tag:theconversation.com,2011:/fr/topics/harper-lee-14770/articlesHarper Lee – The Conversation2018-08-15T04:18:49Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1007632018-08-15T04:18:49Z2018-08-15T04:18:49ZHow the moral lessons of To Kill a Mockingbird endure today<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230505/original/file-20180803-41331-17gzzrr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Gregory Peck and Harper Lee on the set of To Kill a Mockingbird. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056592/mediaviewer/rm2958667776">Universal Pictures/IMDB</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>In our series, <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/guide-to-the-classics-23522">Guide to the classics</a>, experts explain key works of literature.</em></p>
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<p>Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird is one of the classics of American literature. Never out of print, the novel has sold over 40 million copies since it was first published in 1960. It has been a staple of high school syllabuses, including in Australia, for several decades, and is often deemed the <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/nitv/nitv-news/article/2017/02/21/australian-kill-mockingbird-makes-it-big-screen-indigenous-actor">archetypal race and coming-of-age novel</a>. For many of us, it is a formative read of our youth. </p>
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<p>The story is set in the sleepy Alabama town of Maycomb in 1936 - 40 years after the Supreme Court’s notorious declaration of the races as being <a href="http://time.com/4326692/plessy-ferguson-history-120/">“separate but equal”</a>, and 28 years before the enactment of the <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/civil-rights-act">Civil Rights Act</a>. Our narrator is nine-year-old tomboy, Scout Finch, who relays her observations of her family’s struggle to deal with the class and racial prejudice shown towards the local African American community. </p>
<p>At the centre of the family and the novel stands the highly principled lawyer Atticus Finch. A widower, he teaches Scout, her older brother Jem, and their imaginative friend Dill, how to live and behave honourably. In this he is aided by the family’s hardworking and sensible black housekeeper Calpurnia, and their kind and generous neighbour, Miss Maudie. </p>
<p>It is Miss Maudie, for example, who explains to Scout why it is a sin to kill a mockingbird: “Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us.” </p>
<p>Throughout the novel, the children grow more aware of the community’s attitudes. When the book begins they are preoccupied with catching sight of the mysterious and much feared Boo Radley, who in his youth stabbed his father with a pair of scissors and who has never come out of the family house since. And when Atticus agrees to defend Tom Robinson, a black man who is falsely accused of raping a white woman, they too become the target of hatred. </p>
<h2>A morality tale for modern America</h2>
<p>One might expect a book that dispatches moral lessons to be dull reading. But To Kill a Mockingbird is no sermon. The lessons are presented in a seemingly effortless style, all the while tackling the complexity of race issues with startling clarity and a strong sense of reality. </p>
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<p>As the Finches return from Robinson’s trial, Miss Maudie says: “as I waited I thought, Atticus Finch won’t win, he can’t win, but he’s the only man in these parts who can keep a jury out so long in a case like that.”</p>
<p>Despite the tragedy of Robinson’s conviction, Atticus succeeds in making the townspeople consider and struggle with their prejudice.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Atticus Finch delivers his closing statement in the trial of Tom Robinson in the 1962 film.</span></figcaption>
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<p>The effortlessness of the writing owes much to the way the story is told. The narrator is a grown Scout, looking back on her childhood. When she begins her story, she seems more interested in telling us about the people and incidents that occupied her six-year-old imagination. Only slowly does she come to the events that changed everything for her and Jem, which were set in motion long before their time. Even then, she tells these events in a way that shows she too young to always grasp their significance. </p>
<p>The lessons Lee sets out are encapsulated in episodes that are as funny as they are serious, much like Aesop’s Fables. A case in point is when the children return home from the school concert with Scout still dressed in her outlandish ham costume. In the dark they are chased and attacked by Bob Ewell the father of the woman whom Robinson allegedly raped. Ewell, armed with a knife, attempts to stab Scout, but the shapeless wire cage of the ham causes her to loose balance and the knife to go astray. In the struggle that ensues someone pulls Ewell off the teetering body of Scout and he falls on the knife. It was Boo Radley who saved her. </p>
<p>Another lesson about what it means to be truly brave is delivered in an enthralling episode where a local farmer’s dog suddenly becomes rabid and threatens to infect all the townsfolk with his deadly drool. </p>
<p>Scout and Jem are surprised when their bespectacled, bookish father turns out to have a “God-given talent” with a rifle; it is he who fires the single shot that will render the townsfolk safe. The children rejoice at what they consider an impressive display of courage. However, he tells them that what he did was not truly brave. The better example of courage, he tells them, is Mrs Dubose (the “mean” old lady who lived down the road), who managed to cure herself of a morphine addiction even as she was dying a horribly painful death from cancer. </p>
<p>He also teaches them the importance of behaving in a civilised manner, even when subjected to insults. Most of all Atticus teaches the children the importance of listening to one’s conscience even when everyone else holds a contrary view: “The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule”, he says, “is a person’s conscience.” </p>
<p>The continuing value in Atticus’ belief in the importance of principled thinking in the world of <a href="https://www.economist.com/prospero/2016/02/22/how-to-kill-a-mockingbird-shaped-race-relations-in-america">Black Lives Matter</a> and the Australian government’s rhetoric of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/commentisfree/2018/jan/18/the-african-gang-crisis-has-been-brewing-in-australias-media-for-years">“African gangs”</a>, is clear. </p>
<p>Atticus’ spiel on “conscience” and the other ethical principles he insists on living by, are key to the enduring influence of the novel. It conjures an ideal of moral standards and human behaviour that many people still aspire to today, even though the novel’s events and the characters belong to the past.</p>
<p>Lee herself was not one to shy away from principled displays: writing to a school that banned her novel, she summed up the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/harper-lee-letter-to-a-school-board-trying-to-ban-mockingbird-2016-2?IR=T">source of the morality</a> her book expounds. The novel, she said, “spells out in words of seldom more than two syllables a code of honor and conduct”. </p>
<h2>Fame and obscurity</h2>
<p>When first published the novel received <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/books/ct-harper-lee-to-kill-a-mockingbird-1960-review-20160219-story.html">rave reviews</a>. A year later it won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature, followed by a <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/2016/04/19/to-kill-a-mockingbird-film-review/">movie version</a> in 1962 starring <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vouoju4mETc">Gregory Peck</a>. Indeed, the novel was such a success that Lee, unable to cope with all the attention and publicity, <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/go-set-a-watchman/why-harper-lee-kept-her-silence-for-55-years/">retired into obscurity</a>. </p>
<p>Interviewed late in life, Lee cited two reasons for her continued silence: “I wouldn’t go through the pressure and publicity I went through with To Kill a Mockingbird for any amount of money. Second, I have said what I wanted to say, and I will not say it again.” </p>
<p>The latter statement is doubtless a reference to the autobiographical nature of her book. Lee passed her <a href="http://time.com/4234210/harper-lee-childhood/">childhood</a> in the rural town of Monroeville in the deep south, where her attorney father defended two black men accused of killing a shopkeeper. The accused were convicted and hanged. </p>
<p>Undoubtedly influenced by these formative events, the biographical fiction Lee drew out of her family history became yet more complex upon the publication of her only other novel, Go Set a Watchman, in 2016. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/childrens-books-site/2016/jun/05/go-set-a-watchman-by-harper-lee-review">Critics panned it</a> it for lacking the light touch and humour of the first novel. They also decried the fact that the character of Atticus Finch was this time around a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/11/books/review-harper-lees-go-set-a-watchman-gives-atticus-finch-a-dark-side.html">racist bigot</a>, a feature that had the potential to taint the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/feb/19/go-set-a-watchman-harper-lee-legacy-to-kill-a-mockingbird">author’s legacy</a>. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/review-has-go-set-a-watchman-helped-topple-the-notion-of-the-white-saviour-44951">Review/ Has Go Set a Watchman helped topple the notion of the white saviour?</a>
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<p>Subsequent biographical research revealed that Go Set A Watchman, was not a sequel, but the first draft of To Kill a Mockingbird. Following initial rejection by the publisher Lippincot, Lee reworked it into the superior novel many of us know and still love today. </p>
<p>Lee gave us the portrait of one small town in the south during the depression years. But it was so filled with lively detail, and unforgettable characters with unforgettable names like Atticus, Scout, Calpurnia and Boo Radley that a universal story emerged, and with it the novel’s continuing popularity.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/100763/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anne Maxwell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>To Kill a Mockingbird is no sermon. Its lessons are presented in effortless style, tackling the complexity of race issues with startling clarity and a strong sense of reality.Anne Maxwell, Assoc. Professor, School of Culture and Communication, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/550902016-02-19T18:29:21Z2016-02-19T18:29:21ZHarper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird author, led a life of great courage<p>The death of Harper Lee is big news. Bigger than the deaths of most major writers.</p>
<p>Why? It isn’t because she made worldwide headlines last summer due to the controversy over the recent publication of <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/go-set-a-watchman">Go Set A Watchman</a>. That book was initially described as a sequel To Kill A Mockingbird, but is now generally regarded as a shoddy first draft of Lee’s 1960 Pulitzer Prize winning work. It is pretty disappointing. </p>
<p>But Go Set a Watchman does help to suggest why To Kill A Mockingbird made such an impact when it appeared and continues to do so. The 1960 novel, unlike the book published in 2015, is committed without being preachy. It makes serious points about race, class and the sheer delight and agony of growing up in the only way fiction can and should – by immersing its readers in the lives of its characters. And it tells a story that is simultaneously instructive, insightful and gripping. In short, it makes a difference – to the life, that is, of anyone who ever reads it. </p>
<p>Which brings me back to why the death of Harper Lee is such an event. Without question, To Kill A Mockingbird is one of the most important books written by an American in the latter half of the 20th century. </p>
<p>If that sounds like hype, just consider a few facts and figures. A <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1991/11/20/books/book-notes-059091.html">1991 survey</a> of 5,000 Americans conducted by the Library of Congress to determine which book had made the greatest difference in their readers’ lives listed To Kill A Mockingbird as second only to the Bible. One of president Bill Clinton’s closest friends, James Carville, declared in his memoir that reading Lee’s novel when he was 16 “changed everything” for him. “When I got to the last page,” Carville said: </p>
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<p>I closed it and said, ‘they’re right and we’re wrong’. The issue was literally black and white, and we [white southerners] were absolutely, positively on the wrong side.</p>
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<p>So thoroughly has To Kill A Mockingbird permeated contemporary culture and popular discourse, and American culture in particular, that the battle over Clinton’s impeachment included a debate about the meaning of the novel. Special prosecutor Kenneth Starr <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1998/09/06/magazine/ken-starr-would-not-be-denied.html?pagewanted=all">attempted to co-opt</a> the hero of To Kill A Mockingbird, lawyer Atticus Finch, for the prosecution. Clinton’s personal attorney, David E Kendall, retaliated with an opinion column in the New York Times titled “To Distort a Mockingbird”, in which he interpreted the moral values of the novel in defence of the president. </p>
<p>The point, both men knew, is that they could make such claims for and against a beleaguered president with the confidence that their audience – American voters, the general public at home and abroad – would know who and what they were talking about. After all, in the United States, To Kill A Mockingbird was, until this moment, the <a href="http://edex.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/publication/pdfs/20131023-Common-Core-in-the-Schools-a-First-Look-at-Reading-Assignments.pdf">most widely assigned reading</a> of any living author in US high schools; and, among all English language authors living or dead, she remains only below William Shakespeare, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Mark Twain. To Kill a Mockingbird has <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-27203069">sold over 30m copies</a> in English worldwide, and has been translated into 40 languages.</p>
<p>“Real courage” goes one of the most memorable quotes in To Kill A Mockingbird, “is … when you know when you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what”. Harper Lee showed real courage throughout her life – not least, by writing a book that went against the tide of majority white opinion in the American South at the time. Her reward for that courage is to be loved by generations of readers, who have discovered – and will continue to do so – that reading her work can change everything.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/55090/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Gray does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Why the death of Harper Lee is bigger news than the deaths of many major writers.Richard Gray, Professor in English Literature, University of EssexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/449512015-07-21T20:16:35Z2015-07-21T20:16:35ZReview/ Has Go Set a Watchman helped topple the notion of the white saviour?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89097/original/image-20150721-12527-skreg0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Atticus is not who we thought he was – but maybe who we thought he was was wrong.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Paul Walsh</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Last week on Facebook, a friend declared she will now abandon plans to name any future son of hers Atticus. She is not alone among fans of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), including <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/07/his-name-was-atticus/398600/">thousands of parents</a> of young Attici who are dismayed that the legacy of a heroic character who – so it goes – stood against the tide of racism in 1930s Alabama, is now revealed as a bigot in <a href="http://www.harpercollins.com/9780062409850/go-set-a-watchman">Go Set a Watchman</a>, published last week, 55 years after its predecessor.</p>
