Chronicles of A Procrastinating Novelist Volume 10: Book Review – Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee

This piece is lightly recycled from my 2015 Goodreads Review of the book.

This initial reaction was recorded having avoided as much press as I possibly could so that I wouldn't have my opinion tainted or pre-determined. The only press notes of which I was aware were (A) the controversy over whether Lee published this piece of her own volition or was "manipulated" into doing so by lawyers, and (B) the fact this book was supposedly a reworking of a first draft of To Kill A Mockingbird. *SPOILERS* While I'm such a fan of To Kill A Mockingbird that I never expected Lee to equal its quality, I was not disappointed by this sequel. If one nit-picks, the shades of her having composed this pre TKAMB are there; however, that this extension of Scout’s beloved tale appears now, right when the U.S. has slipped back into some of the worst race relations we’ve had since the 60s, feels timely. In this version, we the readers and fans of the first book find our hero, Atticus, is more complicated, in a negative way, than the first book would suggest, and we’re every bit as broken hearted as Scout at the discovery. Had this sequel been published closer to the success of Mockingbird, it might have robbed that piece of its power and cultural significance. Now, so long after the first book, for me, Go Set A Watchman resonates eerily. These 2010s are a time when progressive, well-meaning white people are learning the problems with race in this country are far from solved and for such problems to have survived this long after the Civil Rights movement means that there’s complicity from the silent, peaceful white majority, even if it’s unwitting complicity. To have Atticus reduced to flawed human being with a culturally induced, racist, blind spot upset me, but it made sense. Not everyone will agree. Many will see it as contradicting his depiction in To Kill A Mockingbird. But having lived in the South for over 15 years, I disagree. I have extended Southern family who never taught me hate, never taught me to view people of color as sub-human, and who even now tell me all humans are God’s creatures and loved of God in equal measure and that I should never treat anyone different on such a shallow basis as the color of his or her skin. But those exact same family members still suffer Atticus’s same entrenched blind-spot. It baffles and pains me, just as Scout is baffled and pained in Go Set A Watchman. Just because it is illogical does not make it untrue. Writers write what they know. This is just my theory, but I assume Harper Lee lived through this heart wrenching contradiction of a good, kind, loving, wise person to whom she looked up falling from grace. The emotional core of the book is too true to life for me to think otherwise. It’s certainly a product of a mind who lived through those first history making moments during the Civil Rights movement when the Supreme Court began to change the constitution, and the reactions of the characters are very rooted in that moment, and to a modern reader like me whose view of history is very schooled, were a bit surprising and revealed some ignorance on my part. But I can see this half of the story sticking with Lee all these years, particularly if she came up with this arc before she wrote TKAMB. It makes sense to me that a good editor might read an early draft of Go Set A Watchman and suggest retooling the story because he or she saw greater potential in the court case from Atticus’s past, and the fact Scout’s flashbacks are the strongest writing in the book. The seeds of Mockingbird having been born from Watchman are present. But Go Set a Watchman is, in my view, not just a weak revision of a first draft. It is a true, coherent sequel to To Kill A Mockingbird in every sense. It seems like an insult to Harper Lee to recognize it as anything less than a fine extension of that much beloved first book. I was afraid it would ruin one of my favorite books. It did not.