Harper Lee wrote, “Children are children, but they can spot an evasion faster than adults, and evasion simply muddles ‘em” (“To Kill a Mockingbird”).
And I must say, Harper Lee, we’re still muddled. Completely muddled. The author who claimed that she would never write another book again just did…around 60 years ago. Harper Lee’s second novel “Go Set a Watchmen” weighs in at a hefty 304 pages and was recently “found” by her lawyer, Tonja Carter, while she was doing some legal, casual browsing at Lee’s house.
How do you lose 304 pages? I understand that she wrote the book long before making copies of everything was a trend, but when it comes to a writer’s work—a novel nonetheless—it seems peculiar that if the book was ever lost, why wasn’t it found earlier?
Regardless of the doubt surrounding it, we should start with some background on the novel. “Go Set a Watchman” was written by Lee sometime in the 1950s. The novel tells the story of the same characters from “To Kill a Mockingbird” like honorable Atticus and sweet little Scout. It takes place 20 years after the trial of Tom Robinson and Scout is now a grown woman visiting her dad, Atticus, back in Alabama.
The chronology starts to falter because “Go Set a Watchman” was written before “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Somehow it is a sequel that was written before the main story even existed.
According to an article from the New York Times, Lee submitted “Go Set a Watchman” to her editor, but he recommended that she write the story with Scout as a young child. Then, you guessed it, out pops “To Kill a Mockingbird.”
While it is completely plausible, the sequence of events is just a tad too providential to believe; 60 years later and her lawyer just stumbles upon this manuscript? Writers treasures their work, so it seems strange that while Lee hadn’t found her novel before now, yet her lawyer was able to happen upon it by chance.
The novel will be released on July 14 of this year and the publishers are already loaded with two million copies to hit the shelves. This seems a bit contradictory to Lee’s initial comments concerning why she would never write again: “Two reasons: one, 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.”
What is this novel bringing to Lee? Pressure? Check. Publicity? Check. Now the novel is shrouded in hypocrisy because Lee—the woman that would never publish again according to her—is going back on her infallible word.
For a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, this publication seems a bit too suspect, enveloped in unknowns and uncertainties. With such a one-and-done mentality, what makes now the perfect time to publish this novel? If it wasn’t worthy of publication 60 years ago, what is so enticing about the present? These are just theories—conspiracies if you will—surrounding 88-year-old Harper Lee.
The book will be bought, no doubt about it, but, unfortunately, it will be for the wrong reasons.
Those strong, just, courtroom characters that were birthed in 1960 are now cloaked in a veil of secrecy, manipulation and duplicity. Will the sequel be as good as the Pulitzer Prize winning prequel? Nobody can say for sure until it is released but sequels rarely live up to the brilliance of their literary predecessors.
It’s almost a tragedy that a book with Atticus Finch, the archetype of honesty and justice, is now locked in a whirlwind of skepticism and speculation. Until July 14, we will just have to continue to be muddled.