<p>In newspaper reports, the draft that Lee <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-third-book-harper-lee-may-indeed-have-another-ace-up-her-sleeve-44703">allegedly wrote prior</a> to her classic novel is described as potentially horrifying in its revision of a “<a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3157064/New-Harper-Lee-novel-presents-unsaintly-Atticus-Finch.html">literary saint</a>”.</p>
<p>Go Set a Watchman’s Atticus Finch, now aged 72, keeps a lurid pamphlet – The Black Plague – among his reading material and once attended a Ku Klux Klan meeting. He welcomes racist, pro-segregation speakers at the Maycomb County Citizens’ Council meetings. In heated conversations with his daughter Jean Louise (the adult Scout, who was the child narrator of To Kill a Mockingbird), he warns about a future in which there might be “negroes by the carload in our schools and churches and theaters” and in which full civil rights might see white southerners politically “outnumbered”.</p>
<p>The anxiety about how this depiction of Atticus Finch might taint his saintly status, which was especially fostered by <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056592/">his filmic portrayal</a> by Gregory Peck in 1962, is summed up by a <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/cartoons/daily-cartoon/daily-cartoon-monday-july-13th">New Yorker cartoon</a> published last week. It shows a metallic Terminator lined up outside a book store with the caption:</p>
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<p>I’ve been sent from the future to stop Harper Lee from complicating the legacy of a beloved fictional character.</p>
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<p>Michigan bookseller Brilliant Books is offering “refunds and apologies” to customers who have bought Go Set a Watchman. The store has even published an <a href="http://www.brilliant-books.net/go-set-watchman-opinion-piece">opinion piece</a> discouraging readers who are looking for a “nice summer novel” from purchasing it, and suggest the book is best suited for “academic insight”.</p>
<p>Though the novel has received a number of <a href="http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/betrayed-harper-lee-wrote-the-great-american-novel-she-doesn-t-deserve-this-1.2288605">scathing reviews</a>, it still has the potential to not only allow readers to encounter other facets of Jean Louise as an adult through her narration, but to be forced to rationalise a story in which there is no reassuring resolution to racial inequality. </p>
<p>In To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus Finch explains that “Every mob in every little Southern town is always made up of people”. In Go Set a Watchman, Atticus loses his distinctive identity to become a member of the mob.</p>
<p>We might be shocked by an Atticus Finch who supports racial segregation, but the flawed Atticus might not be as fraught as his initial infallible depiction, or at least Scout’s – and most readers’– belief in it. The heroism of Atticus might never have issued from his being an exceptional man immune to the racism that permeated the American south.</p>
<p>To Kill a Mockingbird has always been a problematic novel with respect to race. While several generations have read Lee’s novel in high school as a way to discuss the history of racial prejudice, it does not mean that the story was not also influenced by the racist culture into which it was written.</p>
<p>This is not to charge Lee with racism, but to note that many people, including African-American author <a href="https://www.bostonglobe.com/2015/07/10/harperlee/bISayt9ciWvagFkRR1KiLJ/story.html">Toni Morrison</a> consider Mockingbird to be a “<a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/01/-em-12-years-a-slave-em-yet-another-oscar-nominated-white-savior-story/283142/">white saviour narrative</a>”. Such stories might be well-intentioned, but as Morrison pointed out, they sideline people of colour from playing any role in fighting for equal rights or defending themselves. </p>
<p>To Kill a Mockingbird presents racism from a white perspective and, <a href="http://www.newrepublic.com/article/122295/these-scholars-have-been-pointing-out-atticus-finchs-racism-years">like Atticus’s courtroom defence</a>, gives little voice to and insight from its tragic victim, Tom Robinson.</p>
<p>Moreover, Atticus Finch never defends Tom because of his interest in civil rights or countering racial discrimination. He was assigned the case, rather than making a choice to represent Tom. He is largely motivated by the principle of equality and fairness before the law, noting that a man of “any color of the rainbow […] ought to get a square deal in the courtroom”.</p>
<p>In Go Set a Watchman, the focalising view of Scout Finch, a six-year-old child, is replaced by the adult perspective of Jean Louise, which necessarily brings with it a more sophisticated understanding of events and the potential for inner contradictions. After she has her illusions of her father shattered, Jean Louise is surprised to see that he still looks the same; she doesn’t know why “she expected him to be looking like Dorian Gray or somebody”.</p>
<p>Lee is thought to have based the character of Atticus upon <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/harper-lees-father-the-inspiration-for-atticus-finch-changed-his-segregation-views-1436670661">her own lawyer father</a>. Amasa Coleman Lee had comparatively liberal views on race. He defended two black men accused of murder, and had a verbal confrontation with members of the Ku Klux Klan. Yet he was also a segregationist and resisted integrated schools.</p>
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<p>The Atticus Finch produced by the combined picture of To Kill a Mockingbird and Go Set a Watchman is a similar figure in his progressiveness, in some respects, and susceptibility to inherited views about racial hierarchy. Lee’s father and Atticus are also not unusual in being highly respected men, with a reputation for compassion, who also subscribed to racist ideology.</p>
<p>In To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus Finch tells Scout’s brother Jem that there was once a Klan in Maycomb in 1920, but that it was “a political organization more than anything” and that they “couldn’t find anybody to scare”. </p>
<p>In Go Set a Watchman, Atticus Finch has attended one KKK meeting, ostensibly to discover the men behind the masks. As Jean Louise’s suitor, Henry, explains, the organisation was once “respectable, like the Masons” and the Wizard of the chapter was actually the Methodist preacher.</p>
<p>Atticus Finch’s disturbing views on race accord with the worldviews that enabled the founding of the United States and other British colonies. One of the most quoted examples so far of Atticus’ racist turn is his claim that “The negroes down here are still in their childhood as a people”. Derivatives of <a href="http://www.icr.org/article/heritage-recapitulation-theory/">recapitulation theory</a> held that civilisations passed through stages of development much as a child develops into an adult.</p>
<p>In his 1904 book <a href="https://archive.org/details/adolescenceitsp01hallgoog">Adolescence</a>, American psychologist G Stanley Hall ranked races on an evolutionary chain. He placed Christians of the Western World at the adult pinnacle and regarded the “primitive” races as “adolescent”, among which he included Hawaiians, South and North American Indians, the Irish and Africans. </p>
<p>Hierarchical ideas about race, and the infantilisation of non-white races, underpinned the founding of white settler colonies and justified genocide and slavery.</p>
<p>Racial prejudice was embedded in every element of the world in which Atticus Finch would have been raised. Go Set a Watchman notes that the picnic grounds at the historical Finch family property, the Landing, was used for “negroes [who] played basketball there” and that “the Klan met there in its halcyon days”.</p>
<p>The dilemma that Go Set a Watchman confronts us with is that a “good”, educated man, committed to upholding the right for all people to be equal before the law could also hold racist views that are almost universally understood as abhorrent today. And he is not alone. The men Atticus Finch sits alongside while listening to racist speakers are “[m]en of substance and character, responsible men, good men”.</p>
<p>Historically, we know that the hagiographic account of Atticus Finch, narrated by Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird, describes a man who is very unlikely to have been produced by the society in which he lived. Yet as a character he was eminently reassuring.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89096/original/image-20150721-12536-t82fge.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89096/original/image-20150721-12536-t82fge.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89096/original/image-20150721-12536-t82fge.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89096/original/image-20150721-12536-t82fge.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89096/original/image-20150721-12536-t82fge.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89096/original/image-20150721-12536-t82fge.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89096/original/image-20150721-12536-t82fge.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89096/original/image-20150721-12536-t82fge.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">MarioMancuso</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>The nature of Atticus Finch also relates to the questions being raised about <a href="http://www.npr.org/2015/07/13/422545987/harper-lees-watchman-is-a-mess-that-makes-us-reconsider-a-masterpiece">the provenance</a> of Go Set a Watchman. There has been enormous speculation about when the novel was actually written. The <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/feb/03/harper-lee-new-novel-to-kill-a-mockingbird">official account</a> from publisher HarperCollins holds that the work is Lee’s long-lost first manuscript of what was to become To Kill a Mockingbird.</p>
<p>It is accepted that editor <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/13/books/the-invisible-hand-behind-harper-lees-to-kill-a-mockingbird.html?_r=1">Tay Hohoff</a> read Lee’s initial manuscript and worked with her to recast the original story to focus on Scout’s life as a child. Go Set a Watchman itself, however, does not read like it was written prior to To Kill a Mockingbird.</p>
<p>In Go Set a Watchman, the central plot point of Atticus Finch’s defence of a black man against false rape charges occupies only three paragraphs. As Jean Louise observes the racist discussion of the Citizens’ Council in the county courtroom, she fleetingly remembers Atticus’ defence of an innocent black boy, who is successfully acquitted. His past statement “equal rights for all, special privileges for none” springs into her mind to interrupt the hateful chorus of voices: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>kinky woolly heads…still in the trees….greasy smelly…marry your daughters…mongrelize the race…mongrelize…mongrelize….save the South". </p>
</blockquote>
<p>While it is certainly possible that Hohoff recognised the potential that Lee’s three paragraphs held as the lynchpin for a publishable novel, Go Set a Watchman seems to rely on a reader who is already familiar with Atticus Finch. </p>
<p>As <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/27/sweet-home-alabama">Adam Gopnik wrote recently</a> for the New Yorker, “it’s difficult to credit that a first novel would so blithely assume so much familiarity with a cast of characters never before encountered.”</p>
<p>In particular, a reader who was not aware of To Kill a Mockingbird would be hard-pressed to share “color blind” Jean Louise’s heightened reaction to her father’s complicity with the overarching current of racism in the south in the face of organised movements for racial equality, such as the <a href="http://www.naacp.org/">NAACP</a>. </p>
<p>Go Set a Watchman has little plot movement and turns on Jean Louise’s realisation on one of her annual visits from New York that her father – and other respectable men in her hometown – have changed as race relations have deteriorated.</p>
<p>Atticus Finch’s brother, Dr Jack Finch, eventually tells Jean Louise that she confused her father “with God”, never seeing him “as a man with a man’s heart, and a man’s failings”. Her struggle to accept a multi-dimensional, flawed Atticus is now mirrored in the cultural and critical reaction to the less palatable aspects of his character. </p>
<p>Readers are struggling to integrate Atticus Finch’s heroism in his spirited defence of a black man with his support of segregation and belief in the “backwardness” of African Americans.</p>
<p>Can Atticus’ beloved status endure after a novel that acknowledges that racism is often cloaked by respectability, or has Go Set a Watchman helped to topple the notion of the white saviour? </p>
<p>We’ll have to check on the popularity of “Atticus”, which has <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/parenting/atticus-tops-baby-names-2015-124073377716.html">shot to the top</a> of baby name lists in 2015, in a few year’s time.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/44951/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Smith has previously received funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>Atticus Finch, we learn in Go Set a Watchman, once attended a Ku Klux Klan meeting, and welcomes pro-segregation speakers at local council meetings. But is he really so different to the man we know from To Kill a Mockingbird?Michelle Smith, Research fellow in English Literature, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/449112015-07-20T06:02:54Z2015-07-20T06:02:54ZWhat’s in a name? Atticus Finch and his Roman forebears<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/88950/original/image-20150720-21062-bm921e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Already having baby-naming regret? Don't worry – look to the past for alternative role models. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Still of Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962). Universal Pictures</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The publication of <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24817626-go-set-a-watchman">Go Set a Watchman</a> (2015), Harper Lee’s long-awaited semi-sequel to <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2657.To_Kill_a_Mockingbird">To Kill a Mockingbird</a> (1960), has reportedly caused consternation among parents who chose to name their son Atticus out of their admiration for the courageous lawyer Atticus Finch. </p>
<p>According to <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/15/nyregion/the-name-atticus-acquires-an-unwelcome-association.html?_r=0">an article</a> published on July 14 in the New York Times, some parents have been horrified to discover that in Lee’s new book, Atticus Finch is a racist, undermining the values of principle and honour which the name had long possessed in modern culture. Similar feelings <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/shortcuts/2015/jul/13/character-assassination-how-name-atticus-finch-tarnished-overnight">have been expressed</a> by the owners of businesses named after Atticus in the hope that their titles would conjure up similar ideals.</p>
<p>But should these children and businesses despair that their fictional namesake has been revealed to be an opponent of racial integration? After all, the name is originally a Roman one, and a survey of other famous Attici (the plural of Atticus) suggests that all is not lost.</p>
<h2>The origins of Atticus</h2>
<p>In Latin, Atticus is an adjective meaning “belonging to Attica”, the region in which Athens is located, or more simply, “Athenian”. As a name, it had connotations of literary sophistication and culture. </p>
