LSAT 118 | Section 1 | Logical Reasoning: Q16

LR Question 16 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Literary critic: Often the heirs of a successful writer …

QUESTION TYPE: Weaken

CONCLUSION: Successful writers who decide not to publish a recently completed manuscript should destroy it ASAP.

REASONING: Some writers believe certain manuscripts are unworthy of publication and wouldn’t want them published. But also, heirs often publish unpublished manuscripts after a writer dies.

ANALYSIS: The critic is assuming that the writer’s decision not to publish a manuscript is usually a reliable indication that the manuscript should never be published.

But what if writers were wrong about their own work? Then destroying the manuscript could eliminate valuable literature.

A good answer will show that unpublished manuscripts may actually have substantial value despite the author’s own negative judgment.

Think about authors who hated works that later became classics. If that happens frequently, the critic’s advice starts looking pretty bad.

___________

1. A writer could be unrecognized during life and still correctly judge a particular manuscript as bad. This doesn’t directly address the advice about destroying unpublished manuscripts.
2. The fact that correspondence may become public doesn’t tell us whether manuscripts should be destroyed.
3. CORRECT. If successful writers are often too harsh in judging their recent work, then deciding not to publish does NOT reliably mean the manuscript is unworthy of publication. This seriously undermines the recommendation to destroy unpublished manuscripts.
4. This tells us many posthumously published books would eventually have been published by the author. But the critic’s advice concerns manuscripts the author had already decided not to publish. So this doesn’t tell us whether those decisions were good or bad.
5. The critic’s concern is that heirs publish manuscripts regardless of merit. Whether the heirs are qualified doesn’t really affect the central question of whether the manuscripts should be destroyed.