Going, Going, Gone - 5 Times Literary Works Disappeared
Banksy's painting self-destructed immediately after it sold at auction today. (Here's a CNN article link.) Banksy captioned his instagram photo with "Going, going, gone." That reminded us of the far worse ways that art can disappear, and not at the hands of its creator.
Ever wonder about literary theft?
Here's a summary of 5 times literary works were famously stolen...
- 5. Last year, a short prequel to Harry Potter, handwritten by J.K. Rowling, was stolen during a home burglary.
- 4. Ernest Hemingway's entire suitcase full of early manuscripts was stolen at a Parisian train station in 1922.
- 3. Frantz Kafka died in 1924, but his notebooks and letters were later stolen by the Nazis from Dora Diamant's home in Berlin. In the 90s the Kafka Project was launched to search for any documents still missing. (For a deep-dive into this subject, read Ellyne's Staff Pick Kafka's Last Trial.)
- 2. Walt Whitman's notebooks were stolen from the Library of Congress in 1942, when they were shipped away for safe-keeping during the war. 30 years later they turned up in an attempt to auction them at Sotheby's in New York.
- 1. One of Shakespeare's First Folios was stolen in 1998 from a library in England. A decade later, a man named Raymond Scott brought an "old English book" to the Folger Shakespeare Library in D.C. for an appraisal. They immediately recognized it as the stolen work. In 2010 Scott was convicted of smuggling the Folio out of England.
For a better summary with a couple more books, check out the Mental Floss's article from last year:
http://mentalfloss.com/article/501262/6-times-literary-works-were-stolen
Some of the greatest books of the 20th century were banned at one time. In 2018, themes of racism (
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The story definitely did not incite this particular teenager to rebel against authority and raise riot in school. Even 
The timing of all this is noteworthy. Fred Rogers' message of simple kindness and Just-The-Way-You-Are acceptance is clearly resonating in American culture right now. If you saw the excellent documentary Won't You Be My Neighbor, you were most likely struck by one of the film's most powerful scenes: Fred Rogers goes to Washington to testify before a Senate subcommittee on behalf of PBS. It's 1969 and committee chairman/curmudgeon Sen. John Pastore is ready for a fight in an attempt to decimate PBS' funding. But what you see in the archival footage is shocking. Even the meanest political ogre is visibly shaken by the gentle goodness that Rogers displays. That scene alone from the documentary shows with emotional clarity how our world craves the simplest acts of love and kindness.
Marielle Heller, director of next year's film You Are My Friend starring Tom Hanks as Rogers, says “It’s a story for our times, a story about kindness and family connection and trying to tap into our better self. God knows we need that right now!”
The Good Neighbor by Maxwell King (out September 4th) is the first full-length biography of Fred Rogers, and tries to convey why he has become such an enduring American icon. You can 
