Thursday, July 16, 2015

Comes a Watchman; or, Mockingbird Rations Have Been Raised Again

How intriguing.  Now that Go Set a Watchman has actually been published, all I'm seeing is a bunch of posts and articles explaining why it should never have been published, that it's unfinished, that Lee never wanted to publish it, that the poor old lady was pressured or coerced into publishing it, and so on and on.  Which may well be true.  But just a few days ago -- right up until publication day -- I was seeing nothing but how exciting it was, how it was going to shed a whole new light on Scout and Atticus, it was going to give us whiter whites and brighter teeth and OMG isn't it wonderful that we're finally going to get a new novel from the mysterious and selfish Harper Lee?  Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia!

(Am I going to read it?  Probably not anytime soon.  I have stacks of books around the apartment that need my attention first.)