<p>In the Roman imperial period, Atticus also became popular as a name. It was a <a href="http://www.behindthename.com/glossary/view/cognomen">cognomen</a> (plural: cognomina), a surname which followed a Roman’s <a href="http://www.behindthename.com/glossary/view/praenomen">praenomen</a> (first name) and <a href="http://www.behindthename.com/glossary/view/nomen">nomen gentile</a> (family name). </p>
<p>Today, with surnames largely set in stone, it is our first names which offer parents the opportunity to express their hopes for their children or to honour their own role-models. Young Byron might grow up to be a great writer, little Hillary a politician. </p>
<p>We can also apparently expect more than a few <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/shortcuts/2014/aug/15/are-people-really-calling-their-baby-girls-khaleesi">girls called Khaleesi</a> unleashing their dragons on the primary school playground in a few year’s time.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/88951/original/image-20150720-21047-orl2yf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/88951/original/image-20150720-21047-orl2yf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/88951/original/image-20150720-21047-orl2yf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1028&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/88951/original/image-20150720-21047-orl2yf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1028&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/88951/original/image-20150720-21047-orl2yf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1028&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/88951/original/image-20150720-21047-orl2yf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1291&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/88951/original/image-20150720-21047-orl2yf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1291&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/88951/original/image-20150720-21047-orl2yf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1291&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Herodes Atticus bust, from his villa at Kephissia. mid-2nd century.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>In ancient Rome, it was the cognomen that conferred personal distinctiveness, especially among the Republican aristocracy. Male first names were generally limited to a select group of fewer than 20 praenomina, such as Marcus, Gaius, or Titus, leaving little room for creativity. </p>
<p>It was even worse for the women, who had to make do with a feminised form of the family name, such as Julia (from the Julian family). Many cognomina began life as nicknames, which eventually became a badge of family pride, such as Cicero (“Chick-Pea”) or Ahenobarbus (“Bronze-Beard”). </p>
<p>The first Roman known to have carried the name Atticus was Aulus Manlius Torquatus Atticus, who was consul in the mid-third century B.C. The reason for Torquatus’ assumption of the name is not attested, but we can assume that it was designed to conjure up an image of cultural refinement, reflecting Rome’s increasing contact with, and affinity for, the Greek world in the middle Republic. </p>
<h2>Famous Attici in history</h2>
<p>This influenced the assumption of the name by Cicero’s close friend and correspondent, the businessman <a href="http://www.britannica.com/biography/Titus-Pomponius-Atticus">T. Pomponius Atticus</a>. He spent much of his early life in Athens studying philosophy, and subsequently split his life between Rome and his estates in Epirus. Unlike Cicero, Atticus was a suave and charming wheeler-dealer who deliberately eschewed political office. </p>
<p>He preferred to exert influence through his business interests and by cultivating powerful friendships. This policy served Atticus well, ensuring his survival during the civil wars which transformed the Roman Republic into Caesarian dictatorship and then Augustan principate – while his friend Cicero <a href="https://100falcons.wordpress.com/2009/05/16/how-they-killed-cicero/">was executed</a> for sticking to his principles. </p>
<p>Although rare in the Republican period, the name Atticus became much more common under the Roman empire. The evidence of epitaphs and other inscriptions shows that it was held by senators, centurions, cavalrymen, town councillors, freedmen and soldiers in the praetorian guard. </p>
<p>But it did not lose its association with Greek culture and refinement. One of the most famous Attici was <a href="http://www.britannica.com/biography/Herodes-Atticus">Herodes Atticus</a>, an extremely wealthy intellectual and orator who was appointed as tutor in Greek rhetoric to the future emperor Marcus Aurelius. He was not well-liked by the prince’s Latin tutor, <a href="http://www.britannica.com/biography/Marcus-Cornelius-Fronto">Cornelius Fronto</a>, who contemptuously referred to him as a “little Greek” (Graeculus).</p>
<p>Fronto was probably right to be suspicious of Herodes Atticus. Although a lavish benefactor to his beloved Athens, Herodes Atticus appears to have been a deeply unpleasant man. </p>
<p>He aroused the enmity of the Roman governors of Greece, as well as the Athenians themselves, who accused him of tyranny. But this was eclipsed by his treatment of his wife Regilla, who came from a Roman aristocratic family and moved to Greece to live with her husband. </p>
<p>Herodes allegedly had one of his freedmen <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674034891">beat Regilla to death</a> when she was eight months pregnant. Regilla’s brother had Herodes Atticus brought to trial for murder before Marcus Aurelius (now emperor), who exonerated his former tutor. </p>
<p>Herodes Atticus ostentatiously displayed his grief for Regilla by erecting monuments in her memory, a move long suspected of covering up his complicity in her murder. Even today visitors can still enjoy concerts in the theatre on the side of the Acropolis that he constructed either out of grief or guilt. </p>
<p>Modern day Attici, shocked at their hero’s fall from grace in Go Set a Watchman, can perhaps take some comfort in the ancient history of their Latin name. Romans continued to be called Atticus, even after the murderous and criminal actions of Herodes Atticus. </p>
<p>Parents anxious to distance their children from the views of the new Atticus Finch can instead claim that they chose the name based on its original Roman connotations of culture and sophistication. </p>
<p>Or perhaps they should not worry too much: after all, it is our values, character and deeds that really define who we are, not our names.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/44911/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Caillan Davenport receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>Some parents have been horrified to discover that, in Harper Lee’s new book, Atticus Finch – long admired as a paragon of virtue – is a racist. Why? Because their kids are named after him. So, what now?Caillan Davenport, Lecturer in Classics and Ancient History, The University of QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/448112015-07-17T21:49:45Z2015-07-17T21:49:45ZIn Go Set a Watchman, the legal debate that racked America’s conscience<p>The brave, solitary figure standing up for justice against all odds has a claim on the heart. Meanwhile, the conservative traditionalist using legal arguments to cling to the past is justly forgotten. </p>
<p>That likely explains <a href="http://www.npr.org/2015/07/13/422545987/harper-lees-watchman-is-a-mess-that-makes-us-reconsider-a-masterpiece">why a number of reviewers</a> have treated Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/27/sweet-home-alabama">like a dead rodent to be held at arm’s length while taken to the trash</a>.</p>
<p>For unlike Mockingbird’s Atticus – a lone hero who represented a disabled black man falsely accused of assaulting a white woman – the Atticus in Go Set a Watchman opposes Brown v Board of Education, which overturned segregation. He supports the <a href="http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/134814">White Citizens Council</a>, argues that African Americans haven’t earned their citizenship and worries what will happen if voter suppression efforts aren’t successful.</p>
<p>Yet this shouldn’t be a reason to disparage the novel; if anything, it presents a very real tension that many Americans were grappling with in the 1950s: how should they interpret the Constitution? And should the rule of law take precedent over justice being served?</p>
<p>In this sense, Atticus represents the past: strict adherence to the law, above all else. Meanwhile, his daughter Jean Louise (the adult Scout) represents a new strain of legal interpretation that’s devoted to justice for all.</p>
<p>Set in the fictional Maycomb, Alabama in the late 1950s amidst the push for integration and voting rights, the novel centers on a deep disagreement between Jean Louise Finch and her father, Atticus, over these civil rights issues.</p>
<p>In Jim Crow Alabama – where the law denies African Americans voting rights, limits their jury service and segregates them in school – this is what complicates the character of Atticus, who supports a Jim Crow society and thinks that the Constitution does, too. And it may explain the shift in Atticus’ character, from a lawyer defending a wrongly accused black man in Mockingbird, to a supporter of the White Citizens Council.</p>
<p>In Watchman, when African-American lawyers from the NAACP work in a neighboring county to challenge the exclusion of African Americans from serving on a jury, Atticus fears they may show up in Maycomb, too. </p>
<p>Here, the novel rings true to history. Stretching back to the 1930s, Alabamans had a deeply held fear of outside lawyers. One response was to run them out of town. Another was to lynch their clients. For example, in 1933, after two African-American men were shot to death in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, the NAACP asked the US Department of Justice to prosecute local officials who were complicit with the lynchers. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/law/jurisprudence/karl-llewellyn-and-realist-movement-2nd-edition?format=PB">Karl Llewellyn</a> was a Columbia law professor and leader of the “legal realist” movement, which sought to understand what was actually happening between laws, enforcement of laws and the delivery of justice. In 1933, he argued on behalf of the NAACP that the intimidation of lawyers and their clients in Alabama – with the tacit approval of those in power – was hindering the proper enforcement of the law. Lynchings, Llewellyn said, were designed to intimidate the entire African-American community and to stop them from asserting their rights. </p>
<p>In Watchman, the efforts to stop African Americans from asserting their rights are somewhat more subtle. Atticus offers to represent a young African-American man accused of running over a drunk white man, but only so NAACP lawyers will not take on the case themselves – and then start asking questions about African-American jury service.</p>
<p>Alabama lawyers like Atticus still read the Constitution through the lens of white superiority. Jean Louise, recalling Atticus’ defense of Tom Robinson in the 1930s, tells him his ideas of justice “have nothing to do with people.” She calls his ideas “abstract justice written down item by item on a brief, nothing to do with that black boy.”</p>
<p>That’s just how many judges before the civil rights movement viewed constitutional law. For example, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes defended forced sterilization along similar terms when he <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/274/200">dismissed the equal protection claim</a> of a young woman about to be sterilized.</p>
<p>Jean Louise’s uncle tells her that Atticus will “always do it by the letter and by the spirit of the law.” Atticus’ version of the law was informed by the “separate but equal” doctrine, which had been the rule – up until Brown.</p>
<p>But it’s a vision of the law rooted in the past. On the one hand, Atticus won’t defend lynching, which was against the law (even if officials sometimes failed to enforce it). On the other, his narrow conception of the Constitution doesn’t extend to equal rights in schools, the voting booth or at the altar. </p>
<p>It isn’t just on race that Atticus is out of step with the times. He opposes social security, too. And he worries that even the “time-honored, common-law concept of property…has become almost extinct.”</p>
<p>Even Jean Louise is skeptical of Brown v Board of Education. She tells her father she thinks it’s inconsistent with the Tenth Amendment (which deals with states’ rights). This is an <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=IBvIFG6q4AkC&pg=PA17&dq=tenth+amendment+states+rights+segregation&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAGoVChMI4b3G2PzgxgIVjI4NCh0dfQCc#v=onepage&q=tenth%20amendment%20states%20rights%20segregation&f=false">argument</a> that was popular with states’ rights advocates and segregationists in the 1950s. </p>
<p>However, she also realizes that the Supreme Court has no choice – they “had to do it.”</p>
<p>“Atticus,” she says, “the time has come when we’ve got to do right.” She is, like the famous Karl Llewellyn, a legal realist when it comes to constitutional interpretation: she realizes that strict interpretation isn’t compatible with social realities.</p>
<p>There was a sense for Jean Louise, as for so many Americans of that era, that constitutional arguments about states’ rights were subordinate to grander principles of justice. The equal protection clause of the Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment was a principle that supported civil rights; but those who opposed civil rights found only principles of limited construction and state sovereignty. Jean Louise referred to the equal protection principle when she told Atticus she believed in the slogan “Equal rights for all; special privileges for none.”</p>
<p>In the 1950s, the world was changing. So was the meaning of law. The character of Jean Louise reflects the thinking of many Americans during the civil rights movement: that the Constitution was designed for equality, for voting rights and for better schools. Much has been written about how Watchman demotes Atticus from hero status. But the novel also demonstrates the idea that the Constitution stood for principles of equality.</p>
<p>The train that brought Jean Louise back to Maycomb also brought new ideas that would become central to the civil rights movement. In that respect, Watchman is more inspirational than Mockingbird, for it supports the view that the Constitution is forward-looking, and that our nation – not just some heroic lawyer – is doing something about civil rights.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/44811/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alfred L. Brophy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The novel’s two main characters represent the constitutional conundrum that many Americans grappled with in the pre-civil rights era.Alfred L. Brophy, Judge John J Parker Distinguished Professor of Law, University of North Carolina at Chapel HillLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/445412015-07-15T11:51:35Z2015-07-15T11:51:35ZReview: why Go Set a Watchman is the novel we deserve<p><em>Warning: this article contains spoilers.</em></p>
<p>It has been a long time since a new novel has attracted as much clamorous attention as Harper Lee’s <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/14/books/review/harper-lees-go-set-a-watchman.html?_r=0">Go Set a Watchman</a>. The back story is familiar enough by now: it is 55 years since Lee published <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/oct/17/review-to-kill-a-mockingbird-harper-lee">To Kill A Mockingbird</a> – a book that has managed to sustain that rare alchemy of huge popularity and genuine critical respect. A follow-up was always rumoured, but apparently abandoned by Lee. The years passed. </p>
