(Image sourced from Google.)

Like many American lawyers, I count Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird as one of my prime inspirations in joining the legal world, and the novel’s hero, Atticus Finch, as one of my great professional heroes (yes, I know he’s fictional, and no, I don’t care).  I first read To Kill a Mockingbird the summer before my freshman year in high school, and I was staggered by it.  I knew about my country’s shameful history of racial injustice, but To Kill a Mockingbird brought it home to me like nothing else.  There are many characters in the novel, and many converging storylines, but it was Atticus and his brave defense of a man on whom the justice system had turned its back that spoke to me most.  I’ve read the book countless times since.  I still have my tattered paperback copy from that summer before starting high school.  It’ll always be one of my favorite books.  And like many readers, I always wished Harper Lee had written more.

Well.  Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably heard the big literary news.  Harper Lee did write more.  Her first novel, Go Set a Watchman, has just been rediscovered – and for the one or two people who haven’t already read the synopsis, it focuses on Scout as an adult woman, coming home to Maycomb to visit her father in the 1950s, and witnessing events there.  Lee wrote Go Set a Watchman before writing To Kill a Mockingbird.  As the story goes, the book contained some flashbacks to Scout’s childhood that Lee’s editor thought were particularly good, so he encouraged her to turn those into a book.  To Kill a Mockingbird was born, and Go Set a Watchman was forgotten.

Until now, that is.  What we’ve been told is that Lee’s lawyer, Tonja Carter, found Watchman stapled to the back of a Mockingbird manuscript.  Lee believed Watchman to have been long since lost, and is allegedly “delighted” that it has turned up and is being published.  And published with a vengeance – Harper Collins is apparently planning a first printing of two million copies.  Two million.  On a first printing.  Basically, they’re expecting everyone and their dog to buy this book, and they’ll most likely be proven right.  Which leads me to my question:

Are you going to buy Go Set a Watchman?

Since I heard the news, my feelings on the subject have waffled even more than they usually do.  (And that’s saying something.  I’m a champion waffler.)  At first, I was elated.  NEW HARPER LEE NOVEL!  WHAT WHAT WHAT WHAT WHAT!  Basically, my head exploded with the rest of the bookish internet.  Is it July yet?

And then.  And then.  I read some of the thoughtful pieces, written by people more deliberative than I, laying out some very real concerns about the story we’re all being fed.  First, Book Riot posted “Uncollected Thoughts on the New Harper Lee Novel,” in which Jeff O’Neal described some of the issues surrounding the release, including:

On a scale of 1 to 10 with 1 being Lee’s full-throated 100% attributable consent and 10 being the shadiest of shady dealings on behalf of the people around her, I give it a…..dammit. I wish I could give a vigorous defense of this or a heartfelt attack. I just don’t know what we are dealing with. Is the story we are being given possible? Absolutely. Is it weird that Alice Lee recently died and that Harper herself has actively avoided public life for 50 years? More than weird. Whatever the truth is, I think it is probably beyond our understanding and that there is much more going on than either a worst case or a best case scenario. If you want to go into reading this book, and reading about this book even, with your eyes open, you are probably going to have to get used to the idea that you don’t know what the truth is.

There’s a lot more there, so go read the full post.  Since Book Riot’s post expressing concerns – concerns which many in the literary world share – new statements have come out purporting to be from Lee herself, affirming her approval of the project and her delight in the rediscovery of a manuscript that hasn’t seen the light of day in more than half a century, and her hurt at having to defend her competency to authorize publication of her first work.  So now, the question is, can we believe that these statements are really coming from Lee herself?  Or are they coming from others around her – namely, attorney Tonja Carter, who is apparently the only person involved in this process with direct access to Lee?  As I knew she would, my friend Amal had plenty to say on the subject:

Is Carter committing elder abuse, which is defined under Alabama law as “the maltreatment of an older person, age 60 or above”? It includes material exploitation: “The unauthorized use of funds or any resources of an elderly individual or the misuse of power of attorney or representative payee status for one’s own advantage or profit. Examples include stealing jewelry or other property and obtaining the elderly person’s signature for transfer of property or for a will through duress or coercion.”  Code of Ala. § 38-9D-2  (2014).

Again, I encourage you to go read Amal’s entire post, and her other posts on Harper Lee and To Kill a Mockingbird.  (Amal is also an attorney and also a big Lee fan.)  Amal’s blog has a collection of some of the best thought-out posts I’ve ever read about Harper Lee and the legal controversies surrounding her in recent years.  And to be honest, as soon as I heard of some of the questions concerning Lee’s true feelings on the publication of Go Set a Watchman, one of my first questions was, I wonder what Amal thinks about this?

Amal has said that she won’t be buying a copy of Go Set a Watchman until she’s comfortably confident that her favorite author is not being taken advantage of.  And she has a point.  The entire situation smells funny.  Is it elder abuse?  I certainly hope not, but as Jeff O’Neal points out in Book Riot’s post, we might never really know.  And Harper Collins certainly doesn’t expect that people will be put off by the uncertainty of the situation – not if they’re ordering a two million copy initial printing.  The publisher is clearly banking on the buzz and the fact that it’s a new novel by Harper Freaking Lee.  This book could be nothing but a list of names and people would buy it.

As for me?  I don’t know.  I started out leaping around my house (as much as I can leap around in my third trimester) and chewing hubby’s ear off about how excited I am about this book and now… now I just feel squicky about the whole thing.  (That’s right, squicky.  It’s an industry term.)  I really, really don’t want to support any endeavor that takes advantage of anyone’s age or declining health, maybe least of all that of the woman who wrote the Great American Novel.  (Yep, it’s been written already.)  But… dang.  I have to know what’s in this book.  So now I just don’t know what to do.  Am I going to buy Go Set a Watchman?  If I’m being completely honest, I have to say… I probably am.  I really, really respect Amal’s scruples, and the scruples of anyone else who can resist buying this book until they have a comfort level that Lee really is delighted with the whole thing.  And part of me worries that if I don’t take a stand against the publication (at least until we have some clearly unbiased information about Lee’s approval) I’m part of the problem.  But I don’t know that I’m strong enough to stay away from this book – especially if, as Jeff suggests, we might have to make peace with never knowing for sure.  Gah.  I sure wish these issues were simple.  But as Atticus Finch could attest, they never are.

What about you?  Are you going to buy/read Go Set a Watchman?  How conflicted are you about the whole situation?