BeauRegards to all,
It’s been reported that Harper Lee is going to have another novel published. It is titled, Go Set a Watchman, and has been described as a sequel of To Kill a Mockingbird, featuring many of the same characters twenty years later. When I first heard this I was shocked—as I’m sure most were. Frankly, I had assumed Harper Lee was dead. Her name had heretofore resonated in my mind as the author of that great classic, To Kill a Mockingbird, that played a formative role in my childhood; I vividly remember reading it in 8th grade and being challenged by my teacher to think deeply about big themes like race, hatred, innocence and gender–really for the first time.
Thus it was more than a little puzzling to hear this news, as it immediately begged the question (in my mind) of why it has taken so long for this novel to be published. The answer to that question cannot ultimately be known (although I think it’s fair to say that Lee didn’t want it published, considering it was written in the 1950s), but the circumstances surrounding the publication are known and are, frankly, quite suspect. For one thing, Lee’s sister–a lawyer who had apparently been a careful advocate for Lee, protecting her publicity-shy personality—passed away merely 3 months before the news of the novel’s publication came to light. Secondly, Lee’s current attorney, Tonja Carter, has stated that “Lee has a history of signing whatever’s put in front of her.” Couple these things with the fact that author suffered a stroke in 2007,whereby she was left forgetful and nearly blind and deaf, and the story becomes, indeed, very suspect.
Nevertheless, the novel is slated to be published in July of 2015 and thus we, as readers, are faced with something of an ethical dilemma in our approach to it. As much as it pains me to say this, I don’t think I will read it, as I don’t think I could ultimately get past the nagging feeling that it very well might be the case that the only reason the book is in print is because the publisher manipulated a defenseless author into agreeing to it. I suppose one could argue that a work of art takes on a life of its own once created; that it isn’t owned by the author in the same way a child isn’t owned by his or her mother. That argument may have some merit, but ultimately the means by which the novel appears to have been published don’t justify the end, in my estimation. I could be wrong, though.