Atticus Finch Grows Up
The hero of To Kill A Mockingbird is now a “racist.”
Harper Lee, Go Set a Watchman, Harper, 2015, 278 pp., $27.99
The newly published Go Set a Watchman is the book Harper Lee originally delivered to J. B. Lippencott Company in the spring of 1957 and that later became To Kill a Mockingbird. It presents a very different picture of Atticus Finch, the hero of Mockingbird–one that will disappoint millions of readers who admire him as courageous fighter for equal treatment for blacks. It is also an unwitting portrait of the shrill, uncomprehending liberalism that has come to dominate American thinking about race.
At Lippencott, Go Set a Watchman was assigned to an experienced editor named Tay Hohoff (1899 – 1974). She later recalled that “the spark of the true writer flashed in every line,” but she did not consider the book ready for publication. For two years, Miss Lee and her editor rewrote the work until it bore little resemblance to the original manuscript. “I was a first time writer, so I did as I was told,” recalls Miss Lee. Go Set a Watchman, then, reveals for the first time a Harper Lee unmediated by the “hands on” editing of Hohoff, and there are surprises aplenty for any American who has taken high school English. ...
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