Magnum Opus Redux?

 Magnum Opus Redux?

This is what the Lord says to me: “Go, post a lookout and have him report what he sees.”           Isaiah 21:6

 

The Publishing Event of the Decade

When publisher HarperCollins announced in February, that after five and a half decades the Pulitzer Prize winning Harper Lee would be releasing a sequel to her world-wide best-selling (over 40 million copies sold) classic To Kill a Mocking Bird, the literary world, readers, and fans were propelled into a frenzied exaltation over the prospect of being reacquainted with the iconic characters of Scout, Atticus, Dill, Boo, Jem, and Calpurnia.

The title of Go Set a Watchman was taken from the Old Testament (Isaiah 21:6) as a foreshadowing of the state of people and things in Maycomb when an adult Scout returns home.  The overarching narrative among the literary cognoscenti is - does the sequel possess sufficient literary gravitas to confirm that TKAM and Miss Lee are not a “one hit wonder.” GSAW will either enhance or detract from Lee’s reputation, there is simply no middle ground.

Literature has a surprising number of “one hit wonders,” authors who have written one book that achieved an extraordinary level of success from critics and sales, never to be remotely attained in subsequent works. 

Most notably, fellow female southerner and Pulitzer Prize winning author Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With The Wind (1936) parallels Miss Lee’s TKAM on several levels – a great American novel, obviously set in the south, a great movie adaptation considered by many to be even better than the novel, required reading in many high schools, an adoring, almost fanatical fan base.  The two novels differ in their theme – GWTW is a coming of age story, while TKAM is a morality tale.  Mrs. Mitchell produced no sequel or any other basis of comparison to GWTW, her only other offering was Lost Laysen, a novella she wrote as a teenager.

Another “one hit wonder,” from an author who couldn’t be more different in background (Jewish Yankee) and subject matter and style (WWII, wildly satirical and dark,) considered one of the greatest literary works of the twentieth century – Joseph Heller’s Catch 22. Heller introduced into the American lexicon, Catch 22 - "a problematic situation for which the only solution is denied by a circumstance inherent in the problem or by a rule."  Heller’s second book, Something Happened, published thirteen years after Catch 22, received this memorable pithy review…”Nothing happened.” The movie adaption of Catch 22 failed to capture the genius of the novel and came across as a silly self-indulgent romp.

Finally, perhaps the greatest “one hit wonder” of all, is the great American novel, a staple of HS reading lists, the classic rite of passage novel…Catcher in the Rye (65 million sold and counting,) by J.D. Salinger and published in 1951.

Miss Lee has trod where angels fear to tread, she has written the sequel to her magnum opus.  Her redux will be judged harshly, but hopefully fairly. 

Being Nelle

Her friends call her Nelle. Her publisher suggested using Harper as her first name for the book. 

Nelle Harper Lee, the grand dame of American literature has always marched to her own drummer, which is largely attributed to her well-deserved enigmatic persona. The gifted reclusive author, who gave America what has been called “America’s novel” in her magnum opus To Kill a Mocking Bird, now resides with failing, if not lost sight, hearing, and memory as a permanent resident in The Meadows, an assisted care facility in Monroeville, Alabama.

Perhaps it was a combination of genes and circumstance that caused Nelle to evolve into the author that produced the great American novel.  Or, as her nephew Hank Conner once said "Southerners are always attributing things – good and bad – to genes and breeding. Nelle comes from good stock." Her father Amasa, was a newspaper editor and title lawyer who once unsuccessfully defended a black father and son accused of murdering a white storekeeper. The two were hanged. 

Nelle’s lifelong friend Truman Capote was a childhood playmate who wrote stories together as children in Monroeville. After To Kill a Mocking Bird gained widespread accolades, rumors circulated of Truman Capote being the actual author of the novel.  Literary researchers and scholars have thoroughly analyzed Capote’s works over the years with TKAM and have concluded that there exists no legitimate basis for the rumors of Capote’s authorship.

Nelle’s young adulthood offered few signs of the universal acclaim and adulation that would become her legacy.  She carried her interest in English literature from high school to the then all female Huntingdon College in Montgomery.  After a year, Nelle transferred to The University of Alabama.  While in Tuscaloosa she studied law for several years, wore a leather jacket, smoked a pipe, cussed like a sailor and wrote columns, feature stories, and satires for the university newspaper and literary publications, but did not complete a degree.  Remnants of her affection for The University of Alabama can be found in her writing, referring to the state’s flagship institution of higher learning as “the university,” a cultural zeitgeist still prevalent today in Alabama.

