Ranting On...Go Set a Watchman

I have never read To Kill a Mockingbird.  I feel a little like this is the literary equivalent of proclaiming "I am still a virgin" at 25.  I don't honestly know how I never got around to it.  While I don't read as vociferously as an adult as I did as a child, I've always had a penchant for the classics, particularly the books you're "supposed" to read when you're that age.  I hit Huck Finn, Scarlet Letter, Great Gatsby, and Cal of the Wild.  I've read Animal Farm more times than I can count and actually immediately reread Lord of the Flies just because I wasn't 100% sure what had just happened.  Heidi, Black Beauty, Robinson Crusoe-I got to all of them but Harper Lee's famed novel about a Southern lawyer has only been viewed by me through the eyes of Gregory Peck, not through his original literary inventor.  As a result, I didn't run out to buy Go Set a Watchman, and I didn't have my childhood (or the name of my child) ruined by finding out that Atticus was a racist.  What I do find interesting about all of this is the rights of an author to go back to a character, and the question of whether or not this book should have seen the light of day.

The reality is that I've felt leery about this entire endeavor since it was first announced.  I get that this is going to be a major moment in the publishing world.  Not since Fifty Shades of Grey has the country suddenly found themselves in constant conversation about a book, and as an enthusiast for the written word and artistic conversation in general, I can't bemoan that even if the book is apparently quite poor.  It's a major coup for people who have waited decades for the reclusive Harper Lee to finally acquiesce to public demands that she write a second novel, but I feel really uncomfortable with the situation.  Lee no longer has her longtime sister Alice, who for many years protected the deeply private author from public demands, and as a result I worry that she is being taken advantage of by her current representation, eager to make millions off of Lee's legacy.  I am aware that investigations have taken place, but short of Lee herself appearing in an interview with a member of the media (which I sincerely doubt will ever happen), I feel a pall is cast over this book and any subsequent manuscripts that find their way into the public domain.

The reality is that Lee should have the say into whether or not her book is published, and if she isn't mentally competent to do so, I think that legally it shouldn't be allowed.  This isn't a concept I come by lightly, of course, and I think it needs to be clear whether or not an author intended for the work to be published if they are incapacitated or deceased (again, I know nothing about Lee's competency other than rumors, but those rumors line-up with a lot of facts and coincidences, enough so that my antennae are up).  But I do think it's inappropriate to publish creative works without an author's consent, particularly if their longstanding attitude has been not to publish.  The reality is that the author, the holder of an intellectual property, should get to decide what happens next for his or her characters and worlds.  If Lee competently wants to make Atticus Finch a racist, that's her prerogative and we as her audience have to judge what comes out (like all of art).  If, however, these are character sketches that she doesn't want the world to see quite yet or ever, that's a different situation entirely.

It should be clear both that not publishing works after an author's death would deprive us of some of the world's greatest literature and there are exceptions to this rule, of course.  Someone like John Kennedy Toole, who died a decade before his A Confederacy of Dunces was finally published, had pursued publication for decades.  The same thing happened to Sylvia Plath and The Bell Jar.  Novels ranging from Northanger Abbey to A Death in the Family to Maurice to The Aeneid have been published after the deaths of the authors.  The question that should be asked, though, is if the author intended for these works to be published, and whether or not they expressly didn't want the works published.  Authors such as Mark Twain and Vladimir Nabokov expressly forbid their stories to be published after they die, wishing for any unfinished works to be destroyed if they were to die before giving final authority.  I have to say that I support this even if it may deprive the world of a great novel, because publishing unfinished works without the approval of the writer steals away authorial intent.  I personally have written several novels that languish a bit on my shelf, waiting for the day when I will pick them up again and say "this is complete," but I wouldn't want them to be published in their current status were I to be hit by a bus later today.  Legally I wouldn't be able to object, but even if they had my name on the title, they weren't the books I wanted them to be-I'd want something different, something that I had more sharply edited before I could say do with it what you will.

And this is a proposition that I feel Harper Lee has been deprived of with the publication of Go Set a Watchman.  She may still be living, but I feel like her age and potentially her mental status are being taken advantage of by people who want to sully her legacy.  If she goes on a national interview show and proves her mental agility, I'll let this one go (she can obviously publish whatever she wants that a publisher is willing to latch onto if she's doing it with a sound mind), but in the meantime while I fully intend to someday rectify my To Kill a Mockingbird gap, I will probably never do the same for Go Set a Watchman.