Harper Lee's new novel Go Set a Watchman is a bolt from the blue
|
Version 0 of 1. One rarely gets a high-voltage shock in the literary world, a jolt from the blue. But the news has emerged that 88-year-old Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, has discovered an earlier and unpublished novel of hers, Go Set a Watchman, and that it will be published soon. It’s not a sequel but one that she actually wrote first. It deals with many of the same beloved characters, such as Scout and Atticus Finch, 20 years after the events that occur in her famous – and only – novel, referring back to them in passing. Apparently she submitted this first novel to an editor who suggested she might think about trying again, focusing squarely on those flashbacks to life in Maycomb, Alabama, during the Great Depression. Lee decided this editor had a good idea, and she wrote To Kill a Mockingbird, which appeared in 1960, when the author was 34. It was a career-ending debut – but not in the usual sense. Lee won the Pulitzer prize for fiction: an astonishing bit of precocity. The novel sold extremely well and became a classic Hollywood film only two years after its publication. It has since sold millions and millions of copies and is a staple of the American school curriculum. In fact, my youngest son graduated from high school two years ago in Vermont, and he recently complained that he’d been “forced” to read To Kill a Mockingbird in each of his final six years of school. That’s overkill, perhaps, but the book remains a model of its kind, a vivid tale that unfolds over three years (1933 to 1935) in a dusty and exhausted little village in Alabama. Related: Harper Lee to publish new novel, 55 years after To Kill a Mockingbird The story centers on Scout, a tomboy, and her brother Jem. They have a dreamy friend called Dill, who comes in the summers to stay with his aunt. Dill was loosely modelled on Harper Lee’s dear childhood friend, the writer Truman Capote. (And there have always been rumors that Capote had some hand in writing it, which seems unlikely, as the style is so very different from anything by him.) Scout’s widowed father, played by Gregory Peck in the film, is an honourable man, and a lawyer as well – a stunning coincidence. Indeed, I knew one young man who became a lawyer just so that he could stand in the shoes of Atticus Finch, who seeks justice for Tom Robinson, a local black man accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell. It’s a fairly simple novel, a tragic story of racial politics in the old south. (And it’s especially sad that these politics still seem to haunt the US, as seen with the recent killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson.) Lee is, indeed, a gifted novelist, who seems to have been born whole, without needing to “develop” in the way most young writers do. I’ve read the novel many times, and always marvel at its stylistic force, its sensuousness, its quiet generosity (very like Dickens) – each character is so fresh and distinct. I also admire its narrative fluency, as events give way to events in a seamless fashion. The voice of young Scout combines with the voice of the older Scout, with the tension between past and present quietly maintained, employed to render irony and perspective. The child’s innocence is always undermined, however quietly, by the elder Scout’s edge of wry wisdom. This dual perspective makes it possible for a child of Scout’s age to have some grip on the unfolding horror of the trial at hand. Related: Harper Lee returns with a new novel – let the alternative title race begin Lee has a gift for weaving the fabric of smalltown life, with tangible period details, an acute feeling for the colors, the sounds, the smells of everyday living. There is a sly humor in Scout’s voice that has always been attractive for young readers, and the stark racial drama of the rape and the palpable injustice of the community has very little in the way of ambiguity. This book intentionally teaches a blunt lesson, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s a relief, in fact, that the novel is so well written, with a persuasive subtlety that, more than half a century later, still can move a jaded reader like myself, who might prefer to read Toni Morrison or William Faulkner (I do) but still finds something to love in To Kill a Mockingbird, which I first read in high school only a few years after its first publication. Lee remains a woman of mystery. Not unlike JD Salinger, who disappeared from view and ceased to publish novels after a brilliant start, Lee simply stopped giving interviews to the press in 1964. She ignored the literary world entirely, going about her business, whatever that was, for the rest of her life. Of course she had no need to make a living: To Kill a Mockingbird made her rich. However, it’s important to note that not every writer feels compelled to write book after book: I dip my eyes shamefully to the floor as I write this. But each writer is different, and there is simply no point in saying that one way is better than another way. It’s important to celebrate a fine American novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, which has introduced half a century of American students to the pleasures of fiction. It has always offered countless schoolteachers an opportunity to discuss the issue of racism and injustice in the United States with young people who may not have had the opportunity to think directly about such things. It seems unlikely that the publication of another novel by Harper Lee at this stage will make a big difference to anyone, although it will certainly find curious eyes, like my own, eager to read it. And why not? |