Harper Lee to write second book

[ghostjmf]

I think the New Yorker review gets it even righter than I did:

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/ ... me-alabama


To synopsize, if you don't wanna read the whole thing: In the end of this review the reviewer points out that the trashing of Atticus in Watchman doesn't make sense if you don't already know who Atticus is, & that 1st novels are usually long, often overly long, in laying out who the characters in them are. But Watchman scants this for all its characters. We only feel we know them because we do know them (except for the few new ones), from Mockingbird. Reviewer thinks that Lee may have written a version of Watchman 1st, but what we're given here isn't it; that what we're reading is what she returned to after Mockingbird to shape into the "race novel" she once put on a list as projected to write.


I know there was a "race novel" projected from the list given in an after-Mockingbird letter to the NYC friends who had funded the sabbatical from work in which she wrote whatever novel she did write which won her the publishing contract that eventually produced Mockingbird. This list is shown in the PBS documentary, though reviewer doesn't cite PBS doc as list source; there were a lot of other novels she also never wrote, that we know of, on that list.


This makes perfect sense to me.

[danielh41]

I just posted this on my Facebook page, and I thought I would put it here too:

So I just finished Harper Lee's Go Set a Watchman. I could tell that it was written before To Kill a Mockingbird, even though it is set 20 years later. There are references to the Tom Robinson trial that was central to TKAM, but in this version, Atticus won an acquital for the unnamed black teenager accused of raping a white girl. That particular episode became much more poignant when Ms. Lee adapted it for To Kill a Mockingbird.

The day of the book's release (which was only the day before yesterday), the Internet was abuzz with stories that Atticus had become a racist. The thing we have to remember is that this book was finished in 1957. Nowadays, just about the worst thing a person could be accused of being is a racist, something that wasn't true 55 years ago. Go Set a Watchman makes a much less subtle statemet on race relations than To Kill a Mockingbird ever did, and the attitude of this Atticus Finch (who is not the same character as in To Kill a Mockingbird) was central to that statement.

I do think that Go Set a Watchman is a less complete, less fulfilling, and more fractured novel than To Kill a Mockingbird. But then again, To Kill a Mockingbird is a classic. Go Set a Watchman provides one with more than a little insight into the making of that classic, but it can't really stand on its own, I don't think. It's still worth reading though.

[Vandal]

“Go Set a Watchman,” the second novel from “To Kill a Mockingbird” author Harper Lee, has sold a million copies, publisher HarperCollins said Monday.

Story

[ghostjmf]

I've been reading a lot of reaction to Watchman. One thing many "official" & also informal reviewers miss, even though knowing Lee modeled a lot of fictional stuff on her real life, is that in real life her brother Ed(win), an Armed Forces officer as an adult, with a/wife & two kids, dropped dead of an aneurism when Lee was around the age JL is in Watchman. So brother Jem not being in Watchman, except in flashbacks, is not a cop-out. Maybe his death still hurt too much when Lee wrote Watchman. We should be glad we got to meet & know him in Mockingbird.


HL has a cousin, still living, who's been interviewed about Watchman; this cousin, Jennings? Something, has an arm that's deformed in the way Jem's broken arm winds up in Mockingbird.


A lot of reviewers point out Jem, being older, is a far more reliable narrator than Scout. And takes even the saintly Atticus of Mockingbird to task for many things he is realizing are not moral in '30s Maycomb. (For those who aren't familiar with the "unreliable narrator" concept in modern fiction, its a much bigger topic than I want to go into here, but basically it is what it sounds like; for whatever reason, you can't trust them, even though the story is told through their voice.)


Harper Lee had 2 sisters, neither of whom appear in either book. Alice, 15 years older than HL, was HL's lawyer until her recent death, before which, people like to point out, Watchman was not released. (Its assumed either Alice knew about the manuscript & advised against its publication, or HL decided to not publish until Alice & Louise had died; if this is to protect family, it doesn't hold, as Edwin, & possibly Louise, have descendants.) Other sister Louise is also deceased. She may have descendants, Alice has none. In real life HL's mother was not dead when she was a child, but never left the house. She died within a few weeks of Edwin. (Some sources call her schizophrenic or manic-depressive [or both], others describe her as a friendly lady who talked to them via the porch. Truman Capote, who I'd designate as a very unreliable narrator, in one place says HL's mother "tried to drown her in the bathtub"; that HL's upbringing was "real southern Gothic" & in another describes the mother as a regular-person sort of busybody, who he once wrote a short story about called something like "Mrs. Busybody". He said people knew who he meant & didn't like it.)


