The fate of Prince's memoir is uncertain

Performing during a Super Bowl halftime show.
Prince performs during the halftime show at the Super Bowl XLI football game at Dolphin Stadium in Miami in 2007. The performance, he said last month, would be included in his forthcoming memoir.
Chris O'Meara | AP

Every week, The Thread tackles your book questions, big and small. Ask a question now.

This week's question: What will happen with Prince's memoir?

Prince delighted fans last month when he asked the crowd at a New York nightclub: "You still read books, right?"

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That was his way of breaking the news that he had a memoir in the works, tentatively titled "The Beautiful Ones." It was scheduled to be released in the fall of 2017 through Spiegel & Grau, an imprint of Random House.

"We're starting from the beginning from my first memory, and hopefully we can go all the way up to the Super Bowl," he said, referring to his epic performance at the 2007 Super Bowl halftime show.

Rolling Stone instantly proclaimed the book "one of the most anticipated memoirs in music history." Critics' hopes were high: Prince's editor at Spiegel & Grau was Chris Jackson, who had previously worked with Ta-Nehisi Coates on the award-winning "Between the World and Me."

After Prince's death last week, however, the future of the book is uncertain. His publisher had no comment.

Esther Newberg, one of his literary agents, previously told the Wall Street Journal that he had already submitted 50 pages. He was working on the book with Dan Piepenbring, a web editor with the Paris Review.

https://twitter.com/DanPiepenbring/status/724675147840524289

Whether enough of a draft exists to move forward remains to be seen.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.