fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3365 ]

[ SECRET POST #3365 ]

⌈ Secret Post #3365 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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07. http://i.imgur.com/lBTV71m.png

Almost everyone I've seen who hates this book, hate it because of the disgusting way it was published.

???

here is a summary.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/25/opinion/joe-nocera-the-watchman-fraud.html

Basically some people took advantage of her sister's (caretaker's) death to publish a book she NEVER wanted published.

It is pretty disgusting all around.

Harper Lee was emphatic that she wanted it published and always had wanted it published. It's her first novel and the one that was dear to her; it was editors/publishers who had her take some bits from it and expand them into TKAM.
She wasn't particularly thrilled that the media portrayed her as some helpless, mindless idiot who needed to be protected, either. She even went so far as to say that people who thought her book was published against her wishes and she'd been taken advantage of shouldn't read it because they wouldn't like the story.

Source please?

Absolutely any reputable news media that followed the story after NPR and the NYT made their accusations. It's even on the GSAW Wikipedia page. Harper Lee even gave at least one interview about it before her death a month ago.

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2016-03-22 00:25 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2016-03-22 00:42 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2016-03-22 00:29 (UTC) - Expand

...that's not really what happened. She didn't speak directly to the media at all.

I mean...I think for a lot of people it's hard to reconcile Atticus from TKAM, who had such unwavering, fundamental respect for human beings and their dignity and merit, from an 8 year old girl to a poor boy dumping pancake syrup all over his lunch to Calpurnia to Tom Robinson to Boo Radley and even to Mayella Ewell, with the kind of lazy hackneyed half-racist we see in GSAW. Was Atticus's respect and kindness complicated, and layered, and at times tainted with notions of class, status, race, etc.? Absolutely! But the entire POINT of Atticus's character was that in his heart he loved and respected every person just because people deserve respect.

Now, like I said, there's room for a lot of interrogation there. Atticus was a white man in the 30s, written by a white woman in the 60s, and his idea of Tom Robinson or Boo Radley or Mayella Ewell's dignity might not be THEIR idea. But in GSAW--what I read of it--Atticus has apparently given up his careful, humanitarian approach to people and social problems; he bangs on like everybody's racist uncle about how black people can't be trusted to handle themselves yet, and he condescends endlessly to Scout. It's inconceivable, to me, that a man who had so much respect for his daughter when she wasn't even ten could be so dismissive of her thoughts and opinions as a grown woman. Atticus, in TKAM, knew where he stood in history; I think the Atticus of TKAM would have known his hour was over, and Scout's had arrived.

I would love to see an in-depth look at how a man like Atticus, who was so staunchly "progressive" in the South in the 30s, would adapt to the times, to the age of MLK and the Black Panthers. I have no doubt he'd be worried, likely even paternalistically so, and urge caution without sight for how long Black people had waited for their due. But the novel seemed so...unfinished, so thrown away for shock or something. Like, yes, Atticus is a bit of a dick now. Calpurnia never even had fondness for the kids--does that character deserve a revisitation? Is her position a complex and problematic one? YES. But to have her simply dismiss Scout is to do an injustice to the complex nature of her character, and the many, many real women who lived lives so much like hers.

So...tl;dr: I agree with you that people who recoil in shock at the idea that a man born less than 50 years after the Emancipation Proclamation might harbor some deeply problematic notions. What I can't square is the style and seemingly inconsistent writing in the novel itself, which seems so far removed from the care and dignity that marks TKAM. I think people reacted as much to that as to the idea that Atticus wasn't perfect.

That said, a lot of people grew up with Atticus as a literary/cinematic role model, and I understand why their knee-jerk reactions are frustrating (I also understand why it's hard to swallow; Atticus Finch is pretty Pure).

Sorry for the essay, lol....my students start To Kill a Mockingbird this week, and today we discussed race, family, responsibility, etc. in class. The results were fascinating, and I can't wait to see what they make of the book.

ALSO: I think the book being published at all was exploitative and Bad. Just saying.

Edited 2016-03-21 23:22 (UTC)

+10000000000 to everything in this comment. It wasn't the fact that Atticus was portrayed as not a shining beacon and his flaws were more apparent than in TKAM, it was the fact that his imperfection was done in a totally OOC way rather than a way that flowed naturally from his characterization in TKAM.

*insert applause gif*

This post is awesome and you should feel awesome :).

Also, I so wish I could attend that class. That does sound fascinating indeed.

I hate it because it was never meant to be published, it was an early first draft of To Kill A Mockingbird that was COMPLETELY re-written and drastically changed. It's a fine story as it is, but it has nothing to do with what Lee intended to have published.

Also, what's wrong with disliking it because of what it did to Atticus's character? There's nothing wrong with writing a story about a character who is great in one context but isn't a shining beacon of light in another, but...we have a million stories like that? Aren't we allowed to have even ONE character in all of fiction who is just flat-out a great role-model-worthy admirable person? Not even ONE???

