The Road Back to Mockingbird
By Sarah Bearup-Neal
Sun contributor
In the realm of really-hard-acts-to-follow resides the 1960 classic To Kill A Mockingbird. Author Harper Lee wrote a singular novel — singular from the standpoints of quality and quantity. All that changes July 13-14 at midnight when Lee’s next novel, Go Set A Watchman, is released by publisher HarperCollins. The arrival of Go Set A Watchman is reason for celebration, according to one Glen Arbor reader.
“We never expected to have another book from Harper Lee,” said Sue Boucher, owner of the Cottage Book Shop 5989 S. Lake St. in Glen Arbor, “but here we have another book by her 50 years later.”
Boucher will mark the occasion not with champagne and fireworks but with a movie and popcorn. As a warm-up to the Go Set A Watchman release, she’ll screen the 1962 film version of To Kill A Mockingbird starring Gregory Peck and Robert Duvall July 13 at Lake Street Studios’ plein air stage, 6023 S. Lake St. The film begins at 10 p.m. followed by a midnight book release party back at the Cottage Book Shop. There is no charge.
Originally written in the mid-1950s, Go Set A Watchman was the novel Lee first submitted to her publisher. Assumed to have been lost, the manuscript was discovered in late 2014 by Lee’s attorney. The story features many of the characters from To Kill a Mockingbird 20 years later. Jean Louise Finch, the beloved Scout, returns home to Maycomb, Ala, to visit her father, Atticus, the principled exemplar. Jean Louise’s trip back to the small Alabama town that shaped the child Scout challenges the adult Scout, personally and politically.
Even though there have been no leaked pages, hints to the books contents might be found in the title, which will ring more bells with Biblical scholars than Your Average Reader. It comes from Isaiah 21:6: “For thus hath the Lord said unto me, Go, set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth.” It alludes to Scout’s view of her father as the moral compass (“watchman”) of Maycomb.
When Lee, now 89 and in assisted living, first offered Go Set A Watchman to her publisher, she was advised to go back and write something from the perspective of a younger Scout. To Kill A Mockingbird was hatched and it fledged a coming-of-age story populated by indelible characters that have riveted generations of readers’ eyeballs to the page. The array of moral challenges and questions that are the heart of this 320-page book still plague us. Go Set A Watchman, on the other hand, is a 304-page book, moral questions and challenges still unknown. It will be published in its unedited state, as it was originally written. The first run will yield 2 million copies.
“I do think the reviewers are going to slaughter it because that’s what they do,” Boucher said. “My feeling is, and I could be naïve, if (Go Set A Watchman) was total trash, HarperCollins wouldn’t publish it. If the book is even a quarter as remarkable as To Kill A Mockingbird, I think it will be really interesting.” And it’s the June pick for the Glen Lake Book Club.
The discovery of Lee’s first novel set off a controversy: the timing of the discovery, did she write it, was the author — who is in assisted living in Monroeville, Ala. – competent enough to have sanctioned the release of her first novel. In February long-time friend Wayne Flynt told the Associated Press, “This narrative of senility, exploitation of this helpless little old lady is just hogwash. It’s just complete bunk.”
Boucher’s view of the controversy is straightforward. “I think the bottom line is To Kill A Mockingbird holds a special place in peoples’ hearts. It’s natural that they would want to buy the new book,” she said.
If only to hear Scout’s voice once more.
“And, who doesn’t want to know what kind of person Scout grew up to be?” Boucher said.
