It's the kind of manuscript, like James Joyce's "Stephen Hero," that often emerges after a writer's death - a first grappling with subjects and themes that a powerful writer later sculpts into a masterpiece. Nonetheless, "Watchman" is worth reading as a historical and literary artifact. For its publisher to claim that "Watchman" "stands as a magnificent novel in its own right" is cynical and gets me wondering, cynically, who will spend the profits generated by it. Written by an unknown rather than Harper Lee, it would never have been published. It's not a sequel to "Mockingbird," but readers will struggle not to read it like one. The more deeply a person knows and likes "Mockingbird," the weirder "Watchman" is going to seem. Also, the odd relationship between "Watchman" and "Mockingbird" creates considerable dissonance for a reader.
These concerns make it challenging to consider "Go Set a Watchman" simply on its own merits as a novel. Other people are troubled by word-of-mouth reports that "Watchman" paints Atticus Finch, the upright white lawyer in "Mockingbird" who defends a black man unjustly accused of rape, one of the most admirable father figures in American fiction, as a racist bigot. After at least one anonymous complaint that Lee was coerced into allowing publication, Alabama state authorities investigated but found no evidence of elder abuse, according to a New York Times report. Some potential readers have qualms about whether Lee, 89, ailing and living in an Alabama assisted-care facility, sanctioned publication of this decades-old manuscript, which she wrote before she wrote the classic "To Kill a Mockingbird" (1960). But Harper Lee's "Go Set a Watchman" has created that quandary for them. Never before have readers - experienced, sophisticated adult readers - told me that they're agonizing, ethically and morally, about whether to read a new novel.
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