Harper Lee's second book deal "Go Set a Watchman"
THE SECOND BOOK DEAL
If you’re a weekend newspaper junkie (as I am) you’ll probably have come across reports about the upcoming publication of Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman, the earlier version of To Kill a Mockingbird. Saturday’s Irish Times jumped into the mosh pit with a provocative headline: “Little to celebrate about Harper Lee’s teaser chapter” while Sunday’s Observer tempted us to find out more with “Atticus the racist? Shock as Harper Lee’s sequel to Mockingbird exposes her hero”.
Eileen Battersby in The Irish Times rails against the media hype surrounding publication of the nonagenarian’s lost and found manuscript – the one that was rejected all those years ago, with an editorial suggestion to rewrite it in the voice of Scout, as a young girl. She goes on to argue that if it didn’t find a publisher at that time there must have been good reason – i.e. it wasn’t good enough.
Nothing much new here other than that Battersby (quite reasonably) tells us that she wouldn’t judge a book by reading a single chapter; and furthermore she believes that editors in the 1960s would have had a ‘nose’ for a good story line and what to reject, accept or modify – just as they would today. We’re left in no doubt that she’s not awfully inspired by the prospect of this new publication.
Over to the Observer where Vanessa Thorpe and Edward Helmore tell us more of the same story, except we also learn that the first draft of Mockingbird finds Lee’s Atticus being less of a hero than his portrayal in the version we know so well. Go set a Watchman, the rejected precursor of To Kill a Mockingbird, was written in the voice of Jean Louise (now a grown-up Scout in the 1950s) and, as the journalists tell us, it is about “her gradual disillusionment with the ingrained attitudes she finds [on her return to Maycomb, Alabama]”.
For me, the most interesting thing about this original draft from Harper Lee is that the male protagonist was not the male hero that publishers (and film makers) wanted and needed to make both book and film the profitable enterprise they became. No surprise to any female living in the 21st century where male heroes still outnumber female ones by a large factor – it is what we are used to (see The card that Sappho was dealt blog).
In 1930s Alabama (and probably world-wide) a fictional hero needed to be white and male. An antihero with ingrained prejudice (his story narrated in the voice of a young woman) just wasn’t going to cut it in the publishing world.
In her own final chapter of years let's hope that Harper Lee will benefit from the publication of her second book with enormous financial success. Her literary success needs no enhancement.
And for myself I'm thrilled, not only to have an opportunity to read the first draft of such a seminal work of the 20th Century, but to also gain insight into Harper Lee’s original thinking on the politics and prejudices of the 1950s, still reverberating with us today.
Alison Hackett blog 13 July 2015
If you’re a weekend newspaper junkie (as I am) you’ll probably have come across reports about the upcoming publication of Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman, the earlier version of To Kill a Mockingbird. Saturday’s Irish Times jumped into the mosh pit with a provocative headline: “Little to celebrate about Harper Lee’s teaser chapter” while Sunday’s Observer tempted us to find out more with “Atticus the racist? Shock as Harper Lee’s sequel to Mockingbird exposes her hero”.
Eileen Battersby in The Irish Times rails against the media hype surrounding publication of the nonagenarian’s lost and found manuscript – the one that was rejected all those years ago, with an editorial suggestion to rewrite it in the voice of Scout, as a young girl. She goes on to argue that if it didn’t find a publisher at that time there must have been good reason – i.e. it wasn’t good enough.
Nothing much new here other than that Battersby (quite reasonably) tells us that she wouldn’t judge a book by reading a single chapter; and furthermore she believes that editors in the 1960s would have had a ‘nose’ for a good story line and what to reject, accept or modify – just as they would today. We’re left in no doubt that she’s not awfully inspired by the prospect of this new publication.
Over to the Observer where Vanessa Thorpe and Edward Helmore tell us more of the same story, except we also learn that the first draft of Mockingbird finds Lee’s Atticus being less of a hero than his portrayal in the version we know so well. Go set a Watchman, the rejected precursor of To Kill a Mockingbird, was written in the voice of Jean Louise (now a grown-up Scout in the 1950s) and, as the journalists tell us, it is about “her gradual disillusionment with the ingrained attitudes she finds [on her return to Maycomb, Alabama]”.
For me, the most interesting thing about this original draft from Harper Lee is that the male protagonist was not the male hero that publishers (and film makers) wanted and needed to make both book and film the profitable enterprise they became. No surprise to any female living in the 21st century where male heroes still outnumber female ones by a large factor – it is what we are used to (see The card that Sappho was dealt blog).
In 1930s Alabama (and probably world-wide) a fictional hero needed to be white and male. An antihero with ingrained prejudice (his story narrated in the voice of a young woman) just wasn’t going to cut it in the publishing world.
In her own final chapter of years let's hope that Harper Lee will benefit from the publication of her second book with enormous financial success. Her literary success needs no enhancement.
And for myself I'm thrilled, not only to have an opportunity to read the first draft of such a seminal work of the 20th Century, but to also gain insight into Harper Lee’s original thinking on the politics and prejudices of the 1950s, still reverberating with us today.
Alison Hackett blog 13 July 2015