<p>Then, mysteriously, <a href="http://jezebel.com/be-suspicious-of-the-new-harper-lee-novel-1683488258">suspiciously</a>, the dreamt-of sequel came to light: a manuscript “discovered” in a vault by a lawyer and – we are <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/books/2015/02/05/harper-lee-is-happy-as-hell-about-new-book-publisher-says/22924865/">insistently told</a> – published with the knowing consent of its ailing 89-year-old author. The murky circumstances of Go Set a Watchman’s publication have been the subject of <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-suspicious-should-we-be-about-the-new-harper-lee-novel-37182">much speculation</a>. But here we have it nonetheless – a late and unlikely sibling for one of American literature’s most beloved of only children. </p>
<h2>Yearning for youth</h2>
<p>The plot itself is a variation on a classic. The prodigal daughter, having fled for a life in the progressive big city, returns to the nostalgia-tinted backwater of her youth. Where once she was a native, her urban worldliness now jars against hometown conventions. </p>
<p>The tom-boy Scout Finch we know from To Kill a Mockingbird is now a conscientious and independent woman: Jean Louise. Her brother Jem is dead, while her father, the hero-lawyer Atticus, is suddenly an arthritic bigot. Contemporary Maycomb – parochial and boiling in the summer sun – is intercut with flashbacks to Scout’s childhood. You can feel Lee’s yearning to get back to that time – which she would, of course, when she came to rewrite it all. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/88488/original/image-20150715-17774-vgzz0c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/88488/original/image-20150715-17774-vgzz0c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=748&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/88488/original/image-20150715-17774-vgzz0c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=748&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/88488/original/image-20150715-17774-vgzz0c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=748&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/88488/original/image-20150715-17774-vgzz0c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=941&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/88488/original/image-20150715-17774-vgzz0c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=941&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/88488/original/image-20150715-17774-vgzz0c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=941&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The Atticus we know and love.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/tom-margie/1547204362/sizes/o/">twm1340/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<p>Composed before To Kill a Mockingbird, but set many years afterwards, some of Go Set a Watchman’s character trajectories and plot points don’t quite match up. After all, this isn’t a sequel as such, but another novel altogether. Knowing this makes the recent <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2015/07/12/us/harper-lee-atticus-finch-racist/">howls of betrayal</a> over Atticus’s racism in social and print media seem rather simple-minded: it isn’t really the same character, but a character with the same name. </p>
<p>Here in Go Set a Watchman, Atticus Finch bristles with all the threatened white masculinity that would hardly have been unusual for a 72-year-old man in 1950s Alabama. In that sense, he feels less like the paragon of virtue we encountered in Mockingbird, and more like an ordinary man of his times. </p>
<p>The novel offers a critical observation of the sectional tensions of the 1950s, and Lee uses it to rehearse arguments about segregation and states’ rights. While it isn’t one of the most sophisticated novels on race in America, it is an intriguing <a href="https://theconversation.com/go-set-a-watchman-exposes-american-obsession-with-white-saviours-44720">document of its volatile age</a>.</p>
<h2>A different voice</h2>
<p>Lee made some critical changes when, on the orders of her editor, she went back to the drawing board with Go Set a Watchman. A key part of To Kill a Mockingbird’s perennial appeal is surely Scout’s endearing first-person narration. Go Set a Watchman’s third-person viewpoint is less engaging, but also more disenchanted: perhaps this is why, stripped of his daughter’s admiring gaze, Atticus emerges as a flawed spokesman for smalltown small-mindedness. </p>
<p>But it also means the narrative voice has to take us on the journey back to Maycomb at arm’s length. We lose the intimate, confessional immersion of Mockingbird’s world – and with it, the idealist sentiment that seemed to draw many of its loyal readers in.</p>
<p>The fuss over the publication will fade, and in time we’ll just be left with the novel itself, forever a necessary appendix to its more famous, final version. Go Set a Watchman is a first run at another, better novel; an unpolished but occasionally still a lyrical and evocative piece of writing. But it’s also an angrier, more disillusioned, and more obviously political work. And in that sense, it feels like the book we deserve.</p>
<p>Because reading it now, in 2015, its depiction of a divided American South inevitably casts us back to the troubled era when a young Harper Lee conceived of it. That was a time before the march on Washington, before Selma and before the Civil Rights Act. Half a century on, the sequel is being published when a man with African heritage is president of the United States. Much has changed. </p>
<p>Yet we are also aware of our own difficult moment: of <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-accumulated-injustices-of-the-trayvon-martin-case-16061">Trayvon Martin</a>, of <a href="https://theconversation.com/michael-brown-ferguson-and-the-nature-of-unrest-30501">Michael Brown</a>, of <a href="https://theconversation.com/ferguson-has-reinforced-racial-fear-and-lethal-stereotypes-3467">Ferguson, Missouri</a>. A few weeks ago, a young white man attended a Bible study group at a church in Charleston, South Carolina, and, after an hour, took a gun from his bag and <a href="https://theconversation.com/hate-violence-and-the-tragedy-of-the-charleston-shootings-43579">shot dead nine people</a> because they were black. </p>
<p>Reading Go Set a Watchman’s depiction of a segregated post-war America, we are aware that much has changed in the years since it was written. Much, but not enough.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/44541/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark Storey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Lee’s second novel is an angrier, more disillusioned, and more obviously political work than her classic, To Kill a Mockingbird.Mark Storey, Assistant Professor of American Literature, University of WarwickLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/447202015-07-15T11:08:57Z2015-07-15T11:08:57ZGo Set a Watchman exposes American obsession with white saviours<p>The literary editor who, in 1957, advised Harper Lee to rewrite what has now been released as <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/go-set-a-watchman">Go Set a Watchman</a> undoubtedly did the right thing. As a literary work, the resulting novel To Kill a Mockingbird is certainly superior to the original Watchman, as many reviews have attested. But as a historical document, Watchman is a fascinating read. And the reaction to its 2015 publication gives us a valuable insight into how America prefers to remember its history of racism. </p>
<p>Watchman captures the moment in the mid-1950s when the determination of the Supreme Court to dismantle racial segregation across the South unleashed campaigns of massive resistance from southern whites. The ugly truth it captures, a truth which white Americans often prefer to forget, is that resistance to integration was not limited to a lunatic fringe of hardcore Klan members – the “poor white trash” that Atticus had been so steadfast in opposing in Mockingbird. “Respectable” whites, even ones who had a history of fighting for the better treatment of African-Americans, were part of the opposition to integration in the 1950s and 60s. </p>
<h2>Racism on a spectrum</h2>
<p>So Jean-Louise (Scout all grown up) is horrified to find the meeting of the White Citizen’s Council, the association that sprang up across the South to oppose integration, is full of “men of substance and character, responsible men, good men”. The Supreme Court’s determination to end segregation forced the gloves to come off: the racism that respectable white southerners had hidden behind a veneer of civility and good manners was suddenly cast aside. “You realize that our Negro population is backward don’t you?” Atticus asks his daughter: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Do you want Negroes by the carload in our schools and churches and theaters? Do you want them in our world?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As an account of the reaction of the white South to integration, and as a depiction of the limitations of southern liberalism – what we might now be allowed to call “Atticus Finch” liberalism – Watchman is a valuable text. Southern Liberals like Finch did indeed work in organisations such as the Committee on Interracial Cooperation (CIC) to ameliorate the excesses of racism which threatened the reputation of the south. But this did not mean they viewed African-Americans as equals and wanted to end segregation. </p>
<p>On the contrary, they thought a kinder, gentler form of segregation would preserve the racial hierarchy at the heart of southern life. Watchman’s elaboration of these gradations of racism is disconcertingly powerful. Atticus doesn’t want an African-American to be lynched, or even to be unjustly convicted of rape, but this doesn’t mean he wants African-Americans in his world, sitting next to him at church. Racism in Watchman is a continuum; a spectrum, not a fixed, yes/no position.</p>
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<h2>Blissful ignorance</h2>
<p>In addition to its depiction of white resistance to integration, reactions to the release of Watchman give us food for thought about the way white Americans today want to remember their history of race relations. The news that Atticus Finch turns out to be a bigot has been greeted with horror. Finch, so movingly portrayed on screen by Gregory Peck, was a much-loved character. Many fans of Mockingbird share his daughter’s horror that the saint-like defender of Tom Robinson is now determined to oppose integration. <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2015/07/12/us/harper-lee-atticus-finch-racist/index.html">Devastated readers</a> have pledged not to read the new book.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"619704819226406912"}"></div></p>
<p>What does it tell us about America’s unwillingness to confront the realities of racism that it is a fictional liberal white man that is the hero of the seminal text on American racism? The horrified reaction to Watchman, this preference for “blissful ignorance”, exposes the reluctance of white Americans to understand that integration was a battle fought by actual African-American people, not fictional white men. And, yes, there were some white allies, but there were more white opponents. And not all of these opponents were comic-book southern racists, whose stupidity and ignorance marked them out as not like the rest of white America. </p>
<p>White Americans want to believe that Atticus Finch is real, because they want white people to have played a more heroic role in the struggle for racial equality than they really did. They are determined not to spoil their comforting tale of white heroism by a more nuanced – and accurate – understanding of what white southerners believed and what they did. The moral certainties of Mockingbird are more palpable to a white Americans still struggling to understand what racism and white privilege actually mean than the complexities of Watchman.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/44720/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Helen Laville does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>As a historical document, Watchman is a fascinating read. It gives us valuable insight into how America prefers to remember its history of racism.Helen Laville, Reader in American History, University of BirminghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/447032015-07-15T04:17:35Z2015-07-15T04:17:35ZThe third book – Harper Lee may indeed have another ace up her sleeve<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/88452/original/image-20150715-21707-1ht2ia0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C9%2C1595%2C1125&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Anyone who thought Go Set a Watchman would solve the 'delicious mystery' of Harper Lee was dreaming.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Akki annant</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>We all love a good mystery. So what are we to make of claims and counterclaims currently playing out <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/13/harper-lee-third-novel-lawyer-tonja-carter">in the media</a> about a possible “third book” in <a href="http://www.biography.com/people/harper-lee-9377021">Harper Lee’s</a> body of work, a companion piece to her classic <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2657.To_Kill_a_Mockingbird">To Kill a Mockingbird</a> (1960) and the newly-released <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-long-lost-friend-reborn-what-we-can-expect-from-go-set-a-watchman-44510">Go Set A Watchman</a> (2015)? Is a third book possible? </p>
<p>Well, yes, it is.</p>
<p>In 1966, the Hanover County School Board in Richmond, Virginia declared To Kill a Mockingbird “<a href="http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/04/problem-is-one-of-illiteracy-not.html">immoral literature</a>” and sought to have it banned from all school library shelves in their county. Still riding high on the success of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, but becoming jaded with and tired of the demands of public life, Lee nevertheless <a href="http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/04/problem-is-one-of-illiteracy-not.html">provided a response</a> to the heated discussion being played out in the local newspaper in that county, beginning by explaining the reports she’d heard from Richmond had made her wonder if any of “[the board] members can read”. </p>
<p>She continued:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I enclose a small contribution to the Beadle Bumble Fund that I hope will be used to enrol the Hanover County School Board in any first grade of its choice.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Lee’s rapier wit and somewhat dark humour is not unlike that of the young Scout Finch’s innate rebelliousness and deep sense of justice, which many readers have already have seen playing out again in Go Set A Watchman, through Jean-Louise’s (the now grown-up Scout) conflicted relationship with her father, Atticus Finch.</p>
<p>This relationship, and particularly the rendering of Atticus Finch as a rather more complex man with <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/theater-arts/harper-lee-set-watchman-features-racist-atticus-article-1.2290965">segregationist overtones</a>, has created in would-be readers and fans somewhat of an ethical dilemma – read the book, and risk tarnishing the image of one of the most beloved characters in American letters. </p>
<p>Atticus Finch is a man exalted <a href="http://www.afi.com/100Years/handv.aspx">like no other</a>, particularly for one who’s occupation is a lawyer, and <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/law/2010/sep/01/dahlia-lithwick-legal-hero-atticus-finch">oft-cited</a> as the reason many join the legal profession.</p>
<h2>Real-life influences</h2>
<p>Lee’s father <a href="http://law-and-business.net/amasa-coleman-lee-the-man-behind-atticus-finch/">AC Lee</a> was also a lawyer, and it is to him both To Kill A Mockingbird and Go Set A Watchman are dedicated, along with Lee’s <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/11398342/Harper-and-Alice-Lee-a-story-of-two-sisters.html">sister Alice</a>, a lawyer with the distinction of having been the oldest practising lawyer in Alabama, only retiring a year or so before her <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/nov/18/alice-lee-alabama-mockingbird-harper">death</a> at 103 in November 2014. </p>
