I first read To Kill a Mockingbird in 1961, when I was 12, and I have loved it ever since. I am sure that I did not understand much of what was going on between Mayella Ewell and Tom Robinson, but I grew up in a small Louisiana town much like Maycomb, and the parts of the book that dealt with Scout's relationships with her brother, with Dill, and with her neighbors rang very true to me.
When I grew up I was fortunate to be able to teach the book to ninth graders and to relive through them my own discovery of the book's greatness. We often remarked how odd yet fitting it was that the author had never published anything else.
It was with much trepidation that I learned that a new book by Harper Lee, Go Set a Watchman, would be published.
This early review in the New York Times pretty clearly says that the new book is not a prequel or sequel or anything like that; rather, it is an early draft of TKM that Harper Lee submitted to her publisher and represents Lee's novel in a stage before her editor convinced her to re-imagine the book in a more hopeful and redemptive way. I am aware that Lee was recently declared mentally competent, but I cannot believe that if she were entirely in her right mind she would have published this work, which according to the several reviews I have read has a much darker tone and much less emphasis on Scout's childhood, along with being told in third person rather than in Scout's voice.
Here is the review:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/11/books/review-harper-lees-go-set-a-watchman-gives-atticus-finch-a-dark-side.html?hpw&rref=books&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region®ion=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well
Go Set a Watchman might have some interest to scholars who want to see how a writer and editor reshape a book from a draft to a finished product, but it holds no interest for me.
When I grew up I was fortunate to be able to teach the book to ninth graders and to relive through them my own discovery of the book's greatness. We often remarked how odd yet fitting it was that the author had never published anything else.
It was with much trepidation that I learned that a new book by Harper Lee, Go Set a Watchman, would be published.
This early review in the New York Times pretty clearly says that the new book is not a prequel or sequel or anything like that; rather, it is an early draft of TKM that Harper Lee submitted to her publisher and represents Lee's novel in a stage before her editor convinced her to re-imagine the book in a more hopeful and redemptive way. I am aware that Lee was recently declared mentally competent, but I cannot believe that if she were entirely in her right mind she would have published this work, which according to the several reviews I have read has a much darker tone and much less emphasis on Scout's childhood, along with being told in third person rather than in Scout's voice.
Here is the review:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/11/books/review-harper-lees-go-set-a-watchman-gives-atticus-finch-a-dark-side.html?hpw&rref=books&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region®ion=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well
Go Set a Watchman might have some interest to scholars who want to see how a writer and editor reshape a book from a draft to a finished product, but it holds no interest for me.
