completed work is unnecessarily harsh and is

   Why this is right

   This shows a reason why it would be bad to immediately destroy a manuscript you decide not to publish. You just spent the last two years writing a manuscript for a novel. You decide to sit down and read what you've written, start to finish. You're annoyed at how predictable your writing style is. You hate how often you use that one word/phrase. You're convinced that this work has nothing important to say and that people will make fun of you for having written it. The author thinks you should immediately throw the manuscript in the fire and delete all electronic copies of it, so that it's irrecoverable. This answer is saying, "Remember -- you always tend to hate your stuff when it's too fresh. Normally, when you walk away from something you wrote for a month or a year or so, you see it with fresh eyes and think, Hey, this is pretty good!" Artists are usually their own harshest critics, and so if they followed this policy of immediately destroying anything that didn't seem up to publishable standards, they would potentially trash works that were actually quite good (even by their standards). The answer is saying that when successful writers revisit something they've written later, they often revise their assessment of it upwards. The word "most" gives this answer a lot of impact!

   Skill tested: Weaken · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

   74%
4. D

   Weak Impact13% picked this

   Many posthumously published books would have been published by the author had

   This slightly undermines the argument by saying that it's common (at least a handful of cases, 'many') for a writer to die and leave behind a manuscript that they would have published had they lived. This argument was never claiming that all unpublished manuscripts at the time of death are ones that authors would not have published. This answer might be dealing with cases in which a writer recently completes a manuscript, seems to like it, but dies before they have a chance to publish it. The conclusion is talking about cases in which a writer recently completes a manuscript, decides they don't like it enough to publish, and then dies.

   13%
5. E

   Too Weak: some4% picked this

   Some heirs of successful writers do not consider themselves qualified to judge the merits of

   This tries to weaken by making it seem like a writer needn't worry about their heirs publishing manuscripts posthumously, since the heirs wouldn't consider themselves qualified to judge whether the manuscript is good enough as a literary work. But the quantifier "some" just means "at least one". It doesn't move the needle here to say that, "there's at least one heir who doesn't feel qualified to judge the literary merits". The author wasn't saying, "All heirs will publish anything that's leftover", just that "often heirs to decide to publish something that's leftover". In addition, it's not like the heir has to consider themselves qualified to judge that this leftover manuscript has enough literary merit to publish, in order for them to publish. The heir could simply be interested in making more money for the estate that they profit from. The heir could be thinking, "I don't care whether this manuscript is good or bad. I just care that Random House is going to give us $1 million for it!"

   4%