HL in later life describes Capote as "a real psychotic", & is said to have told friends about finding a manuscript by a relative of Capote's, presumably the aunt he describes so lovingly in his writing, "that was so vile she burned it".


When HL & Capote were still getting along, she did a lot of the research for "In Cold Blood" for him; people write that while Capote put people off with "his ways", HL came across as "down-home folks" to the people in Kansas & they opened up to her. She is reported in being disappointed that the only credit she gets in "ICB" is a dedication that makes her seem no more than some kind of secretary. Its reported that she went with friends, back when she could still see, I'd assume (she's now reported to have macular degeneration that leaves her almost blind, but she can read enlarged print) to see one of the movies on Capote. Its not reported what she thought of it.


Whether Harper Lee had a real-life equiv of Calpurnia raising her is not reported. Calpurnia had in Mockingbird a son, Zeebo, & in Watchman a grandson who needs defense against manslaughter charges. No-one has come forward as being the model for Calpurnia (she'd be far over 100 if still alive now) or of being descendant of her model.


There's a fair amount of writing online by African Americans who "never like Mockingbird because the only real people in the book were white". I'm not crazy about this analysis; I think its a cop-out as a review, for one. That includes Toni "cop out" Morrison. (interestingly enough, I haven't read that about another author dealing with American race relations, Faulkner, perhaps only because I haven't been recently reading reviews of Faulkner. Faulkner does come up in discussions of Watchman, though. I have [gasp] never yet read anything by Faulkner myself, but have earlier in my life read many reviews.)


I could decide I don't like a lot of things, including Merchant of Venice & Oliver Twist, because "the only real people in them are not Jewish". Actually I'm not that fond of Merchant & have put off reading Twist until this day because I don't love Dickens to begin with, & don't wanna wade through the Fagin portrait. Doesn't mean I haven't seen dramatizations of both, though! <---Too big a topic for here/now.

[Vandal]

Bookstore offering refunds for Go Set a Watchman

Link

Brilliant Books in Traverse City, Michigan, has said that its “dozens” of customers for Go Set a Watchman are owed “refunds and apologies” over the way the novel has been presented. “It is disappointing and frankly shameful to see our noble industry parade and celebrate this as ‘Harper Lee’s New Novel’,” the bookseller writes on its website. “This is pure exploitation of both literary fans and a beloved American classic (which we hope has not been irrevocably tainted). We therefore encourage you to view Go Set a Watchman with intellectual curiosity and careful consideration; a rough beginning for a classic, but only that.”

[Beebs52]

I finished it. Meh.

[SportsFan68]

Based on what I've read here and from a couple locals who have read it, I'm not buying it and won't be reading it. Thanks for the input, everybody.

What a shame -- her amazing legacy would have remained intact forever. Probably. Who knows what would have happened when her estate was settled...

[Beebs52]

It wasn't bad, but it was very almost preachy, pseudointellectual, mixed in with modern novel of manners sort of thing.

[SportsFan68]

It wasn't bad, but it was very almost preachy, pseudointellectual, mixed in with modern novel of manners sort of thing.

That's pretty much what Pauline said. She then said it came across as a first novel and then basically said "Meh" with a shoulder shrug. She offered to lend it to me, but I've made my decision.

Darn it, I thought it was gonna be so great. Oh well.

[Catfish]

It wasn't bad, but it was very almost preachy, pseudointellectual, mixed in with modern novel of manners sort of thing.

Finished the audiobook yesterday. What Beebs said.

[SpacemanSpiff]

OK, after the dust jacket has settled a bit, do most of you think this was a money grab on somebody's part? (See The Confessor's post, #13)

It somewhat reminds me of what's happened with Ted Geisel's work after he died. His widow decided (or was talked into) licensing the hell out of everything Seussian; Seussical the Musical; let some bad movies based upon his books come out (I've never been a fan of Jim Carrey's version of The Grinch as that it suffers from way too much padding in order to make it to theatrical time. Heck, I even think that Chuck Jones' definitive version is about 6 minutes too long, but that's the nature of the beast; and don't go there with Mike Myers' The Cat In The Hat, a movie he was in that was even more forgettable than The Love Guru), licensing stuff that never was licensed in Ted's lifetime.

They licensed and licensed 'til their licensors were sore!

OTOH, I haven't looked at the "lost" Seuss book that's come out. In his case, it's entirely possible to make something out of a lot of scraps of his work, if done right.