The literary world has been abuzz
of late with a literary find, accompanied by a whiff of suspicion: Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman, which
presents a picture disturbingly different from what we all read in high
school, To Kill a Mockingbird. Its publication status has been
questioned. It is a sort of a
sequel, or rather a prequel, or maybe a pre-written sequel; the history of the manuscript, and its “discovery”,
is obscure, and the lawyer at the center of the intrigue keeps changing her story. There’s a bodacious editor
involved, who, one commenter suggested, may have done a sort of Maxwell Perkins
on Lee’s manuscript: “There’s what
Lee wrote, and then there’s what got published,” the latter being a much more
acceptable narrative.
 |
| Atticus Finch redivivus ? |
[Update 27 July 2015] Another nay-sayer:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/25/opinion/joe-nocera-the-watchman-fraud.html
Fortunately, such skeptical doubts
do not attach to the equally spectacular recent publication of a lost fragment
of Charles Dickens:
In a literary climate so rife with
hoax and dark doings, it is a pleasure to be able to present this impeccable
find, saluted by all the experts.
Although the circumstances of discovery of this treasure are nothing short
of scandalous, the manuscript itself is undoubtedly genuine.
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