In 1949 she left Alabama to pursue a literary career in New York.  Nelle’s first job in New York was as an airline reservations clerk with the British Overseas Air Corporation. After some time and with the financial support of friends, a gift she remembers in "Christmas to Me," she was able to quit her job and write full time. Over a period of three years, interrupted by the deaths of her mother and her brother and other responsibilities, she worked on her novel.

Jane Austen or Harriet Beecher Stowe

Miss Lee’s early literary ambition was to be the Jane Austen of south, clearly circumscribed, at least geographically.  Seeking to emulate Jane Austen is no surprise, she remains the critic’s choice as the number one woman writer of all time in English literature.  Among Austen’s strengths as an author is a palpable realism and a keen social commentary, two salient characteristics of TKAM. 

Recently, Lee enjoyed a ranking as high as the third best female author of all time in English literature, giving credence to her stature based on the acclaim of her one novel at the time.  Despite her paucity of work, Miss Lee is firmly ensconced in the pantheon of great southern female writers – Willa Cather, Carson McCullers, Flannery O’Connor, Eudora Welty, Margaret Mitchell, all but Mitchell were prolific in their writing.

It’s a long way from Jane Austen to Harriet Beecher Stowe, literarily speaking. Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin will never be accused of being on the literary level of Austen’s Pride and Prejudice; perhaps George Orwell summed it up best when commenting on the novel, “The best bad book of the age.”

Uncle Tom’s Cabin or Life among the Lowly, published in 1852, has achieved its lofty status based not upon its literary merit (a 19^th century melodrama), but upon its fictional account of a historical time and its impact on history.  The novel became the rallying point for the abolitionist movement, quite literally accelerating the events that led to the Civil War. 

While TKAM did not have the direct historical impact of UTC, the novel clearly benefited from extra-literary circumstances.  Mockingbird caught the wave of the civil rights movement and ignited among its millions of readers a sense of the better nature of man thereby providing a popular impetus hastening the movement. 

Evaluating the merits of TKAM and most certainly GSAW, one should view the work through two perspectives – literary and historical (comparing to Mockingbird).

Getting from There to Here

As an Alabama native and admirer of Harper Lee, an America treasure, it is not without a degree of trepidation that I share my opinion of her latest novel. 

What I bring to the table is the experience of living at the vortex of the civil rights era, in the cradle of the confederacy – Martin Luther King, Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Rosa Parks, the Selma to Montgomery march, Freedom Riders riot, et al.  The apartheid was real, tense when not violent, and institutionalized through laws, politicians, education, and churches. 

I was raised in a culture where it was largely believed/understood that blacks were an inferior breed of human and the vast majority of us were racists, according to today’s definition, to one degree or another, whether we uttered the word “nigger” pejoratively or not.

For my generation, this milieu made for a peculiar alliance between blacks and whites, an uneasy conviviality where genuine affection existed among individuals – maids, yard men, drivers, employees, never as equals socially.  This unusual relationship spawned the popular but flawed notion in the south that whites loved blacks as individuals, but not as a group.

As an adult in corporate America, I served as Chairman of the Urban League in the largest city of a southern state.  Hosted the annual Urban League Christmas party at my home. I attended the annual NAACP conference in Manhattan and spent a fascinating hour of in depth discussion on the corporate jet to NY with a major civil rights leader, who among other interesting shared insights, had revealed an adopted and raised a white son.  Before you think that this may have been done by me out of a noble altruism, it wasn’t, just a corporate responsibility that I performed to the best of my ability.

My background in this area is shared to offer a perspective on the issue of race (to be sure, it’s all about race,) that includes a wide variety vantage points.

Readers’ have long held a fascination with the South for several reasons.  Stories about the vanquished are far more engaging that tales of the victors, see Russian literature.  The Greek tragedy quality of southern literature – pathos and poignancy.  An insatiable curiosity about race.