<p>While a respect for the law and a keen sense of justice ran in the family, it was Harper Lee who backed away from practising, leaving university just shy of a law degree to move to New York City to focus on writing. There are obvious commonalities between the portrayal of Jean-Louise in Go Set A Watchman and what we think we know of the life of Harper Lee, and it is through these close readings that we are given our only real glimpse at the writer herself.</p>
<p>Choosing a life away from home and the family trade seems characteristic of the strong-willed woman who wrote that blistering retort to the school board, and is evident in the index of Charles J Shields’ unauthorised biography, <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/114408.Mockingbird">Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee</a> (2006).</p>
<p>Under “Lee, Nelle Harper”, we find entries for: “Athleticism” (p. 77, 78), “Drinking of” (22, 99, 129, 185, 270), “Foul mouth of” (76, 78), “Humor” (89, 97, 112) and, tellingly, “Nonconformism of” (33, 35, 39, 55, 61, 76-77, 84, and 237). </p>
<p>Lee’s carefully guarded private life is one of the few things over which she has retained a sense of ownership. One only has to witness the almost distressed and soul-searching reactions to the re-imagining of Atticus Finch being played out across social media and in news columns to understand that To Kill A Mockingbird is a book that in many ways belongs to us now, not Lee. </p>
<h2>Competing versions</h2>
<p>Charles J Shields’ biography contains many references to the previous versions of To Kill A Mockingbird, and they are revealing, especially in light of claims there may be <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/07/13/harper-lee-third-book-novel_n_7788318.html">one more version</a> of this much-loved and revered text.</p>
<p>We learn much about the labour Lee performed under the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/13/books/the-invisible-hand-behind-harper-lees-to-kill-a-mockingbird.html">watchful eye</a> of editor Tay Hohoff. The descriptions in Shields’ book of the “drafts, titles and revisions” refer not only to the extensive editing and revision the manuscripts were subject to, but also the progressive titles, with Go Set A Watchman being first offered to editors in 1957. </p>
<p>Go Set A Watchman is recorded on index cards from the publisher’s office as being received, and Lippincott’s (the publisher) staff track the manuscript’s <a href="http://www.courier-journal.com/story/opinion/contributors/2015/02/27/shill-mockingbird/24134627/">development over time</a>. </p>
<p>There followed a series of suggestions to an uncommonly compliant Lee, and this resulted in the shift in perspective to what we now know is Jean-Louise as a 26-year-old in Go Set A Watchman, to Atticus in the next full manuscript submitted. Chapter 5 of Shields’ unauthorised biography describes the next iteration of the novel in the chapter title: Atticus becomes To Kill a Mockingbird.</p>
<p>Atticus, then, would be the mysterious “third” book (chronologically, it would be the middle book of three). Hohoff’s name should figure largely in the eventual discussion of the changes made to the manuscripts, especially given the furore over the depiction of Atticus in Go Set A Watchman, and claims from Hohoff’s granddaughter that the editor <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3160287/Granddaughter-Kill-Mockingbird-editor-hits-new-Harper-Lee-novel-disrespectful.html">would not have approved of</a> the publication of Go Set A Watchman.</p>
<h2>The new Atticus Finch</h2>
<p>It seems evident that Hohoff’s steady hand guided Lee to a more flattering and progressive portrayal of Atticus Finch, one that may sit somewhere in the more moderate middle, if the manuscript of Atticus ever comes to light. </p>
<p>This is, by all accounts, the man <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/anger-as-go-set-a-watchman-exposes-bigoted-atticus-finch-true-nature-of-harper-lees-hero-can-be-explained-by-her-father-10383606.html">AC Lee became</a> later in life, and one Harper Lee enjoyed a good relationship with, developing a deep admiration for her father, as evidence by the dedications of both her best-selling books to him. </p>
<p>Perhaps in this third version of the man – in Atticus – readers would find, as Jean-Louise does (and as Harper Lee seemed to), a sense of balance and an acceptance of their differences. In the last pages of Go Set A Watchman we see this, with Jean-Louise helping the increasingly frail Atticus Finch into a car, expressing her love to him in words and yet thinking of him as “her old enemy” (p. 178). </p>
<p>There’s a quiet, devastating reference to her brother there too but then the dark Lee humour rears up and bites the reader, lest the scene lull us into a false sense of sentimentality.</p>
<p>Where Lee may have once responded with fiery retorts to a perceived slight against her work, the once rebellious nonconformist has been able to settle into something resembling acceptance – of her fame, of her status as a writer, of her life away from the limelight, which has regardless led to further scrutiny. </p>
<p>Questions still remain about the discovery and publication of Go Set A Watchman, including Lee’s participation and the <a href="http://www.courier-journal.com/story/opinion/contributors/2015/02/27/shill-mockingbird/24134627/">role of her lawyer</a>. It’s all part of what long time friends have described as <a href="http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2002-09-13/features/0209130001_1_atticus-finch-mockingbird-harper-lee">the “delicious mystery”</a> of Miss Lee. </p>
<p>Lee may still have one more ace up her sleeve, but Go Set A Watchman has already achieved some of what To Kill A Mockingbird did, both polarising and uniting readers – and leaving us ultimately wanting for more.</p>
<p><br>
<strong>See also:</strong><br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-long-lost-friend-reborn-what-we-can-expect-from-go-set-a-watchman-44510">A long-lost friend reborn: what we can expect from Go Set a Watchman</a></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/44703/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lynda Hawryluk is affiliated with the Australasian Association of Writing Programs, and the Northern Rivers Writers Centre, organiser of the Byron Bay Writers Festival. </span></em></p>Talk of a possible third book to follow this week’s release of Go Set a Watchman suggests the ‘delicious mystery’ of Harper Lee will continue for years to come. So what basis is there for the rumours?Lynda Hawryluk, Senior Lecturer in Writing, Southern Cross UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/445482015-07-14T10:10:31Z2015-07-14T10:10:31ZThe irrelevancy of Go Set a Watchman<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/88268/original/image-20150713-11825-118pvu7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C2%2C1942%2C1401&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Atticus of To Kill a Mockingbird and the 'new' Atticus of Go Set a Watchman come across as caricatures in today's context.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/galaxyfm/205216077">Galaxy fm/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>F Scott Fitzgerald is famous for saying that there are no second acts in American lives, but we seem to have granted Harper Lee a blockbuster: her second novel (or her first, depending on whose story you believe), Go Set a Watchman, is a bestseller before it even appears in print. </p>
<p>The soap opera surrounding its “discovery” and publication could be a novel in itself, with a reader’s choice of villains, knaves and Lee as the sprightly hero. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/12/books/racism-of-atticus-finch-in-go-set-a-watchman-could-alter-harper-lees-legacy.html">Leaked previews</a> of Watchman have stirred the pot even more; we have to get used to Atticus as more of a Strom Thurmond than a St Francis.</p>
<p>The prepublication pageant, however, has us looking in the wrong direction and asking the wrong questions. Written in the 1950s, both Mockingbird and Watchman offer windows into one southern writer’s grasp of race relations at a certain moment in history. But that moment is certainly gone now, and Mockingbird is a formula for a nostalgic backward look rather than a prescription for action in the present. (Some say the novel has always been a way for white audiences to console themselves into thinking that a fine speech could be equated with doing the right thing.) </p>
<p>The “new” Atticus of Watchman is apparently no help either: if he is no longer an icon of Mockingbird’s call for “go slow” racial justice, he’s a mouthpiece of massive resistance in Watchman. </p>
<p>Neither Atticus – and neither novel – works in a 2015 context. </p>
<h2>A film devoid of racial nuance</h2>
<p>Horton Foote’s Academy Award-winning screenplay for the film version of To Kill a Mockingbird is one reason we’re in the trance of thinking that feeling bad about injustice amounts to doing something to eradicate it. Most of us who have read the novel and seen the film probably remember the film, which largely shears off the darker complexities of Lee’s novel. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/88255/original/image-20150713-11816-1lvsr4n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/88255/original/image-20150713-11816-1lvsr4n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=769&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/88255/original/image-20150713-11816-1lvsr4n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=769&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/88255/original/image-20150713-11816-1lvsr4n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=769&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/88255/original/image-20150713-11816-1lvsr4n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=966&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/88255/original/image-20150713-11816-1lvsr4n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=966&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/88255/original/image-20150713-11816-1lvsr4n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=966&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The screen version of To Kill a Mockingbird omitted many of the racial complexities present in the novel.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/x-ray_delta_one/5899419289">James Vaughan/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The screen version omits characters like Mrs Dubose, whose racist haranguing of Scout and Jem is excused by Atticus because she’s fighting an addiction to medical morphine. Nor does Dolphus Raymond – sire of a mixed-race family who so loathes Maycomb’s racist hypocrisies that he fakes being the town drunk to be left alone – make an appearance. </p>
<p>Omitted, too, are scenes like the tea sponsored by the ladies of the Alabama Methodist Episcopal Church South who, even after the riveting trial of Tom Robinson, still cling to racist stereotypes of African Americans. </p>
<p>What we get instead is Gregory Peck’s sonorous baritone (which lacks any trace of a Southern accent) telling us how the best white people could have taken care of their Negro inferiors in the 1930s South if it weren’t for white trash racists. (Not in so many words, of course.)</p>
<h2>Marketing nostalgia</h2>
<p>Can we really expect Watchman, whatever its politics, to set us on the right track, to tell us how to deal with Confederate symbols and the latent racism embedded in American politics, institutions, policing practices and daily life? </p>
<p>Probably not. The jacket design echoes the original design of the first edition jacket for Mockingbird, which is set in the 1930s. It was an era when we mostly traveled by train (as the 2015 cover of Watchman seems to want to remind us). In the predigital “stone age,” distances were greater and time moved at a Maycomb pace. </p>
<p>Back then, Atticus felt he could not solely change the monolith of race relations in the South. He hoped his son and daughter, who would have come of age in the 1960s, could carry the torch. Did they? Did we?</p>
<h2>What could be novel in this novel?</h2>
<p>If Watchman is, as many argue, not a free-standing novel but the husk from which Mockingbird was drawn, then it is the product of a time just shy of violent crises: Freedom Summer; the killings of civil rights workers in Neshoba County, Mississippi; and the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. </p>
<p>Still, one wonders whether a novel written 50 years ago tells us anything new. </p>
<p>In Mockingbird, Tom Robinson is gunned down by a white prison guard in what Atticus reports as an escape attempt. In 2015 we have video evidence of a white South Carolina police officer gunning down a black man, Walter Scott – not offstage a novel, but in real time. Tragically, there are more examples, including the shooting in the sanctuary of Charleston’s Emanuel AME Church – a sister church, perhaps, to the AME Church in Mockingbird where Calpurnia takes Scout and Jem as her guests. </p>
<p>This is not to say that the racial violence we know today didn’t exist in the 1930s. </p>
<p>It’s to say that we now know too much to assent to Atticus’ oft-quoted advice to walk around in the skin of others before passing judgment on their words or actions. </p>
<p>How much has really changed? In 2015, Robert E Lee Ewell, the villain of Mockingbird, could arm his racist fantasies as Dylann Roof armed his: with a 9mm pistol. What Boo Radley will rid us of that problem? </p>
<p>Like two million others, I’ve ordered a copy of Go Set a Watchman. But these days, To Kill a Mockingbird – along with the accompanying film – seems merely to add up to a wish fulfillment fantasy. We continue to watch the innocent go to prison or be killed for having darker skin. And we continue to simply feel badly, hoping that someday the jury will actually return the right verdict and all will be well – as in our dreams.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/44548/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael Kreyling does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The hoopla surrounding the novel’s release is misguided; after all, how much power could a novel written 50 years ago wield in today’s charged environment?Michael Kreyling, Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of English, Vanderbilt UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/445102015-07-10T06:37:08Z2015-07-10T06:37:08ZA long-lost friend reborn: what we can expect from Go Set a Watchman<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/88034/original/image-20150710-16937-cyetwm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=63%2C67%2C1216%2C696&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">What does the opening chapter of Harper Lee's Go Set a Watchman tell us about what's to come? </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">anyjazz65</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The provenance of <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2657.To_Kill_a_Mockingbird">To Kill a Mockingbird</a> (1960) is perhaps less well known than the novel itself, which has come to be even less remarked upon than the legal travails and self-imposed isolation of the author who penned the work. </p>
<p>Even those who haven’t read To Kill A Mockingbird know <a href="http://www.biography.com/people/harper-lee-9377021">Harper Lee</a>, now 89, has been labelled a recluse, dogged by <a href="http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2013/08/harper-lee-dispute-royalties">legal troubles</a>, and has the distinction of having written what is regarded an American masterpiece without peer. </p>
<p>The Pulitzer Prize-winning To Kill A Mockingbird <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americannovel/timeline/tokillamockingbird.html">outsold the Bible</a> in its early days, and has been regularly voted the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/mar/02/news.michellepauli">greatest novel</a> of the century. </p>
<p>Lee herself has refused major interviews since 1964, and though active in her local community – Monroeville, Alabama – she still preserves a steadfast and tightly held grip on her privacy.</p>
<p>Then the publication of <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24817626-go-set-a-watchman">Go Set a Watchman</a> (to be released in full on July 14), heralded as Lee’s “lost novel” and a sequel to To Kill A Mockingbird, was <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/04/books/harper-lee-author-of-to-kill-a-mockingbird-is-to-publish-a-new-novel.html?_r=0">announced</a> on February 3, this year. </p>
