Tom's Two Cents : Harper Lee and the "Mockingbird" Controversy

 

 

In the last few months and especially this past week I've read so much about Harper Lee and the publication of her new/old novel "Go Set a Watchman" that I almost feel that the actual reading of it is going to be a bit of an anti-climax.  Now that it's actually "out", I've read three reviews, a commentary and an editorial just this morning.  Enough!

Actually, as an aspiring fiction writer myself, I think I'm more interested in how "Watchman" morphed into "Mockingbird" than I am in the book itself.  I'm also fascinated by the story of the role Lee's editor, Ms. Tay Hohoff at Lippincott, played in the morphing.  In the old days, that is, the 20's, American authors like Thomas Wolfe and Fitzgerald were often mentored and guided to publication by astute editors like the great Maxwell Perkins and such may be the case here.

We shall probably never know exactly why "Miss Nell" changed the character of Atticus, but it's entirely possible that as a young girl, Scout would have seen her father though very different eyes, just as Harper Lee may have.

As to the question of publication--"Why now?"--I'm not at all sure I can buy the sudden rediscovery of the manuscript.  Last Eve I was talking to a friend in Dallas who theorized that the key to the whole thing lies directly with Alice Lee's recent death.  Older sister and protector of Nell, a lawyer and partner with their late father, Alice Lee, of all people, except perhaps Nell herself, would have wanted this view of Atticus suppressed.  It seems to me too much of a coincidence that it surfaced so soon after her death.  Harper Lee is 89, in poor health, and, not the first famous person in literature to be ill-advised to publish an early work.  Of course the publisher, Harper-Collins, stands to make a fortune.  Pre-orders have already exceeded two million.

Miss Nell is old and infirm--let's hope all this attention brings her some pleasure and doesn't make her waning years worse.  It's so ironic that a writer who has fled the limelight all her life is now right smack in it again.  As for "Mockingbird," it has been and will remain a modern classic, and no one can take that away from her!