buying or ignoring?


I was sort of ambivalent about it suspecting, as some/many, the legitimacy of it. That combined with just concentrating on the real world 10' in front of face ..today sort of crept up on me.  So scanning through Progspin.. err.. Deadspin after getting home from work I read this.

http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/hey-you-dont-have-to-read-harper-lees-new-book-1717583752


Well.. it does seem any doubts may be removed... ghost written by a family member in search of a large payday when she finally passes on?  Reallly?

Shockingly, in Ms. Lee’s long-awaited novel “Go Set a Watchman” (due out Tuesday), Atticus is a racist who once attended a Klan meeting, who says things like “the Negroes down here are still in their childhood as a people.” Or asks his daughter: “Do you want Negroes by the carload in our schools and churches and theaters? Do you want them in our world?”

In “Mockingbird,” a book once described by Oprah Winfrey as “our national novel,” Atticus praised American courts as “the great levelers,” dedicated to the proposition that “all men are created equal.” In “Watchman,” set in the 1950s in the era of the Brown v. Board of Education decision, he denounces the Supreme Court, says he wants his home state “to be left alone to keep house without advice from the NAACP” and describes N.A.A.C.P.-paid lawyers as “standing around like buzzards.”

Not sure who wrote this.. sure as hell likely not Harper Lee. Thoughts?

I'll be curious to hear your thoughts... I won't buy it for sure.  As it was I started foaming at the mouth as I read those articles.. angered if you will. Call me a idealist.. hell call me flaming liberal.  I am defintely both but  Atticus Finch really was.. representative of an ideal.. of what this country should be. Fairness, compassion, tolerance. It think it really angers me to see a defining novel of what this country is.. at its best, and character of it who represents it in person, repudiated.  I hate bigotry.. of all types.. but I hate racial bigortry with a great great passion.

bah...  back to the music polls.  Makes fans of  generic souless fusion look like saints...


Edited by micky - July 14 2015 at 18:18

well I got a chance to vent..

seriously though. I'd be curious as to your thoughts as you read it or finish it

as well as of any others.. I have a feeling there will be quite a lot of interesting discussion about this.  I was more shocked than anything when I read that today. Like .. hmm.. good example..  a newly released book/movie depicted Spock as a child molesstor.  Some ideals of childhood we hold dear.  that Spock was all that was good in outer space.. and Atticus Finch was symbolic the type of American we all could be proud of.

It is a bit unnerving to think the original concept of Mockingbird was a much more complicated and, perhaps, more realistic story about a deeply racist but highly professional attorney.   It suggests the book was not the righteous feel-gooder it became, but was in fact a more honest, interesting and human novel that was rejected because it presented an ugly picture of real southern US culture.   Mainstream needs outweighed what would've been a unique and sincere if disturbing exploration of human nature.
 

Aspirations for sure, and maybe that was for the best.   Just observing how an effort to create something truly original and shockingly honest doesn't go over too well when selling a book.   Or at least not back then.

Hey micky-

I'm suspicious of anyone judging a piece of art before, you know, actually experiencing the thing himself.

I don't need an article to tell me what to think about a book.  I can read it and make up my own mind.

Hey, You Don't Have To Read Harper Lee's New Book

Well...no sh*t.  Most people won't. 

Edited by Epignosis - July 15 2015 at 00:38

A few words from an ignorant Brit.

I loved To Kill A Mockingbird. It is easily one of the most important works of the 20th century. Like many others, Atticus Finch as a character had a big influence on me as a young man.

I will buy the "new" novel, and will judge it when I have read it. I am not one to be overly influenced by critics or the twitterati, or social media.

A few thoughts, though.

Is it not possible, or, indeed, probable, that Atticus Finch defended Tom because he was INNOCENT (sorry for shouting), and not because he was black? In other words, he would have done the same for anybody in that situation, because, for him, American justice applied to everyone, all in the land, and that was why it was and is the great leveller.

As regards Scout, she was a young child in the book. The book was written from the child's perspective, and children of that age, no matter how perceptive, see things in terms of right and wrong, black and white (again, sorry), and that, to me, was one of the incredible things about it. Scout would not have seen things quite the same as an adult, because adults have to adjust to reality, and the reality was, as far as an ignorant Brit sees it, that racial tension, history, and culture permeated just about every facet of life then, and probably now, given the tensions still apparent today.

The lynch mob at the town jail. Atticus sat outside not because Tom was black, but because a lynch mob would deny a defendant justice. The defendant had a right to appeal. Further, even if he did not appeal, the law insisted upon him being hung by lawful methods, not by a mob of the ignorant. Atticus was an educated, middle class man, and, like many of his status, would have had a deep disdain of the ignorant mob, as, indeed, did many of the negroe class. Poor white trash. The lowest of the low, then, and now.

If one thinks in these terms, then Atticus as a rather angry old, conservative, man, raging against change, and worrying deeply whether that change is good for the society he lives in, actually starts to make sense.

I hope this all makes sense.

I should not need to say this, but this post is not a defence of racism, or intolerance. You all know my politics too well for that.

It is, though, my interpretation of the original novel. A wonderful story, told through the eyes of an innocent child, who has to adjust damned quickly to the realities of the world and society around her.

Atticus Finch was not a liberal Saint. He was a Southern Democrat, fully immersed in his society, a white society with a negroe maid, with a very strong sense of fairness and professionalism, a deep belief in the power and force of the law, and deeply disturbed at the way that depression, poverty (physical and intellectual) put at risk that lawful way of life.

That is the Atticus I admired, and I hope I still do when I have read Harper Lee's original story.

^Cheers, Micky.

I definitely share the curiosity about this, and it will be interesting to see views when we have all read it.

First, though, I need to finish my present book, which, ironically, is The Confessions of Nat Turner. Styron was another Southern person who relocated to, and wrote in, New York. I am enjoying it, but is not a damned easy read at all, and I gather that he came in for quite a lot of criticism from folks at the time it was published.

It is good we read and debate these issues. The forum is all the better for these conversations.

I haven't read Mockingbird yet, so I can't comment on story. However, being an old woman with dementia, there is always the possibility that she wasn't really in her right mind when she gave the thumbs up to release the book, or even worse, she might not have given her consent at all. She only published one book in her lifetime up until now, and surely there must have been a reason why Go Set A Watchman wasn't published in 50 years (first draft was apparently completed in '57).

I'm three chapters in now. It's not bad, so far. Unpolished and somewhat amateurish in places, but far from bad.