Announcement of new Harper Lee book stirs excitement and 'a whiff of controversy'
Image courtesy of HarperCollins.
Harper Lee’s decision to publish a second book 55 years after publication of To Kill a Mockingbird was news to her editor at HarperCollins.
Hugh Van Dusen, who oversaw a 35th anniversary edition of Mockingbird in 1995, tells Vulture in a Q and A that he first learned the book existed on Monday. “The book had been a deep secret here, even to me,” he said.
The new novel, Go Set a Watchman, will be released in July. Lee wrote the book before To Kill a Mockingbird, and it features Scout as an adult. In a statement, Lee, 88, explained that she submitted Watchman to editors at J. B. Lippincott, who liked the flashbacks to Scout’s childhood and persuaded her to write a book from the point of view of Scout as a child. Lee complied with the request, writing the novel that became To Kill a Mockingbird.
Lee said in the statement that she didn’t realize the original book had survived and was “surprised and delighted when my dear friend and lawyer Tonja Carter discovered it.” Carter began working with Lee’s sister, Alice Lee, at her Alabama law firm soon after Carter graduated from the University of Alabama’s law school in 2006, the Wall Street Journal Law Blog reports. Alice Lee died in November at the age of 103.
Carter is married to the son of a cousin of the late Truman Capote, a writer who was one of Harper Lee’s close friends, the Law Blog says.
Some publications are raising questions about the decision to publish Watchman. The Christian Science Monitor says a “whiff of controversy” accompanied the announcement.
“A completed novel?” the Christian Science Monitor asks. “Just three months after her sister, Alice, who was the legal eagle in the family, passes on, a completed novel suddenly surfaces?”
Others struck out at the criticism. The Guardian columnist Hadley Freeman wrote, “Until there is proof that Lee is being exploited, and not mere assumption stained with well-meaning condescension for an elderly woman, we should make like Atticus Finch, see the best in people, and treat the new book as a cause for celebration.”
Van Dusen says he was told Carter discovered the manuscript, which was wrapped in a manuscript of Mockingbird in a safe deposit box or bank vault. He believes Carter serves as a go-between in negotiations with Lee.
“She’s very deaf and going blind,” Van Dusen told Vulture of Lee. “So it’s difficult to give her a phone call, you know? I think we do all our dealing through her lawyer, Tonja. … I’m told it’s very difficult to talk to her.”
Vulture asked Van Dusen about the publicly expressed skepticism towards Lee’s willingness to publish a book that was forgotten for more than five decades. “You mean was she unwilling to have it published?” Van Dusen said. “No, no, no, no. We would never do that. She’s too valuable an author to fool around with that way.”
Vulture asked whether the new book will be edited. “If it has been edited, nobody’s told me,” Van Dusen said. “My understanding is that it will be exactly what she wrote in the mid-1950s.”
Charlotte Bush, the publicity director for Cornerstone Publishing in the U.K., tweeted Thursday that she had a direct quote from Harper Lee, in which the author said, “I’m alive and kicking and happy as hell with the reactions to Watchman.”
Updated at 10:02 a.m. to add new Harper Lee quote and additional coverage.
