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Thread: Harper Lee's sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird

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    Default Harper Lee's sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird

    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/06/bo...new-novel.html
    Harper Lee has issued a new statement expressing her happiness with the publication of her second novel, “Go Set a Watchman,” amid growing speculation that the fiercely private novelist may have been pressured into signing over publication rights for the book.

    “I’m alive and kicking and happy as hell with the reactions to ‘Watchman,’ ” Ms. Lee, 88, said in a statement that she is said to have given to her lawyer, Tonja Carter, on Wednesday when Ms. Carter visited her at an assisted-living facility in Monroeville, Ala.

    Ms. Carter, who has declined interview requests, delivered the new remarks to Ms. Lee’s international literary agent, Andrew Nurnberg, who sent it to her publisher in Britain.

    The emphatic statement from the author of “To Kill a Mockingbird” arrived as some fans, biographers and scholars expressed excitement and skepticism over Ms. Lee’s involvement in the decision to publish another book.

    More than 50 years after “To Kill a Mockingbird” was published, it remains one of the most beloved and influential works in American literature, and many of Ms. Lee’s fans and readers rejoiced at the news that she would finally publish another book. “Go Set a Watchman,” which will be released in July, shot to No. 1 on Amazon, and “To Kill a Mockingbird” climbed to No. 3.

    But some scholars and people who knew her in Monroeville remained suspicious about the circumstances of the book’s publication. Ms. Lee, who had a stroke in 2007, has trouble seeing and has almost completely lost her hearing. She recently put Ms. Carter, a longtime family friend, in charge of her estate.

    Some Monroeville residents said they had long suspected that Ms. Lee had written another book, but expressed surprise that she had consented to publishing one now.

    Sue Sellers, who lived near Ms. Lee’s home for 48 years and frequently visited with her, said Ms. Lee had often expressed her reservations about publishing a second book and said she feared it would be compared unfavorably to “Mockingbird.”

    Karen Hare, the owner of David’s Catfish House on the edge of Monroeville, said Ms. Lee had remarked several times during her visits that were she ever to publish another book, she would want it done posthumously.

    “People knew about the book, but never for sure,” Ms. Hare said. “She always said she didn’t want anything done until she died.”

    Other people who have seen Ms. Lee more recently say that she is physically frail but completely lucid. Mr. Nurnberg described her as “feisty” when he visited her this month. He said that while she was “indeed hesitant” to publish the book, she had been persuaded by a close circle of people who had read it and assured her that it stood up to her monumental first book.

    Wayne Flynt, an Alabama author and historian who has been close friends with Ms. Lee for more than a decade, said she was as sharp as ever when he visited her on Monday, quoting lines from “Macbeth.”

    “I don’t think that anybody that says she’s demented has been to see her in the last 10 years,” Mr. Flynt said. “The problem may be that almost nobody goes to see her, almost nobody gets in. She’s such a private person.”

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    This is one that I'll be reading for sure. I don't expect the quality of To Kill a Mockingbird, but I'm anxious to see how Scout grew up.

    John

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    I do wonder about her hesitation to publish. At her age...it's not like she is looking for a career. Perhaps she is just nervous like any "young" author. After all, this is only her second book.

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    I can't wait!

    John

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    http://electricliterature.com/harper...ingbird-novel/
    Go Set a Watchman has yet to commence its inevitable mass exodus from bookstore shelves, but the much-hyped To Kill A Mockingbird sequel is already in danger of being eclipsed by yet another long lost Lee manuscript.

    Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal published a piece by Harper Lee’s lawyer Tonja Carter, in which she reveals that the manuscript for Watchman sits in a safety deposit box “underneath a stack of a significant number of pages of another typed text.”

    Carter claims not to have perused these pages, but speculates that they might contain yet another tract on the life of Jean-Louise Finch. “Was it an earlier draft of ‘Watchman’, or of ‘Mockingbird’, or even, as early correspondence indicates it might be, a third book bridging the two? I don’t know.”

    According to Carter, we might have an answer soon, once experts – given Lee’s blessing – “examine and authenticate” all of the documents in the safety deposit box.

    An exciting prospect for TKAM fans who, this time tomorrow, will have finished tearing their way through Watchman. But given the ambivalence that has characterized most reviews of the book (a “lumpy tale,” says Michiko Kakutani), perhaps it’d be best if the documents turn out to be something less incendiary – like a list of Illuminati members, or a treasure map for the Holy Grail.

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    i hope it's another book. EW gave the book a D plus. so they fucking HATED it. me i'm open to read it, there is no doubt in my mind it won't be as good as Mockingbird. the book isn't polished at all cause it's well a 1st draft and they didn't touch it at all. so if you go expecting it to be a better book there's no doubt you will be disapointed but what are ya gonna do? as for me? i'm hoping i like it when i eventually do get read it. has anyone read it yet? and if so what do they think about it?

    also many people HATE how Atitcus is written. sorry for the shitty spelling. but it was the 50's it was in. and it's said his character is destroyed by this book. well i dunno about that but since it was written 1st and not after mockingbird you could say
    she changed how the character was written. and it's also a character that's based off her father and if that's true that's how her father was in real life as well. times were indeed different back than. there's no doubt about that

  10. #10
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    I'm about 1/3 of the way through it -- reading it to my wife. It definitely could have used a strong editorial hand. It meanders and it doesn't do a very good job of keeping the reader oriented. There are some funny bits (Jem, Scout and Dill stage a revival, and Atticus's reaction to it), but to this point there isn't really a story.

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    that might be why her publisher wanted a different book by her is my guess. or rather a better book i mean to say

  12. #12
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    Anecdotally an interesting read. With all of the handwringing about the change in Lee's portrayal of Atticus I was expecting some kind of maniacal Klan member but it was really much ado about nothing.

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