First explanation I’ve seen of how it came to be rediscovered, although how it came to be lost in the first place is still a little murky. I kind of wonder how much truth there is in all this oh-gosh-surprise.
The $64 million question.
Finally we will know how race relations in Alabama worked out.
(Credit to the onion)
I’m just hoping this doesn’t throw out the Extended Universe Cannon.
Editors are G-dlike. Note how they kept Stephen King to 500 pages instead of his now 1000.
:dubious:
The one thing I thought might be relevant is that Mockingbird is an extension of the Scout flashbacks in this book. Maybe they thought it was too similar.
Plus we know that Lee wanted to stay out of the spotlight, so she was probably not too keen on publishing something else at the time. It could be subsequently lost from there, since it wasn’t important.
And, while I agree it’s murky–seeing as we didn’t hear a quote from Lee herself–I can believe that she’s okay with it now, since the celebrity part won’t be much of an issue for her. In her curren position, her privacy is pretty well managed. It’s not like she’s going to be expected to do interviews or anything.
And if this had been a money grubbing thing on the publishers’ part, it would seem to make more sense to wait until after she died. Posthumous works tend to shoot up in value, do they not?
She’s in an assisted living home now. Since having a stroke a few years ago, she’s blind and deaf, and has to use a wheelchair.
I am concerned that in her frail condition, she may not even fully understand what the publishers are doing with her book. Somebody will be making a fortune on this book (and there’ll probably be a movie too), but I’m afraid she won’t get much.
Her former agent convinced her to sign over the copyright for Mockingbird. (I think she went to court and finally got it back.) People took advantage of her in the past, and now that her sister is no longer there to protect her, she may be very vulnerable to exploitation.
I can’t get too excited about that. It either comes out now or in a few years when she dies - and when we start digging through her papers with a scholarly (or, if you prefer, vulturey) eye. And it doesn’t sound like she is really in a position to have this make a huge impact in her life, or for her to be too exploited. Even if the book is lousy, its important for academics to understand how TKAM came to be and to have more examples of Harper Lee’s writing.
And its possible that she is making this choice of her own free will - TKAM helped change race relations in this country, and recent events make it look like we might need a kick in the butt - she could be fully aware of what is going on, and this may be her kick in the butt.
Hey, they found a new Truman Capote ghost written book. Cool. 
I guess this controversy will continue forever. Theres so many similarities in Capote’s style in To Kill A Mockingbird. If he didn’t write it, then he certainly should have. Had Harper Lee written something else then this could be put to rest.
Friends say Harper Lee was manipulated into publishing second book.
I can’t imagine what it’s like for a living author to watch a work she wrote become one of the seminal texts of American literature, taught in high schools across the country.
No wonder Lee never felt like she could top that.
No. Capote’s voice is nothing like Lee’s in TKAM, and anyone who claims otherwise isn’t reading well. Not continuing to spread this false and silly rumor is what would put it to rest.
A bump to say I just saw a Times story reporting that Go Set a Watchman is scheduled for release July 14.
Well, how about that? Atticus was a Good Ole Boy after all.
I, for one, am kind of disgusted by this obvious cash-grab. What the fuck is the world coming to?
He is not the same character. Speaking of To Kill a Mockingbird as rewritten as the publisher recommended is an understatement. 
The morning news was talking about this. One random viewer tweeted, “Any book that has Atticus Finch as a bad guy is not a book I want to read.”
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
I shall reserve judgement until I read it. 
People who have read Too Kill a Mockingbird have unfairly put Atticus Finch on a pedestal that Harper Lee never intended to be there. In 1992 (prior to the knowledge that Go Set a Watchman even existed) Monroe Freedman, a law professor at Hofstra attempted to point out the fallacy of proselytizing Mr. Finch.
Seems like Mr. Freedman, was more spot-on with Harper Lee’s interpretation of Atticus Finch than most of her readers.
Speaking as someone who liked (but didn’t love) To Kill a Mockingbird…
There are several things we have to bear in mind:
- To Kill a Mockingbird is FICTION! Atticus Finch was NOT Amasa Lee, Scout is NOT Nelle Harper Lee, Dill is NOT Truman Capote, and Jem is not Edwin Lee. Yes, there are parallels and similarities, but readers shouldn’t be disappointed to learn that Tom Robinson and Boo Radley didn’t exist, or that most events in the book never happened.
Huckleberry Finn wasn’t Sam Clemens, and neither was Tom Sawyer. Young Sam Clemens never really helped a runaway slave, he never really sailed on a raft to Arkansas, and he never really attended his own funeral.
J.D. Salinger never really wandered around New York after being expelled from a fancy prep school. He was NOT Holden Caulfield.
“Pip” Pirrip was NOT young Charles Dickens. No anonymous benefactor ever left young Charles a fortune to raise him as a gentleman.
Sure, bits and pieces of Sam’s real childhood found their way into Mark Twain’s fiction, and parts of Dickens’ real childhood appeared in his description of Pip’s life . But you should never assume ANY beloved work of fiction is supposed to be autobiographical.
2) To the extent that Atticus Finch WAS based on Amasa Lee, it was a mistake to read To Kill a Mockingbird and assume that either Atticus OR Amasa was a modern, color-blind liberal. Rather, they were cerebral, liberal Southern Democrats of the 1930’s. A Southern white liberal in 1936 would have been aghast at lynchings and cross burnings… but in all likelihood, he would STILL view blacks as an inferior race that should stick to their own kind. Some of the most liberal Democrats in the Senate were ardent segregationists like J. William Fulbright.
Atticus Finch WAS a hero in To Kill a Mockingbird, but it was foolish for any reader to assume that he shared the enlightened views of a liberal Milennial.
3) If you’re disappointed to find that Atticus or Amasa held racist attitudes, you completely missed one of the most important points of To Kill a Mockingbird: that people are full of surprises, that fundamentally decent people are capable of doing horrible things, and that disreputable people are capable of courage and kindness. Mr. Cunningham and his friends are all nice people- nice people who’d gladly have lynched Tom Robinson. But at the same time, who protects Tom Robinson with a shotgun? Newspaper editor Underwood- a man we’re told HATES blacks.
If you think it’s implausible for a nice man to be part of a lynch mob or for a racist to defend a black man from that mob, you don’t know much about people, and you don’t understand To Kill a Mockingbird. Atticus Finch was a stuffy man with regrettable racist attitudes, but he also had the decency and courage to defend a black man who needed him. To anyone’s who’s wondering, “Is Atticus a hero or a bigot,” the proper answer is, “Why can’t he be BOTH?”
- Finally, ***To Kill a Mockingbird ***and ***Go Set a Watchman ***are set at completely different times in Scout’s life. Atticus doesn’t change that much in the time that passes between those tow novels, but Scout does grow and change just as Nelle Harper Lee did.
MANY (most) of us regard our parents as all-wise and all-good when we’re little. When we get older, we learn differently. Nine year old Scout Finch thought Atticus was the greatest man alive (not without good reasons). The adult Jean Louis Finch has been around the block, and now knows better.
Atticus Finch was neither an angel nor a devil. The same is true of Amasa Lee, of J. William Fulbright, and of the rest of us.
It’s also a good example of how a person doesn’t need to change his beliefs to go from a progressive to a reactionary: sometimes, he just needs to stand still while the world changes around him.