A new novel from Harper Lee, author of To Kill A Mockingbird
When Harper Lee published To Kill A Mockingbird in 1955 readers begged for a sequel, or, at least hoped that the author of this highly acclaimed novel would write something else. The book, the heart of which is race relations and injustice in a small Alabama town, has become part of our literary canon. Ms Lee said at the time that she had said what she wanted to say in her book, and she was not compelled to write another. It seems that it isn't so. Yesterday I read that Ms Lee will publish a companion of sorts to Mockingbird that was written before she wrote that novel. Go Set A Watchman will be released this coming July by Harper Collins. Atticus Finch is still practicing medicine but Scout, his daughter, is all grown up.
There is a considerable amount of discussion concerning this new novel. In 1955 the original publisher did not think it was good enough to publish. Apparently the text is unchanged, leading one to ask why it should be published today. The eighty-eight year old Ms Lee has only spoken about her new work through lawyers. She has not released anything directly. Is she aware of what is happening? Ah, conspiracy. I love it.
I am worried. Disclaimer: I have not read Mockingbird, or even seen the movie. At least one critic for the NY Times wrote: "Those eager masses, now overflowing with unconditional love for a book
they have not read, propelling it to No. 1 on Amazon Wednesday, will be
the very people wielding pitchforks if Ms. Lee’s second book does not
live up to expectations that have been building for decades." Many grew up with the book, and Atticus and Scout are, as the NY Times critic said, family to us. We have expectations of our family members that might not be met in this new novel. Moreover, Mockingbird and the new novel were written in a different America, before major civil rights legislation, before Vietnam and the increased polarization of American society that resulted from that insanity, and the book was possibly or probably read largely by teens. Things have changed, hopefully for the better, but the relations between the races have not necessarily resolved themselves into the melting pot that we would like to think our country is, and the myth of the ability of the White Liberal (which includes Atticus, Scout and me) to make things right just might not hold up so well today.
It is past time for me to read To Kill A Mockingbird, but I wonder what I will find when I do read it. When I left Pennsylvania for graduate school in New York City in the Sixties I started reading books I'd never heard of back home in Grove City. Authors who stand out most vividly are the, then, youthful American authors Thomas Wolfe and John Dos Passos. As a young twenty-something with wet ears, I could not get enough of Wolfe's four big novels, including Of Time And The River, which were about -- a young twenty-something who comes to New York City from a small town in the Thirties. I thrilled to read of the Jazz Age in Dos Passos' U.S.A. Trilogy. I'm not sure I could read them again, at this stage in my life (but there is a copy of the Trilogy on my shelf that I have promised myself to read -- during some long, snowy winter week).
We have a recorded copy of To Kill A Mockingbird in the Deering library. I invite you to re-read it. I would like to know what you think of reading it today if you read it 'back then.' It will be very interesting to see how Go Set A Watchman turns out: will it be a case of 'be careful what you ask for?'