Whether we, as southerners, like it or not, fairly or unfairly, it’s all about race. It is our national legacy from slavery to today.  Race is a central component of every great southern novel. It is the prism through which we are viewed as a people and as individuals, fostering a prejudice every bit as virulent as that of the racist. 

You may be sure, Nelle Harper Lee is writing about race.  

It should go without saying, that I’m nothing more than a rail bird, with opinions sans literary accomplishment.  Something like the old saw: literary critics are people who can’t write. I enjoy the reading, research, analysis, and writing probably as much as any author is gratified by their writing, it’s just my way of artistic (sic) expression.  A required discipline, is of course avoiding the temptation of reading other reviews, where unseen subtleties, nuances, and some obvious points may be presented, but missed by me…so be it. At the end of the day, Miss Lee is a gifted author who can write whatever she damn well pleases.

That being said, Watchman is no Mockingbird, and for good reason.  It is a first draft of Mockingbird. Lee’s formidable editor, Tay Hohoff, read the manuscript in 1959, and said “The flashback scenes, where Scout is a young girl? That’s your novel.” It’s what Smithsonian Magazine once called “a title-on-down revision”.

Further dampening my expectations were the pre-publication events that suggested the book was less a “discovery of an old manuscript” and more of “machinations of a conniving lawyer and publisher.”

After calling her reaction to Mockingbird, “I didn’t expect the book to sell in the first place and it was just about as frightening as the quick, merciful death I’d expected ... like being hit over the head and knocked cold”. The ever self-effacing Miss Lee describes Watchman as “a pretty decent effort.”
Nostalgia Ain't What it Used to Be

It’s difficult to imagine reading Watchman as anything but a sequel, or at worst a companion piece to Mockingbird. Too many references, allusions, and history to allow this novel to be read as a stand-alone work. There is a critical one way interdependency of Watchman to Mockingbird.

Without TKAM, Watchman is a mildly interesting meandering desultory story with a predictable discovery given the times, but a cataclysmic revelation in the context of its predecessor novel.

The beloved Scout, the precocious tomboy “juvenile desperado, hell-raiser extraordinary,” returns to Macomb as Jean Louise, a 26 year old feminist and the embodiment of the most common of oxymoron’s - the naïve sophisticate.

Lost in Watchman is the first person account of a young girl skillfully accomplished by the author in Mockingbird, replaced by a detached third person narrative a seemingly dispassionate clinical account, largely devoid of a sustaining any energy, much less the visceral variety that the circumstances would demand.

All the iconic characters Mockingbird have changed, but not all in a good way. Scout is now an adult absent the wit, energy, and insight of her childhood self.  Jean Louise is reduced to a comic caricature in this sophomorically written passage:

"Had she insight, could she have pierced the barriers of her highly selective, insular world, she may have discovered that all her life she had been with a visual defect which had gone unnoticed and neglected by herself and by those closest to her: she was born color blind,” and then began whimpering softly.

A salute to feminism is grandly announced in this statement to Henry, her boyfriend:

“I’ll have an affair with you but I won’t marry you.”

Brother Jem is dead without sufficient explanation. We are told of the circumstance and given the position of Henry Clinton in the mix in the following account:



"Just about that time, Jean Louise’s brother dropped dead in his tracks one day, and after the nightmare of that was over, Atticus, who had always thought of leaving his practice to his son, looked around for another young man. It was natural for him to engage Henry, and in due course Henry became Atticus’s leg man, his eyes, and his hands."

Dill is off in Italy doing something. Boo Radley is nowhere to be seen.

Aunt Alexandra now caring for her brother Atticus, who is infirm, provides Jean Louise advice typical of the old south ethos about marriage to Henry:

“We Finches do not marry the children of red necked white trash, which is exactly what Henry’s parents were when they were born and were all their lives.”

Funny thing, the same relational attitude exits about blacks.

Calpurnia now part of the changing Maycomb culture, is described by Jean Louise upon visiting the family’s former cook/housekeeper:

“She sat there in front of me and she didn’t see me, she saw white folks. She raised me, and she doesn’t care.”

Uncle Jack, Atticus’s retired doctor and bibliophile younger brother provides Jean Louise an explanation of why things are the way they are after he hits her, gives her a stiff drink, and explains racism to her once again…and dispenses sage advice:

“The time your friends need you is when they’re wrong.”

"As you grew up, when you were grown, totally unknown to yourself, you confused your father with God.”