<p>The author – who had been almost as well known for publishing just the one book as it being <em>that</em> book – and who’d maintained she’d never publish another book, was releasing another, and the publishing world and fans reacted accordingly. </p>
<p>In the history of publishing it’s hard to think of a longer lead-in time to a second novel, or a more highly-anticipated publication. The book’s <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/ng-interactive/2015/jul/10/go-set-a-watchman-read-the-first-chapter">first chapter</a> has appeared, in a coordinated, global publicity campaign, today. Think <a href="http://www.biography.com/people/jd-salinger-9470070">Salinger</a> goes on <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0123366/">The View</a>, or <a href="http://www.abbasite.com/">ABBA</a> reforming, in terms of Least Likely Events to Happen. That Lee would release a second novel is an incredible, stunning second act.</p>
<p>Go Set a Watchman, whose title derives from <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Isaiah+21%3A6&version=KJV">Isaiah 21:6</a>, may be the most anticipated novel in the last 55 years of publishing, for that is how many years have passed between the publication of what will be Lee’s two books.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/88008/original/image-20150710-16758-1tr26x7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/88008/original/image-20150710-16758-1tr26x7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/88008/original/image-20150710-16758-1tr26x7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/88008/original/image-20150710-16758-1tr26x7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/88008/original/image-20150710-16758-1tr26x7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1160&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/88008/original/image-20150710-16758-1tr26x7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1160&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/88008/original/image-20150710-16758-1tr26x7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1160&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Go Set A Watchman (2015) cover, Random House, Australia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Image courtesy of Random House</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The novel, though, is not a sequel, and in fact is the first iteration of the classic story of Scout, her brother Jem and their father Atticus. Back in 1957, Lee’s agent and friend <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/to-shill-a-mockingbird-how-the-discovery-of-a-manuscript-became-harper-lees-new-novel/2015/02/16/48656f76-b3b9-11e4-886b-c22184f27c35_story.html">Maurice Crain was impressed</a> with the Southern Gothic-infused story of Maycomb County, but suggested revising Go Set a Watchman from the adult Scout’s voice reflecting on her childhood, and rewrite the novel with the adult Atticus as the focus. </p>
<p>The resulting novel, Atticus, was completed and submitted for appraisal. Crain and his wife Annie Laurie Williams, also an agent, encouraged the novice writer to re-tell the story again, this time from the child’s perspective. The result was To Kill a Mockingbird, where the six-year-old Scout – who grows up to be the adult Jean-Louise – is our guide in a coming of age story that tracks through summers with brother Jem and friend Dill, and the winters at school in the Deep South of the United States, sometime after the Crash.</p>
<p>The process of writing To Kill A Mockingbird took Lee the better part of seven years to complete, and the resulting novel has been an established part of the American canon ever since.</p>
<p>To say the expectation on Go Set a Watchman is enormous is an understatement, but the interest in Lee’s work has not wavered over the years. <a href="http://www.harpercollins.com/">Harper Collins</a> agreement to release Go Set a Watchman unedited is testament to this, but the quality of To Kill A Mockingbird speaks to an underlying faith in Lee’s abilities as a writer.</p>
<p>This faith is borne out immediately from the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/ng-interactive/2015/jul/10/go-set-a-watchman-read-the-first-chapter">opening lines</a> of Go Set a Watchman:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Since Atlanta, she had looked out the dining-car window with a delight almost physical. Over her breakfast coffee, she watched the last of Georgia’s hills recede and the red earth appear, and with it tin-roofed houses set in the middle of swept yards, and in the yards the inevitable verbena grew, surrounded by whitewashed tires. She grinned when she saw her first TV antenna atop an unpainted Negro house; as they multiplied, her joy rose.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>They have a familiar and comforting cadence, like the voice of a loved aunt after a long absence. The lyrical qualities of To Kill A Mockingbird are evident in the opening description, and bring us back to familiar territory, albeit from the viewpoint of the adult we may have hoped Scout would become. </p>
<p>That Jean-Louise, the adult narrator, existed before Scout told us To Kill a Mockingbird seems immaterial, with distinct echoes of Scout’s fierce independence and unique perspective on life. There’s a recognisable sense of child-like wonder in Jean-Louise’s description of her train ride home to Maycomb; it’s the voice of the truly glad to be alive, looking upon the world with much the same inquisitiveness Scout possessed in To Kill A Mockingbird. </p>
<p>Yet the almost immediate reference to the name Jean-Louise reminds us that Scout – the child – isn’t telling this story.</p>
<p>This is the voice and attitude of a grown woman, reflecting on entirely adult concerns like marriage and adultery. Jean-Louise’s reflections demonstrate she has the wisdom of age, and they read like the thoughts of a deep and pragmatic thinker.</p>
<p>The grown-up Scout is, however, still rebellious and defying convention, self-possessed and assured, rejecting offers of help and marriage alike with a grim humour. Jean-Louise is a woman with a strong moral conscience, echoing the fierce sense of justice we were introduced to in To Kill A Mockingbird. The adult that Scout became seems at ease; settled within herself, and accepting of her eccentricities, even acknowledging their effect on others. </p>
<p>It’s like Lee needed to know and understand the adult before she could provide a realistic depiction of the child in To Kill A Mockingbird.</p>
<p>Jean-Louise’s voice is strong, direct and delivers pragmatic homilies, much in the vein of To Kill A Mockingbird, which begins with:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with, nothing to see outside the boundaries of Maycomb County.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Go Set A Watchman’s narrative voice brings us the maxim: “If you did not want much, there was plenty”. From this, one can deduce Go Set A Watchman may yet deliver the kind of deep parable that made To Kill A Mockingbird such a classic.</p>
<p>Lee’s ability with description is evident in the excerpt published today, with long sentences beautifully rendered and evoking a world long lost to history, but welcoming all the same. The evocative imagery pulls the reader back to the world of To Kill A Mockingbird, although in the first pages we are abruptly introduced to the death of a much-loved character. </p>
<p>A friend’s immediate reaction to reading the first chapter was to comment about her relief Atticus was still alive. Such is the connection with and enduring affection for these characters.</p>
<p>These moments of recognition feel like a long-lost friend reborn. Jean-Louise is a woman of her era; at once independent and confident. She provides a glimpse to a kind of feminism that Scout could not have known the word for. Jean-Louise is as flawed as any human, quite proud and strident in her opinion. </p>
<p>When she tells her prospective fiancée in the opening chapter “Go to hell then”, she provides a link between Scout and what we think we know of Lee, who was quoted as being “<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/style-blog/wp/2015/02/06/harper-lee-says-shes-happy-as-hell-about-her-upcoming-novel/">happy as hell</a>” at the publication of Go Set A Watchman. </p>
<p>As well she should be. Where Lee faced much <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5244492">discussion and debate</a> about the origins and authorship of To Kill A Mockingbird, Go Set A Watchman – we can expect – will provide us with an impressive glimpse into the development of a novel and a writer.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/44510/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lynda Hawryluk is affiliated with the Australasian Association of Writing Programs and the Northern Rivers Writers Centre, organiser of the Byron Bay Writers Festival.</span></em></p>Go Set a Watchman, by Harper Lee, is one of the most anticipated follow-ups in history, to be published next week after a 55-year hiatus. So what does the opening chapter prime us to expect?Lynda Hawryluk, Senior Lecturer in Writing, Southern Cross UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/373492015-02-08T23:59:39Z2015-02-08T23:59:39ZTo Kill a Mockingbird, My Brilliant Career and long-lost ‘sequels’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71415/original/image-20150208-28589-9n8whn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Harper Lee, pictured circa 1962, has announced a return to the literary world. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>By now there can be few people who don’t know Harper Lee’s supposedly long-lost manuscript, Go Set a Watchman, <a href="https://theconversation.com/harper-lees-gamble-could-undermine-her-mockingbird-37160">will be published</a> in July. It will be the first book published by Lee since To Kill a Mockingbird in 1960 and, with both novels essentially hewn from the same manuscript, the works are intimately connected.</p>
<p>When a beloved story ends, whatever the medium, there is a sense of loss and disappointment. We can re-read or re-watch a book or TV series, or turn to fan fiction and different formats <a href="http://www.darkhorse.com/Zones/Buffy">such as comics</a>, in an attempt to continue our immersion in a favourite world and extend the adventures of its characters. </p>
<p>The temptation to give official life to popular books after the death of the author is often too strong to resist.</p>
<p>L Frank Baum’s Oz series was taken up by a new “Royal Historian of Oz”, Ruth Plumly Thompson, who published 19 books in the 1920s and 1930s. Geraldine McCaughrean wrote the “official sequel” to J.M. Barrie’s Peter and Wendy (1911) almost a century after the original in 2006. </p>
<p>And after rights to a Winnie the Pooh sequel reverted from Disney – who had turned the character into a lucrative merchandising phenomenon – the estate of A.A. Milne <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/jan/10/pooh-bear-sequel-david-benedictus">authorised David Benedictus</a> to write Return to the Hundred Acre Wood in 2009. </p>
<p>The Gothic family sagas of V.C. Andrews continued to corner the market for tales of incest even after her death in 1986, with more than 50 additional novels authored by a ghostwriter. Recently it was <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/new-writer-continues-stieg-larssons-bestselling-dragon-tattoo-series-20150130-132cih.html">announced that</a> Stieg Larsson’s Millenium series, for which he wrote three of ten projected novels before he died in 2004, will be continued by a new author. </p>
<p>Readers’ desire for more once an original author has passed away rarely leads to satisfaction. But what if the original author happened to write a prequel or a sequel around the same period as their most famous book?</p>
<p>Such is the case with Go Set a Watchman, the forthcoming book by the reclusive Harper Lee. Many who hold To Kill a Mockingbird dear have been celebrating the news of a second work of fiction.</p>
<p>The novel is set 20 years after the events depicted in To Kill a Mockingbird, but was written prior to the high-school English mainstay. <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory/harper-lee-published-july-28687808">Lee has said</a> she was advised by her editor to write another manuscript, from the perspective of Scout Finch as a child, and Go Set a Watchman was left aside. </p>
<p>As strange as the situation seems, there is a similar case in Australian literary history, albeit by an author who did publish other works of fiction and non-fiction. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71414/original/image-20150208-28615-cia4u4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71414/original/image-20150208-28615-cia4u4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71414/original/image-20150208-28615-cia4u4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=771&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71414/original/image-20150208-28615-cia4u4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=771&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71414/original/image-20150208-28615-cia4u4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=771&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71414/original/image-20150208-28615-cia4u4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=968&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71414/original/image-20150208-28615-cia4u4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=968&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71414/original/image-20150208-28615-cia4u4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=968&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Miles Franklin.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Like Lee, Miles Franklin’s first novel became one of the most successful books ever written in her home country. My Brilliant Career (1901) was – as with Mockingbird – narrated in first-person by a girl, Sybylla Melvyn, who is a teenager coming into womanhood.</p>
<p>Franklin felt her novel had been misread, a process that began with the alteration of her original title: My Brilliant(?) Career, and was heightened by the perception that is was an autobiography. (She even withdrew the book from publication, and it was not reprinted until after her death in 1954.) </p>
<p>Franklin immediately wrote a satirical sequel, The End of My Career, to right the situation, but publishers rejected it. <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=S0OEaxE-Hc0C&pg=PA26&dq=%22my+career+goes+bung%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=LanUVLGFKeL6mQW0y4GQAw&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=%22my%20career%20goes%20bung%22&f=false">According to Penelope Hanley</a>, the manuscript was “too audacious, with characters too recognisable”. </p>
<p>It was not until 1946 that the work was published as My Career Goes Bung. Like Lee’s long-thought-vanished first manuscript, what was to become My Career Goes Bung was also thought lost for a substantial period. Franklin believed it had been thrown into a furnace in Chicago when a man had wanted to use the trunk that contained a number of Franklin’s manuscripts. </p>
<p>Franklin was also something of a recluse in that she lived overseas for more than 30 years and published a number of novels in the latter part of her career under the pseudonym “Brent of Bin Bin”.</p>
<p>Both Lee and Franklin <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-02-04/harper-lee-publish-new-book-50-years-after-to-kill-a-mockingbird/6068174">were inhibited</a> by the weight of the success of their first published novels. </p>
<p>Though published almost half a century afterwards, the sequel to Franklin’s most successful novel was obscured by the original, the reception of which it directly responded to. While Lee was never satisfied with any of her subsequent attempts to write both fiction and non-fiction manuscripts. </p>
<p>In both cases, editors declined early manuscripts that were subsequently thought to have been destroyed. When it was finally published, readers did not find My Brilliant Career: Part Two in My Career Goes Bung, which deliberately rewrote the original to achieve different ends. </p>
