ANATOMY OF A SEQUEL -By: Jeb Ladouceur
Who really wrote “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “Go Set a Watchman”?
296 pages – Lippincott & Company – 304 pages – HarperCollins
In the mid-1950’s Nelle Harper Lee, childhood friend of Truman Capote, is generally thought to have written “Go Set a Watchman,” a down-to-earth novel suggested by the pair’s racially-torn hometown, Monroeville, Alabama.
Author Harper Lee at age eightyHaving moved to New York City at the age of 23, Lee, who preferred using the name ‘Harper’ (to avoid being called ‘Nellie,’ she claims) found a literary agent for her autobiographical tale centered on a 20-year-old woman living in fictional Maycomb, Alabama. Agent Eugene Winick placed the work with J.B. Lippincott & Company … the publishing house whose stable of writers included such notables as Oscar Wilde, Jack London, and Rudyard Kipling.
It was at Lippincott that the most pivotal event of Harper Lee’s young life came to pass when her editor, Tay Hohoff, became enamored of the charming flashbacks-to-childhood described by “Go Set a Watchman’s” adult narrator, ‘Scout Finch.’ Hohoff wisely suggested that Lee re-write the story, using the voice of 8-year-old ‘Scout’ exclusively.
Because she was an eager, unpublished novelist, Harper Lee acquiesced immediately, and in later years, noted improbably that the unanticipated acclaim accompanying the altered book’s release was, “…just about as frightening as the quick, merciful [rejection] I’d expected.”
Lee’s friend, Truman Capote With “Go Set a Watchman’s” narration now assigned to a child, and after the book was welded into a cohesive unit, the revision was re-named “To Kill a Mockingbird,” and published in 1960. The following year it won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, an honor that Nelle Lee’s friend and former neighbor Truman Capote … for all his self-promotion and giant-sized ego … never achieved, and of which he was openly envious.
The book was soon filmed, and more honors ensued … primarily in the form of three Academy Awards, and the same number of Golden Globes.
In recent weeks the so-called ‘long lost’ original manuscript of “Go Set a Watchman” appears to have been ‘found’ by late-blooming lawyer Tonja Carter, 49, who graduated from the University of Alabama law school at the unlikely age of 40. An aggressive and highly protective attorney, Carter soon initiated lawsuits against those whom she saw as infringers on Harper Lee’s copyrights and the interests of her sister, lawyer Alice Finch Lee (Alice died in 2014 at 103—and was replaced as legal counsel by Tonja). Carter is also said abruptly to have issued an unofficial ‘order of protection’ against at least one of Nelle’s longtime friends.
As for author Lee, though partially disabled and reclusive, she appears to be satisfied with both Carter’s role as ‘front man,’ and the assurances of HarperCollins publisher Jonathan Burnham (Lippincott was acquired by Harper & Row in 1978) that the newly unearthed “…Watchman” draft is genuine, and needs only “…minor copy-editing.” It will provide Lee with an advance, in the words of Publisher’s Weekly editor Gabe Habash, “…of well into seven figures.” (Copy-editing is the procedure that ensures the logical progression of written events: If something unfolds on Monday, for instance, and happens again two days later, it can hardly be said to have recurred, ‘on Friday!’).
Oscar-winning Gregory Peck played lawyer Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, 1962. Mary Badham portrays the 8-year-old Scout Among interested Long Island readers, and moviegoers there seems to be strong sentiment for the view expressed recently in the Washington Post: that 8-year-old ‘Scout Finch’ is a character whose development has been, “…full and complete.” Said Post columnist Alexandra Petri, “That’s the ‘Scout’ I want to remember—safe, contained within the covers of ‘To Kill a Mockingbird.’”
Newsday Book Editor Tom Beer, however, is non-judgmental regarding the forthcoming book that will retain “Mockingbird’s” original title, “Go Set a Watchman.” While reporting with meticulous accuracy on the 88-year-old Harper Lee (who now resides in an assisted living facility in Monroeville), Beer adopts a wait-and-see attitude concerning the 304-page sequel, priced at $27.99, and due July 14 from HarperCollins.
In a feature article typically headlined, “‘TO KILL’ AGAIN,” The New York Post reported unequivocally last week that the assumed one-book-wonder, “Harper Lee did write another novel—a ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ sequel that she actually penned before her famed prizewinner.”
There has been persistent speculation, however, that Lee’s childhood chum, Truman Capote, might actually be the more logical creator of the tale inspired by, and set in their humble hometown.
Prof. Wayne Flynt, Auburn UniversityRetired professor Wayne Flynt of Auburn University, himself a Pulitzer Prize nominee, disputes the theory. He has told NPR News that Capote, in a 1959 letter to his aunt, stated he had seen Lee’s novel and liked it very much. Moreover, nowhere in that letter does the author of “In Cold Blood,” (the book for which Harper Lee contributed considerable research, by the way) claim any involvement with Lee’s book … though Capote almost certainly was sufficiently gifted to have assumed her writing style if he so chose.
Obviously, many principals in this 50-year-old sequence of events have died, retired, or been replaced in their business functions—as in the case of attorney Alice Finch Lee who was supplanted by Tonja Carter. For these reasons, and because author Harper Lee is such a private person (oddly, she has steadfastly refused to speak whenever publicly feted), resolution of any skepticism surrounding Lee and her Pulitzer will likely be left to language scholars. They, rather than historians, are probably better equipped to investigate and analyze the matter.
Lee’s reticence is a key reason why the sudden appearance of “Go Set a Watchman” is considered such a tantalizing development in literary circles.
In any event, and in many ways, the mystery that has grown up around the iconic “…Mockingbird” and now “…Watchman,” is becoming as interesting as anything Lee or Capote (or the unlikely duo in concert) could have composed for our collective edification.
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Award-winning writer, Jeb Ladouceur is the author of ten novels, and his theater and book reviews appear in several major L.I. publications. In his current thriller, HARVEST, an American military doctor is seized by a gang of organ traffickers in The Balkans, and ordered to perform illegal surgeries. Ladouceur’s tenth novel THE QUANTUM SYNDROME, suggested by the Atlanta child killings of the 80’s, is due in mid-April.