Unpublished Patrick White novel to not be unpublished

First a cache of Dashiell Hammett stories is uncovered among the late author’s papers in Texas. Then a novel by the late Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño gets serialized in the pages of the Paris Review. Now news breaks that a novel by Patrick White, considered by many to be Australia’s finest writer, will be published in 2012, the centenary of the author’s birth. Called The Hanging Garden, the novel was among a trove of papers that literary executor Barbara Mobbs was instructed to burn after the author’s death. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, Mobbs vacillated for more than a decade before deciding that the book deserves to see the light of day.

From the SMH:

Last year, Sydney University academics Margaret Harris and Elizabeth Webby had the handwritten manuscript transcribed with funding from an Australian Research Council grant.

Ms Mobbs had the typescript in January. She read, consulted, and read again.

The decision was made about 10 days ago.

Just who will publish The Hanging Garden is now up in the air after Random House jumped the gun by announcing its appearance.

In deciding not to destroy White’s work despite the author’s stated demands, Mobbs joins the likes of Max Brod, who allowed Franz Kafka’s work to appear following the author’s death, and Dimitri Nabokov, who decided to overrule his father Vladimir’s wishes and give permission for the author’s final, unfinished book, The Original of Laura, to be published last year.

Bookmarks: Bolano, Meyer, and more

• The mythology of Roberto Bolaño’s hard-knock life is starting to crumble: his widow says he was never a heroin addict, and others say he was not in Chile during the Pinochet coup.
• Slate takes a quick look around at the state of the book business.
• Russell Smith offers some reading recommendations.
• BookNet Canada asks: are e-readers’ claims to a greater greenness overstated?
• Stephenie Meyer still hasn’t gone back to that novel that got leaked; she’s now working on something else.

Bookmarks: More layoffs at Random House U.S., the credit crunch, and Richard Price’s behind

Sundry links from the Web:

• More wreckage at Random House U.S.: Pantheon Books publisher Janice Goldklang is laid off after 25 years with the company.
• How well do you know crime fiction? Take the Ceeb’s online quiz to find out.
• You know that heart-wrenching YouTube video, the one where two shaggy-haired hippies are reunited with their long-lost pet lion? Apparently, their story was recorded in a 1972 non-fiction book called A Lion Called Christian, now the sixth most requested out-of-print book on Bookfinder.com.
• They say that American pop culture is always more inventive when a Republican is in office. Now, The Independent asks whether the credit crunch has a silver lining for literature.
• If 2008 was the year of Roberto Bolaño, will 2009 be the year of Richard Yates?
• Richard Price threatens to bare his ass.