Go Set A Watchman--Put Away Your Claws and Take Out Your Editing Pencil--We're Inviting Harper Lee to Critique Group

So, I'm about to run over and get my copy of Go Set A Watchman. I'm so excited, and yet, I've been horrified by the responses so far, whether it's from the many readers who haven't yet read it--and swear they never will--or from the critics, like NPR, who called it "a mess." If I were Harper Lee I would feel vindicated that I decided not to publish until I could barely see or hear. The claws are out, baby.

When I was a kid, I was in a play created by The Greats. No matter what they did, the material's flaws were--and remain--unfixable. During rehearsals and previews and our brief run, I remember being shocked by the twisted delight I kept seeing on the faces of their most passionate fans as they leaned in, in the classic pose of a gossip, and say, "so, I hear it's awful." Being really young, I would ask them, "why are you so happy? Do you want them to fail?"  (Of course, they all denied it. Passionately. But immediately, the look would return, along with, "but I hear it's really awful."

So--lets change the dynamic. First lf all, let's acknowledge that this book, like To Kill A Mockingbird, belongs to Harper Lee, not to us.

Then let's read the novel for delight.

And after that, let's follow good critique group etiquette: first, what did you love and why? Second: what could be strengthened with suggestions as to how? Last--be kind to your fellow authors. If she were here, we'd want Nelle Lee to feel like a member of our community, not a target.

Anybody in?

Go Set A Watchman. Readers Brains Read: Permanently Closed

I know, I know, I wasn't going to read anything about Harper Lee's new/old book and felt irritated that there were reviews out already.  I get my copy of the book tomorrow and was eager to read it fresh, blind. 

Then, I went to a kid event yesterday, 89 degrees and seventy percent humidity, but five huge bouncy houses and ten bucks giving unlimited bouncing All Day. While my youngest sweated off face paint and I tried to unglue my soaking pants from my legs, I realized I had left any book at home. So I gave in and read the first section of Go Set A Watchman via The Guardian's website, and commentary from the New York Times, guardian, Wall Street journal and Atlantic.

In comment after online comment, people cried passionately, "I won't read it!" (The equivalent of stamping a sign on their forehead that says "this room is closed and locked forever and then bragging about it.) Me, I don't care if the book is good, bad or indifferent or if it presents characters as different than they are. And, spoiler alert: it appears that it does, particularly with wonderful Atticus. People who use To Kill A Mockingbird as their bible and named their sons after this literary character, (a la King Arthur creating a trend in the name Artie,) would be in for a rude awakening, it seems. They may want to change their kid's names, like Harpo Marx did with his, from Adolf to--yup--Arthur, for obvious reasons. 

Others claim To Kill A Mockingbird is so perfect, they are certain Go Set A Watchman couldn't possibly be as wonderful so they aren't going to look, which is akin to saying South Pacific was such an amazingly realized musical, I will never go see The King And I or The Sound Of Music. 

I, on the other hand, cannot wait for tomorrow, for so many reasons. Does this book give insight into 
what lead an active, passionate, pugnacious young woman to live a life of isolation, basically cut off from the writing she must have loved? Does it provide any hint about her mother's mental illness (apart from the dead mother of To Kill A Mockingbird fame?) Give us any idea why neither she nor Alice ever married? What other observances did this fiercely observant woman make about the Deep South at a time of tremendous unrest? If she didn't, in this version, do the eighty-seven rewrites necessary for a gripping first chapter, does the rest of the book live up to the best of the writing in To Kill A Mockingbird, with its hilarious, clear-eyed vision of childhood, it's compassionate exploration of mental illness, and its detailed vision of a small town during a routine summer that becomes far from routine? 

Most of all, will it be an engrossing read? I could really use an engrossing read through the rest of this heatwave. 

One other thought: Harper Lee's father defended a black man in 1919. After that man was acquired and lynched, Amasa never did another trial. So Nelle had to invent his courtroom manner, the details of his reaction, the trial, everything out of whole cloth. That observation was only shaken loose by the idea that Go Set A Watchman showed us a different version of Amasa Lee. I've already gotten insight into Harper Lee's writing process, and I haven't even read it yet. This mind, at least, remains intensely open. Bring it on, Harper Lee. Make it complicated. I'm waiting.

P.s. I always did wonder why those parents didn't name their kids Amasa instead of Atticus. And nobody has named their daughter Nelle.

Go Set A Watchman--Don't Tell Me Anything. I Want To Read It Myself.

Don't tell me anything about Go Set A Watchman, the frantically awaited new/old novel by Harper Lee that will be widely released Wednesday. Don't point to articles about it or hint that it reframes characters or speak of either shock or joy. I want the shock or joy for myself, uninflected by you, or the New York Times, Wall Street Journal or Atlantic Magazine.

To Kill A Mockingbird was one of two first books I bought with my own money. It was sold at a school book fair. I was eight years old. I wolfed it down, though I didn't understand half of it. I read it many times. I memorized the opening, and the long section where the adult Scout reimagined spring, summer, winter and fall with a Boo Radley putting a blanket on Scout's shoulders when the house burns, though I was confused and thought that the He referred to in that section was Scout's daddy.

Sometime later, I snuck downstairs to watch the film--shown on TV past my bedtime--in the reflection on my parent's bedroom windows. I didn't see all the film--they kept catching me and sending me to bed--but I saw most of it, and was stunned by it as well.

In my adult life, I kept running into children named Scout and Atticus. My son went to school with an Atticus (he hates his name) whose little sister is Harper. In Los Angeles, I took a mommy and me yoga class next to a very elegant woman whose son was named Harper--she said the Lees were family friends. I ached with envy, even as her four-year-old tempted my turbo two-year-old with Thomas trains, removing much chance to either speak or do yoga . (I'm thinking now that this was Gregory Peck's daughter and her son, Harper, though I'm not sure.)

Also, as a writer, I longed to know what had harmed Harper so that she stopped writing anything but essays now and then. I scrounged around until I found those essays. (Check those out, people, about the history of the region or whatever. They are deep, warm and brilliant.) Betty Smith wrote of her  challenges after writing A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, and how it took her two years and returning from a specially rented room to her cluttered, chaotic apartment before she could write Tomorrow Will Be Better. Was Lee's blockage caused by perfectionism? Was she fearful of airing dirty family laundry? After memorizing parts of To Kill A Mockingbird, with its complex, nuanced understanding and compassionate, poetic narrative voice--and finding those few essays, sporting the same--I had no doubt she could do it, just as I have no doubt this new-old novel is fabulous. There is no way this author would have turned in a manuscript that wasn't publish-ready and brilliant.

And because people have already leaked things to me, I have a very strong feeling that fear of dirty family laundry was the answer and the death of Harper Lee's older sister, Alice, what has sprung Nelle free. Not that I'm accusing Alice Lee of locking her sister down, but A Long Days Journey Into Night and The Glass Menagerie weren't written until the deaths of all characters save the playwrights, while bold Pat Conroy was, for years, persona non gratis after writing The Great Santini and The Prince Of Tides.

At any rate, feel free to speak with me late Tuesday or Wednesday after I have gotten my own reserved copy and joined the Great American Read In of Go Set A Watchman. And Harper Lee, from the bottom of my heart, thank you--for so many things. I hope this late hour I assume vindication gives you joy.