<p>Go Set the Watchmen, which will be published in its original unedited format and focalised through an adult Scout, is also unlikely to give readers all of the pleasures to be found in To Kill a Mockingbird. </p>
<p>Yet the millions of readers of one of the highest selling books of all-time will be curious to see the world once again through the eyes of Scout Finch. </p>
<p><br>
<strong>See also: <br></strong>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/harper-lees-gamble-could-undermine-her-mockingbird-37160">Harper Lee’s gamble could undermine her Mockingbird</a></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/37349/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
By now there can be few people who don’t know Harper Lee’s supposedly long-lost manuscript, Go Set a Watchman, will be published in July. It will be the first book published by Lee since To Kill a Mockingbird…Michelle Smith, Research fellow in English Literature, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/371822015-02-06T12:19:13Z2015-02-06T12:19:13ZHow suspicious should we be about the ‘new’ Harper Lee novel?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71298/original/image-20150206-28618-1lig8ly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Should it be published or not?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-188182073/stock-photo-closeup-of-book.html?src=30XZjkVef0ZUjYTjuc96jA-1-10&ws=1">Tadeas</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A sequel to Harper Lee’s classic 1960 novel To Kill a Mockingbird has been “found”, and will be published in July, <a href="https://theconversation.com/theres-something-mysterious-about-reviving-lees-mockingbird-37184">her US publisher HarperCollins has announced</a>. The sequel – Go Set a Watchman – was written before To Kill a Mockingbird, but Lee’s editor persuaded her to take her grown-up character Scout back in time, and the multi-million selling novel was born, and the “sequel” discarded. Until now.</p>
<p>It’s big news in the literary world. Social media thrummed with the announcement, with the hashtag #HarperLee trending as readers remembered their love of the schoolroom set-text. Anyone else with publishing news to spread struggled for attention.</p>
<p>Lee is a notoriously absent author, fitting Joe Moran’s definition of the “author-recluse” in his book Star Authors. The author-recluse’s absences can, paradoxically, create a degree of celebrity. A refusal to engage with the task of the “author-promoter” can be taken as a sign of high literary prestige. (It can also result in voicelessness and lack of sales, but that’s a different story.)</p>
<h2>The rumour mill</h2>
<p>But alongside the excitement and the adoration, <a href="http://jezebel.com/be-suspicious-of-the-new-harper-lee-novel-1683488258">cynicism has already crept in</a>. Is there something a little fishy about the book having “turned up”? How was Lee persuaded to publish it many decades later, and after originally being convinced by her publisher that a book from the young Scout’s perspective would be stronger? Will the publication of this book undermine Harper Lee’s reputation, and the status of To Kill a Mockingbird?</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71299/original/image-20150206-28589-dz8bc1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71299/original/image-20150206-28589-dz8bc1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=769&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71299/original/image-20150206-28589-dz8bc1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=769&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71299/original/image-20150206-28589-dz8bc1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=769&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71299/original/image-20150206-28589-dz8bc1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=966&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71299/original/image-20150206-28589-dz8bc1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=966&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71299/original/image-20150206-28589-dz8bc1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=966&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mary Badham and Gregory Peck.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">x-ray_delta_one</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Internet chatter would suggest a tale mired in questions of ownership, legacy and manipulation. The announcement comes hot on the heels of the death of Lee’s sister, Alice, who acted (until the age of 100) as Harper’s lawyer. Harper’s own health is failing following a stroke. It’s been <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-28324115">reported</a> that Alice Lee said in 2011 that Harper isn’t always fully cognisant of the contracts she signs, which undermines the statement Lee made about her support for the new publication. The accusations have been <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/feb/05/harper-lee-to-kill-a-mockingbird-sequel-go-set-a-watchman">swiftly rebutted by Lee’s agent</a>, saying she is “alive and kicking and happy as hell” at the reaction to the announcement.</p>
<p>So should we see the publication of Go Set a Watchman (which will almost undoubtedly be a lesser novel than To Kill a Mockingbird) as an act of literary exploitation, and if so, of whom? Should it be published, or not?</p>
<h2>Afterlives</h2>
<p>Literary history gives us some instructive parallels. <a href="http://www.lrb.co.uk/v30/n06/benjamin-markovits/you-have-never-written-better">Lord Byron’s publisher John Murray burned the poet’s memoirs</a>, in order to protect his author’s posthumous reputation. Murray hadn’t actually read them, but was acting on the word of the poet Thomas Moore, whose lurid recollections of the memoirs feed our understanding of what Byron’s account might have given us. </p>
<p>A mere handful of Emily Dickinson’s poems were published in her lifetime, following her decision to circulate them only among family and friends. </p>
<p>J R R Tolkien’s son Christopher is the author’s literary executor; key to the piecing together and posthumous publication of books including The Silmarillion. <a href="http://www.worldcrunch.com/culture-society/my-father-039-s-quot-eviscerated-quot-work-son-of-hobbit-scribe-j.r.r.-tolkien-finally-speaks-out/hobbit-silmarillion-lord-of-rings/c3s10299/#.VNIdHTlNvdk">Despite this</a>, a “labor of literary disinterment”, the global success of Peter Jackson’s Tolkien films has not been so welcomed by the family; further adaptations <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/the-hobbit-no-more-tolkien-films-after-the-battle-of-the-five-armies-says-peter-jackson-9899935.html">will not be allowed</a>. Christopher commented that his father: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Has become a monster, devoured by his own popularity and absorbed into the absurdity of our time … The commercialization has reduced the aesthetic and philosophical impact of the creation to nothing. There is only one solution for me: to turn my head away.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Such a turn away from commercialisation, and the exploitation of intellectual property, is a far cry from the world of global publishing and associated media industries, where literary agents such as <a href="http://www.wylieagency.com/clients.html">Andrew Wylie</a> represent the estates of authors such as Saul Bellow, J G Ballard, Elmore Leonard and Norman Mailer. Powerful custodianship of these estates maximise financial return and literary prestige while copyright continues (typically 50-70 years after death).</p>
<h2>A different case</h2>
<p>But, of course, Harper Lee is not dead. It’s hard to disentangle the truth behind the rumours of manipulation of Lee herself, although the demands for profit of global media businesses such as HarperCollins (part of the News Corporation empire) is always strong. Internationally recognised authors such as Lee give publishers the opportunity to develop brands, grow new income streams, and sustain backlist publishing. </p>
<p>The announcement of this new book will have prompted a <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/booknews/11390539/Sales-of-To-Kill-a-Mockingbird-rocket-by-6600.html">spike in sales</a> of the 1960 title, and so perhaps this is an exploitation of us as readers – or a reminder to any of us who haven’t read the original to read it before July. Whatever the literary qualities of Go Set a Watchman, it is bound to sell well. </p>
<p>If Lee really wants this publication, is it the equivalent of the ageing rock band wearily undertaking one last stadium tour, in order to rake in enough cash for a comfortable retirement? For the ailing Lee in her care home, comforted by a pile of royalties, that’s probably not the case. </p>
<p>And it must be said that given the choice between this book being in the public domain and not, I’d much rather it was. If nothing else, this new book will give us another case study of the collaborative relationship of publishers and writers, the ethics of cultural ownership, and power dynamics in literary networks.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/37182/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Claire Squires does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A sequel to Harper Lee’s classic 1960 novel To Kill a Mockingbird has been “found”, and will be published in July, her US publisher HarperCollins has announced. The sequel – Go Set a Watchman – was written…Claire Squires, Professor in Publishing Studies , University of StirlingLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/372022015-02-05T18:11:03Z2015-02-05T18:11:03ZWhat should readers look for in Harper Lee’s new novel?<p>The announcement of the upcoming publication of Go Set a Watchman – a sequel to Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird actually written <em>before</em> the famous novel – has, not surprisingly, set off a flurry of excitement and speculation. Pre-orders of the book have already made it an <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2015/02/04/harper-lees-go-set-a-watchman-is-already-a-best-seller/">Amazon bestseller</a>. </p>
<p>Yet many have <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/02/04/harper-lee-go-set-a-watchman-health_n_6610832.html">raised questions</a> about the sudden announcement: it came shortly after the death of Harper Lee’s beloved sister, Alice, who as a lawyer (“Atticus in a skirt” Lee once called her), vigilantly protected Lee’s interests. Suspicions abound that Lee’s current lawyer, <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2015/02/04/meet-the-lawyer-who-found-harper-lees-new-novel/">Tonja Carter</a> – who discovered the old copy of Go Set a Watchman – may have seized the opportunity to profit from an elderly woman now residing in an assisted living facility. (Lee <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-31147034">has dismissed</a> such speculation.) </p>
<p>In Go Set a Watchman, the adult Scout returns home to Maycomb, Alabama from New York to visit her father. According to publisher HarperCollins, Scout seeks “to understand her father’s attitude toward society, and her own feelings about the place where she was born and spent her childhood.”</p>
<p>How should devoted fans of Lee’s first novel – originally published in 1960 – respond to a second novel published 55 years later? One possible reaction is trepidation. Will To Kill a Mockingbird be tarnished through an inferior portrayal of an adult Scout? In this new work, will we recognize the charming voice of the earlier novel? </p>
<p>In the late 1950s, Lee’s editor read the original manuscript of Go Set a Watchman, deemed the flashbacks to Scout’s childhood the strongest parts, and recommended that these be the premise for a new draft (what became To Kill a Mockingbird). Presumably, the editor did not consider the original manuscript of Go Set a Watchman fit for publication.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71227/original/image-20150205-28578-10d30l2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71227/original/image-20150205-28578-10d30l2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71227/original/image-20150205-28578-10d30l2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71227/original/image-20150205-28578-10d30l2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71227/original/image-20150205-28578-10d30l2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71227/original/image-20150205-28578-10d30l2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71227/original/image-20150205-28578-10d30l2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lee chats with childhood friend Truman Capote in a 1966 photograph.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/trumancapote/15862749172/in/photolist-qaJJFo-4LaJvj-4L6q4r-4Lawch-8AMbZy-HLL7b-Zyc5U-4yqEGq-8bGB1n-4MZNGQ-c4pgLo-8bGART-6zLv72-8hLBBJ-eUgd7g-eUsC1m-eUsBMA-eUgdYv-eUgdRV-eUgdPe-eUsAtJ-eUsApG-eUsAbC-eUszTQ-eUgcZa-4xVBpX-4RDLfr-3nUrgR-4BKeje-4REdjv-4RHVkL-4GBMoS-euoVh-eUgjJ6-eUsGw3-eUgdwP-pTpf5z-euoUY-euoTW-euoUg-jGUfyM-me6idc-6akyug-8irSab-gc993N-b4uCGP-mU9dq-5WL4AW-9JSZSW-4tSozv">Steve Schapiro/Corbis</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But beyond questions of quality, there are very real questions about setting and character. <a href="http://www.lib.miamioh.edu/multifacet/record/mu3ugb3522567">I’ve written about</a> ways in which Lee criticizes the traditional social norms of 1930s Alabama, while presenting models for defiance of these norms. For example, Dolphus Raymond – a white man in a relationship with a black woman – is able to circumvent the racist social system by pretending he is an alcoholic whose unconventional choice can be written off as part of his disease. Furthermore, in addition to the overt criticism of the racist social structure, Lee offers a playful critique of gender norms: she portrays Scout as a tomboy more comfortable wrestling with boys than wearing traditional feminine clothing.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71230/original/image-20150205-28594-6oxh2t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71230/original/image-20150205-28594-6oxh2t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=950&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71230/original/image-20150205-28594-6oxh2t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=950&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71230/original/image-20150205-28594-6oxh2t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=950&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71230/original/image-20150205-28594-6oxh2t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1194&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71230/original/image-20150205-28594-6oxh2t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1194&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71230/original/image-20150205-28594-6oxh2t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1194&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee depicts a racist society, in which most romantic relationships were portrayed as either strained or perverse. How will an adult Scout emerge from this world?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/47427194@N06/4784713192/in/photolist-7A7paA-pjTcvG-npqr3n-879LPw-dZhEp3-cN6zHj-atxpCt-8hNUx3-8Z71mw-6FRPrW-e1nbtS-8iabyQ-f76UyU-bh7hFV-64sQu8-fxoUYi-4wu8Vi-a3cjhn-aTjqxt-cfcRTY-dzziRv-74Mwoi-Mrosu-7Rjrw3-cf7Xa7-9j2NBJ-bAQYmT-9iYEKT-8cfbGZ-cf95Qo-aDRDvn-7Ymugr-4Er6MU-eGKatp-db4WB-6zx9BX-nAJgjV-P4pud-81HBbG-gRJCJh-bNYUu4-bww9ZT-noBCDK-Mrp29-n27Urb-4xZJLW-4xVuLn-4xVuMc-8YAWyY-MrwNF">T and L basement/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Lee also opens a path for the young Scout later to assume an unconventional sexual identity. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee’s depiction of heterosexual relationships includes almost no positive examples; meanwhile, she highlights negative cases such as Scout’s Aunt Alexandra’s strained, distant relationship with her husband, and – much worse – the sexual abuse of Mayella Ewell by her own father. The novel calls into question racial and gender norms while legitimizing the violation of social boundaries. Indeed, Scout’s beloved Atticus encourages defiance of social structures in order to be true to one’s conscience, even agreeing to label Boo Radley’s killing of Bob Ewell an accidental suicide.</p>