And don't fucking tell me there aren't any amazing people who wasn't racist in the '30s and continued to be not-racist in the '50s. Amazing people exist. They're rare but they exist. To everyone who thinks a story about a person who seems amazing, is amazing, and continues to be amazing is "unrealistic" - amazing people exist, get the fuck over it, and take your pathetic insecure sour grapes with you.

I haven't read the new book, just to disclaim.

Now, first, I think it's really interesting to think of Atticus as not being the pillar of morality and fairness we - and Scout - were led to believe. It's realistic and addresses a bigger issue, for sure.

That being said, you have to realize that Atticus has been a literary symbol for a very long time. To Kill a Mockingbird is a long time classic. I would always forget Harper Lee was still alive (until recently) because you don't think of classic authors as being around. And classics don't usually get "canon" sequels. I think it's silly to rag on people for being upset. It's like Anne Rice making Lestat a repentant Christian, it goes against everything we thought we knew about the character, and who was a major literary (and pop culture, for that matter) symbol for a very long time.

Honestly, it feels too late to make a sequel. If it had come out a few years later, that'd be something else. But there's nothing wrong with people being upset.

Well, the thing it it wasn't a sequel. It was basically an early draft that was never meant to see the light of day.

Maybe, but that doesn't really matter. To the world, it came out later, therefore, it is a sequel. I don't think it makes a difference what she intended with it.

The story I heard is that, despite chronology, Watchman was written first. Mockingbird Atticus didn't turn into Watchman Atticus--from a writing perspective the opposite is true.

This first draft that is not a sequel and was never meant to be published has nothing to do with Atticus as an actual character, though. Anybody who writes fiction knows how much things can change and how some characters become completely different people between the time they first pop up in your head to the last edit. The whole thing is a great ad for paper shredders. Keeping old garbage drafts around isn't the greatest idea, regardless of your chances of producing some huge iconic book.

Edited 2016-03-22 00:00 (UTC)

I see a bug on chopsticks.

I want to shake everyone's shoulders and yell, "ATTICUS IS.NOT A REAL PERSON. THIS BOOK IS NOT A REVELATION OF A REAL PERSON'S SECRET PAST AS A HORRIBLE RACIST ASSHOLE BEFORE HE SAW THE LIGHT AND BECAME THE GOOD MAN YOU ADMIRE. DON'T WORRY: YOU HAVE NOT BEEN DECEIVED OR BETRAYED, AND YOUR FAVE IS NOT PROBLEMATIC!!!"

Because fuck.

Uhhhh, you're missing the whole point. If he WAS a real person it would be a lot easier to take, because real people are different from fictional people, you can't control them, they're one single human being who just happens to exist in the world. A real human being does not embody a symbol or a message or an idea. But Atticus is not a real person, he's a fictional person - a longstanding symbol and role-model and archetype. He's stand-in for a set of admirable qualities, he's the best an upper-middle class white guy in the '30s American south could have possibly realistically managed to be. He's a lesson in How To Not Be Prejudiced When Everyone Around You Is Prejudiced.

It's a huge slap in the face to have a hopeful story illustrating that human beings are capable of being good and and brave and rejecting the prejudice all around them (not 100% perfectly, he's still got some classist and sexist and racist assumptions even in TKAM, but still VERY impressively) and pass these lessons on unforgettably to their children, thereby spreading a drop of hope for increased respect and fairness throughout society and into the future, even when mired in an environment choking in layers of overt and covert racism and veiled, lurking, simmering racist violence.

And for that matter, Atticus was WAY more complex, nuanced, and layered in TKAM than in GSAW. The fact that he was more dickish in GSAW did not magically make him more realistic or believable or complex just by virtue of added dickishness - the book was poorly written and characterized, and therefore made him LESS complex, realistic, and layered.

sa

Whoops I meant "It's a huge slap in the face to have a hopeful story...[etc]...be ripped away and crapped on."

Well, Lee originally envisioned Scout's father as one personality, and then by the time she wrote Mockingbird, the character of Scout's father had transformed into the personality of the Atticus Finch we know and love. That's it, that's what happened.

If people draw a throughline between the two characters, as though he were a real man with a real self which Watchman exposed in all its ugliness, and take this as a slap in the face, then...well, that's a misunderstanding of what a novel is and how it's crafted. It's more fruitful to investigate how and why Lee's characterization of Atticus changed from common bigot to icon of nobility and principle, than to get all het up thinking Atticus was not "actually" the man we were led to believe he was.

I'm not saying you're doing this -- this is just what I saw and heard happening often when the book came out.

Edited 2016-03-22 01:57 (UTC)

In fact, even if you know nothing about the circumstances of the two books' composition, you can tell that things have changed, because in "GSAW", Tom is acquitted. In fannish terms, they're AUs of each other.

Making him flawed would be one thing. Making him the antithesis of what he was previously? That's just goddamn depressing.

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