Henry Clinton is an important new character we meet.  Jean Louise is barely off the train and into Henry Clinton’s arms before she’s receiving a marriage proposal. Henry doesn’t cut a dashing figure; the 30 year old war veteran has a mouthful of fake teeth and a scar running across his face. 

Jean Louise ponders the prospects of marrying Henry, and leaving when the right man turns up later.  It’s clear that this relationship will not culminate in marriage as Jean Louise rebuffs Henry’s overtures, but is able to salvage the friendship, all in the first chapter.

Will the Real Atticus Finch Please Stand Up?

We are reintroduced to the mythic Atticus Finch in a surprising loose application of Winston Churchill’s famous quote:  If you are not a liberal when you’re young you have no heart, and if you not a conservative when you’re older you have no brain, viz.

Of course, it is not at all that simple, and begs the question of how Atticus devolves from his saintly status, an exemplar of all that’s good, noble, and right to become a white supremacist?

The novel’s theme is captured in the climatic dilemma Jean Louise’s complete disillusionment with her father Atticus, whom she has revered as the epitome of compassion and fairness is revealed as a racist.

The one human being she had ever fully trusted had failed her,” Lee writes, “the only man she had ever known to whom she could point and say with expert knowledge, ‘He is a gentleman, in his heart he is a gentlemen,’ had betrayed her, publicly, grossly, and shamelessly.”

Jean Louise stark confrontation with the state of Maycomb comes when she stealthily attends a meeting of the Maycomb Citizens’ Council, attended by both Atticus and Henry, in which Maycomb residents are in an uproar over desegregation. Jean Louise is startled to learn that Atticus and Henry are both segregationists and are both adamantly opposed to giving equal rights to Maycomb’s black citizens. Jean Louise is equally appalled to learn that Atticus and Henry decided to take the case of a black man (the grandson of Calpurnia, not because they want to present a robust defense, but merely to prevent lawyers from the NAACP from infiltrating the town.

The climactic scene is the argument where Jean Louise confronts Atticus, “I’ll never believe a word you say to me again. I despise you and everything you stand for.” Convulsing in anger make the author so sick she compares him to Hitler.

A curious contrast to all her revulsion is when she says that she was "furious" over a recent Supreme Court decision (likely Brown v. Board of Education), because "it seemed that to meet the real needs of a small portion of the population, the Court set up something horrible that could—that could affect the vast majority of folks."

Atticus characterizes himself as a Jeffersonian Democrat, while setting forth his rationale:

“Honey, you do not seem to understand that the Negroes down here are still in their childhood as a people” — and expressing contempt: “Can you blame the South for wanting to resist an invasion by people who are apparently so ashamed of their race they want to get rid of it?”

“You realize that our Negro population is backward, don’t you?”

“Do you want Negroes by the carload in our schools and ­churches and theaters?” “Do you want them in our world?”

So amid this emotional turmoil, the reader and Jean Louise are left in a quandary. The reader is confounded that the Mockingbird Atticus Finch could somehow morph into a card carrying racist in Watchman. Scout, now grown as Jean Louise, is completely devastated and must decide if she can still love her father.  We don’t know as Jean Louise returns to New York.

A One Hit Wonder Looks a Lot Like a One Trick Pony 

Watchman has all the appearances of an unedited draft – an exposition of missed and undeveloped opportunities.  Why did the author not render a story that dealt with in detail and vividness the multifaceted dimensions of the issue, rather than a patchwork story?

The sad thing about Watchman is that it detracts from Mockingbird in ways that the original story will never be viewed quite the same.

Sir Walter Scott (Ivanhoe) is partly to blame.  Mark Twain attributed the south’s culture to the influence of Sir Walter Scott: 

"Scott with his enchantments, sets the world in love with dreams and phantoms; with the silliness’s and emptiness’s, sham grandeurs, sham gauds, and sham chivalries of a brainless and worthless long-vanished society. He did measureless harm; more real and lasting harm, perhaps, than any other individual that ever wrote. In our South they flourish pretty forcefully still.”

Perhaps Mockingbird is, as renowned southern author Flannery O’Connor said, after reading the novel:  "It 's interesting that all the folks that are buying it don't know they are reading a children's book." 

Sometimes adults need heroes too.