<p>Go Set a Watchman will answer the incipient questions about Scout’s identity that To Kill a Mockingbird subtly poses. Although parts of To Kill a Mockingbird are told in an adult voice, the novel never tells us whether the adult Scout has married or has children. Will the adult Scout of Go Set a Watchman – now living in New York – have acquired even more distance from the racist, small-town, Southern values portrayed in To Kill a Mockingbird? Will she, as an adult woman, violate gender and sexual norms? Or, since Go Set a Watchman was actually written before To Kill a Mockingbird, will the adult character be a more conservative, traditional version of Scout?</p>
<p>Until the novel’s July 14 release, we can only wonder.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/37202/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Laura Fine does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The announcement of the upcoming publication of Go Set a Watchman – a sequel to Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird actually written before the famous novel – has, not surprisingly, set off a flurry of…Laura Fine, Department Chair of English , Meredith CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/371842015-02-05T06:17:59Z2015-02-05T06:17:59ZThere’s something mysterious about reviving Lee’s Mockingbird<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71096/original/image-20150204-28598-1qe9y22.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The hidden story of Nelle (Harper) Lee.</span> </figcaption></figure><p>Every now and then, the writer Josephine Humphreys has suggested, our lives veer from their day-to-day course and become for a short while “the kind of life that can be told as a story – that is, one in which events appear to have meaning”. As the <a href="https://theconversation.com/harper-lees-gamble-could-undermine-her-mockingbird-37160">astounding news</a> breaks that she is to publish a second novel, Harper Lee must be feeling like her life has become a story – a story which the meaning of remains just a little hidden and mysterious.</p>
<p>The background to this story seems simple and straightforward enough. Harper Lee was born Nelle Lee in the small town of Monroe, Alabama in 1926. Her father, Amasa Coleman Lee, was a lawyer who, among other things, defended two African Americans accused of murdering a white storekeeper. Given the racist attitudes prevalent in the South at that time, it must have come as no surprise to anyone when the two men were found guilty, despite serious doubts over the evidence, and hanged. </p>
<p>Lee was a tomboy as a child. (Yes, To Kill a Mockingbird is deeply autobiographical). She then developed an interest in English literature as a school and college student. Moving to New York in 1949, she worked in various jobs and spent her spare time writing several long short stories, none of which were published.</p>
<p>The turning point in her early life came when Lee developed what had begun as a string of short stories into a novel that was eventually published in 1960 as To Kill a Mockingbird. It was an immediate success, winning several awards including a Pulitzer Prize and went on to sell more than 30 million copies worldwide. In 1999 it was voted “Best Novel of the Century” in a poll by the Library Journal. </p>
<p>And the popular acclaim <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=isyrAAAACAAJ&">hardly stops there</a>. In 1991, a survey of 5,000 Americans conducted by the Library of Congress to find out which book had made the greatest difference in readers’ lives listed To Kill a Mockingbird second only to the Bible. Bill Clinton claimed that reading the novel inspired him to become a lawyer. And, ironically, during President Clinton’s impeachment proceedings, the special prosecutor, Kenneth Starr, tried to co-opt the novel’s hero, Atticus Finch, for the prosecution. The response of Clinton’s attorney, David E Kendall, was to write a piece for the New York Times titled: “To Distort a Mockingbird”, interpreting the moral values of the novel in defence of the president.</p>
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<h2>Turning murky</h2>
<p>So far, so straightforward: but this is where the story begins slowly to turn strange. The central consciousness in To Kill a Mockingbird, a tomboyish young girl called Scout is clearly based on the author herself. Autobiographical it may be, but Lee was and remains a deeply private person; a symptom of this is that she identified herself as “Harper” not “Nelle” when the book was published. After publication, Lee seemed almost mortified by its success: “I never expected any sort of success with Mockingbird,” she said in 1964:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I was hoping for a quick and merciful death at the hands of the reviewers but, at the same time, I sort of hoped someone would like it enough to give me encouragement. Public encouragement. I hoped for a little, as I said, but I got rather a whole lot, and in some ways this was just about as frightening as the quick, merciful death I’d expected.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Perhaps it was this, being frightened by her own success and the subsequent invasion of her privacy, that persuaded Lee to become a virtual recluse. She has granted almost no requests for interviews or public appearances. At one of the few public ceremonies she agreed to attend, in 2007, she reacted to an invitation to address the audience by <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturenews/8463233/Harper-Lee-to-disclose-why-she-stopped-writing-after-To-Kill-A-Mockingbird.html">declaring</a>: “Well, it’s better to be silent than a fool.” And, apart from a few short essays, she has published nothing more. Until recently, she appeared likely to join the ranks of those many American authors whose first completed and published novel is also their last. </p>
<h2>A final twist</h2>
<p>Now comes the strangest part of the story. Lee is now very frail. <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-28324115">According to her late sister Alice</a>, writing in 2011, she “can’t see and can’t hear and will sign anything put before her by anyone in whom she has confidence”. Presumably, she has confidence in her lawyer who, according to Lee, discovered the manuscript of this second novel, <a href="https://theconversation.com/harper-lees-gamble-could-undermine-her-mockingbird-37160">Go Set a Watchman</a>. </p>
<p>The novel describes an adult Scout returning to Maycomb County, visiting her father and recalling her childhood. A sequel, in a way, to Mockingbird, it was evidently written prior to it; after reading the story, Lee’s editor asked her to rewrite it from the viewpoint of Scout as a child. “I was a first-time writer”, Lee has said, “so I did what I was told” – and the rest is literary history.</p>
<p>“I hadn’t realised it had survived”, <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory/harper-lee-published-july-28687808">Lee has said</a> of the discovery of Go Set a Watchman:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>So I was surprised and delighted when my dear friend and lawyer Tonja Carter discovered it. After much thought and hesitation I shared it with a handful of people I trust and was pleased that they considered it worthy of publication. I am humbled and amazed that this will now be published after all these years.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Exactly what part, if any, Lee has played in the preparation of the manuscript for press is unclear. What is clear is that the initial print run is for two million copies. Also unclear, to me at least, is the precise relationship of Go Set a Watchman to Mockingbird: do the two stories, for instance, overlap at all, given that the 1960 novel evolved out of this earlier manuscript? Precisely what the status is of Go Set a Watchman as a story – and a story worth reading – also remains open to debate. </p>
<p>Less open to debate is the strange, compelling character of the story of its origins. An ageing author, with just one novel to her credit, the surprise discovery of a manuscript that she thought had been lost, the mystery surrounding the condition of the author… all this is the stuff of fiction. </p>
<p>A belief of <a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/182914">Emily Dickinson</a> comes particularly to mind: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Publication – is the Auction<br>
Of the Mind of Man</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/37184/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Gray does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Every now and then, the writer Josephine Humphreys has suggested, our lives veer from their day-to-day course and become for a short while “the kind of life that can be told as a story – that is, one in…Richard Gray, Professor in English Literature, University of EssexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/371602015-02-04T05:45:15Z2015-02-04T05:45:15ZHarper Lee’s gamble could undermine her Mockingbird<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71038/original/image-20150204-14335-cnkjwd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Lee's second novel, Go Set a Watchman, will have a more adult centre of gravity. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Chris Burke</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, has sold tens of millions of copies worldwide, and was voted <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2138827/To-Kill-a-Mockingbird-voted-Greatest-Novel-Of-All-Time.html">The Greatest Novel of All Time</a> in a London Daily Telegraph poll of 2008. To say there was a little pressure on its follow-up – some 55 years later – would be an understatement. </p>
<p>Lee, 88, has <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/mockingbird-author-harper-lee-publish-second-novel-160859906.html">announced</a> she will in July publish her second novel, Go Set a Watchman, involving some of the same characters as To Kill a Mockingbird. It is certain to be a commercial success, and indeed Lee’s publishers, Harper Collins, are planning an initial print run of 2 million copies.</p>
<p>In truth, though, Go Set a Watchman will be less a “new” novel than a variorum edition, or “director’s cut,” of To Kill a Mockingbird itself. In that work’s original manuscript, which <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/feb/03/harper-lee-new-novel-to-kill-a-mockingbird">turned up by chance</a> last year, the focus is not so much on the six-year-old Scout Finch, from whose perspective Mockingbird is related, but on Scout Finch as a New York lawyer who returns to her fictional southern town of Maycomb to visit her father, lawyer Atticus Finch, who defended Tom Robinson against charges of rape. </p>
<p>Lee’s original editor persuaded her to relinquish this adult centre of gravity, to abandon her ambitious modernist time-shifts, and to tell Scout’s story not through flashback but through the eyes of a child within a more traditional linear sequence. As things turned out, one of the reasons for Mockingbird’s immense popularity was the way the book reconciled edgy and difficult racial issues through a child’s apparently innocent consciousness. </p>
<p>In that sense, Mockingbird spoke perfectly to its time, manifesting itself in classrooms throughout the world as a less rebarbative version of Huckleberry Finn, with Lee’s book speaking to the complexities of American racial conflict from within the safe confines of family life. </p>
<p>Although the novel does address issues of rape, sexual violence and embryonic sexuality, it simultaneously keeps them at a safe distance through the way it mediates them all through the eyes of a young child. But since its publication, the treatment of race in American fiction has moved on apace, in works by Toni Morrison and many others. It will be interesting to see whether Lee’s “new” novel stands the scrutiny of readers in a different century. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71029/original/image-20150204-25536-12v0j5y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71029/original/image-20150204-25536-12v0j5y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71029/original/image-20150204-25536-12v0j5y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71029/original/image-20150204-25536-12v0j5y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71029/original/image-20150204-25536-12v0j5y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71029/original/image-20150204-25536-12v0j5y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71029/original/image-20150204-25536-12v0j5y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71029/original/image-20150204-25536-12v0j5y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Harper Lee, circa 1962.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
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<p>Like her exact contemporary JD Salinger, who died in 2010, Lee has made a profitable career out of various forms of silence, both artistic and personal. Not only did she never publish another book after Mockingbird, she also refused consistently to speak or grant interviews about her famous novel. </p>
<p>With typical reticence, when declining to address one Alabama audience after being inducted into an Academy of Honor she remarked on how “it’s better to be silent than to be a fool”.</p>
<p>Go Set a Watchman will thus represent a significant risk for this least productive of writers. It will be interesting to see whether this first version of the novel does actually succeed in addressing racial and family issues in all of their multifarious adult complexity. Lee’s recent remarks on how she was “a first-time writer, so I did what I was told” would seem to imply a belief on her part that the original editor did her a disservice, artistically if not commercially, by editing out the story’s flashbacks and turning the book into a more conventional narrative. </p>
<p>On the other hand, if Go Set a Watchman disappoints, readers may conclude that the original editors knew what they were doing and that the book’s mass-market appeal derives not from its artistic subtlety or complexity but from its sentimental pungency, its capacity to hit all the right notes.</p>
<p>George W. Bush <a href="http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/awards-and-prizes/article/14666-harper-lee-wins-presidential-medal-of-freedom.html">presented Lee</a> with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2007, and Barack Obama awarded her the <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2011-03-02/streep-taylor-are-among-20-recipients-of-national-arts-humanities-medals">National Medal of Arts</a> in 2010, precisely because Mockingbird ticks so many of America’s conventional boxes. The novel textually valorises racial empathy, legal justice, family feeling and innate childhood wisdom, and as a cultural object it embodies the classic American virtue of overwhelming popularity in a commercial marketplace. </p>
<p>It would not have been so surprising if Go Set a Watchman had been published as a scholarly curiosity after Lee’s death, just as unfinished manuscripts of Salinger and Ralph Ellison have been produced recently by academic publishers. But by sanctioning the publication during her lifetime, Lee would seem to be taking the bold gamble late in life of staking a claim for artistic originality and legitimacy. </p>
<p>Concurrently, she runs the risk of undermining, or at least placing in a different light, the market niche of an indeterminate patriotic sentiment on which all of her fame and fortune have been based. </p>
<p><br>
<strong>See also:</strong> <br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/to-kill-a-mockingbird-my-brilliant-career-and-long-lost-sequels-37349">To Kill a Mockingbird, My Brilliant Career and long-lost ‘sequels’</a></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/37160/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Giles receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, has sold tens of millions of copies worldwide, and was voted The Greatest Novel of All Time in a London Daily Telegraph poll of 2008…Paul Giles, Professor, Challis Chair of English, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.