Lawrence Block - The Burglar in the Rye

She never responded. He wrote a second letter, and had no sooner dropped it in the mail than he realized she could add these letters to the auction. The idea infuriated him, and he didn’t write again.

“And there was nothing he could do,” I told Carolyn. “The law’s very clear when it comes to letters. They belong to the recipient. If I send you a letter, it’s yours. You can keep it, you can tear it up, you can sell it to somebody else.”

“First I’d have to find someone who wanted it, Bern.”

“Well, if I was Gully Fairborn, you wouldn’t have a lot of trouble. He’s an important writer, and he’s such a man of mystery that his letters are particularly desirable. So you could sell them if you wanted. About the only thing you couldn’t do is publish them.”

“Why not, if they belong to me?”

“The letters as physical property belong to the recipient. As literary property, title remains with the sender. He owns the copyright.”

“Wait a minute. I know Fairborn ’s a couple of beads off plumb, Bern, but don’t tell me he sent his letters to the Library of Congress to have them copyrighted.”

“He doesn’t have to. Anything you write is automatically protected by copyright, whether or not you register it in Washington. Fairborn retains the copyright to his letters, and he can keep them from being published. In fact he did just that a couple of years ago.”

“Anthea Landau tried to publish his letters?”

“No, but there was a fellow who wrote a biography of Fairborn -an unauthorized biography, obviously. There were a few people around who’d received purple envelopes over the years, and some of them were willing to let the writer read them. He was going to quote at length from them in his book, until Fairborn went to court and put a stop to it.”

“The guy couldn’t even quote excerpts from the letters?”

“The court ruled that he could report on their contents, because that was a matter of fact, but he couldn’t quote without infringing on Fairborn ’s copyright. He could paraphrase, but not in great detail, and the upshot of it all was that he couldn’t write the book he’d set out to write, and the one he wound up with wasn’t one too many people wanted to read.”

She thought about it. “If nobody can publish his letters,” she said, “what does Fairborn care who owns them? What difference does it make to him if they sit in Anthea Landau’s files or in some collector’s library? If they can’t be published…”

“But they can. Sort of.”

“You just said…”

“I know what I said. You couldn’t quote them in a book, or even paraphrase them in great detail. But you could quote from them and give a detailed description of their contents in an auction catalog.”

“How come?”

“Because you’ve got a right to furnish a description of goods offered for sale. And you’ve also got a right to show the goods to prospective buyers, so anyone who wanted could turn up at Sotheby’s the week before the auction and read through Fairborn ’s letters. And the press could report on their contents.”

“Would they bother?”

“With all the mystery surrounding Fairborn, and with all the interest in the letters? I think they might. They’d certainly cover the sale and report on the selling price.”

“More publicity for Fairborn.”

“And he’s the one author in America who doesn’t want it. He makes B. Traven look like a media slut, and now his private correspondence is up for grabs to the highest bidder. And sooner or later it’ll be published in full.”

“When the copyright runs out?”

“When Fairborn dies. It’ll still be protected, but his heirs would have to go to court, and who knows if they’ll bother? Even if they do, the courts are less impressed with the need to protect a man’s privacy when he’s not around to notice one way or the other. The only way Fairborn can be positive those letters won’t be published is if he gets hold of them and burns them.”

“So why doesn’t he go to the auction and buy them himself?”

“He’s not one to show his face in public.”

“Why not, if nobody knows what he looks like? But he wouldn’t have to show up in person. He could deputize someone to bid for him. A lawyer, say.”

“He could do that,” I allowed. “If he could afford it.”

“How much money are we talking about, Bern?”

I shrugged. “I couldn’t even tell Alice how much her inscribed first of Nobody’s Baby is worth. I couldn’t begin to guess what a hundred letters would bring.”

“A hundred letters?”

“Well, she was his agent for four or five books. Some of the letters are probably cut-and-dried-here’s the manuscript, where’s the check?-but there are probably longer letters that shed light on his creative process and provide personal glimpses of the man behind the books.”

“Ballpark it for me, Bern.”

“I really can’t,” I said. “I haven’t seen the letters and I don’t know just how revealing they’ll turn out to be. And I’ve got no way of knowing who might show up the day of the sale. I’m sure there’ll be a couple of university libraries bidding. If the right private collectors come around, and if their pockets are deep enough, the prices could go through the roof. And don’t ask me how far through the roof, or even where the roof’s located, because I don’t know. I can’t imagine they’ll bring less than ten thousand dollars, or more than a million, but that doesn’t really narrow it down.”

“And Fairborn ’s not rich?”

“Not as rich as you’d think. Nobody’s Baby made a lot of money, and still earns steady royalties, but none of his books since then have amounted to much in sales. He keeps trying new things and won’t write the same book twice, or even the same kind of book. He always gets published, because how can you not publish Gulliver Fairborn? But his recent books haven’t made money, for him or his publishers.”

“Are the new books any good, Bern?”

“I’ve read most of them,” I said, “although I’ve missed a few along the way. And they’re not bad, and they may even be better novels than Nobody’s Baby. They’re certainly more mature work. But they don’t grab you the way that first book did. According to Alice, Fairborn doesn’t care how the books sell, or if they sell. He barely cares if they’re published, just so he can get up each morning and write what he wants to write.”

“He could make money if he wanted to, couldn’t he?”

“Sure. He could write Nobody’s Toddler or Nobody’s Adolescent. He could go on tour with it and give readings on college campuses. Or he could sit back and sell film rights to Nobody’s Baby, which he’s always refused to consider. There are lots of things he could do, but not if he wants to live his life in peace and privacy.”

“So he can’t buy the letters back.”

“He tried to, remember? Landau didn’t even answer his letter. And he can’t afford to pay what they’ll bring at auction.”

“I get the picture,” she said. “And I guess that’s where you come into it, huh, Bern?”

“It’s really a shame,” I’d told Alice. “You would think lawyers could do something, wouldn’t you? I guess the best he can do is hope the letters wind up with someone who’ll keep the public away from him.”

“There would still be the auction catalog.”

“True.”

“And the newspaper stories.”

“It’ll blow over eventually,” I said, “but so will a tornado, and your trailer park never looks the same afterward. There ought to be something somebody can do.”

“Perhaps there is.”

“Oh?”