One of the really excellent things about writing for me has always been its ability to organize my thoughts into some semblance of coherent order; any topic, any time, any place, pen to paper is usually the most reliable way for me to clear up something on my mind or reach some understanding about it if I'm lucky enough. That could mean my (proverbial) pen that's doing the writing, or the pen of some brilliant author before me who's been lucky enough to get their words published; reading and writing are two sides of the same important coin for this English major. Today marks what I'm guessing will probably be the literary event of 2015 on the reading end, and I've got a lot of thoughts about it that I think need to get set down here on the writing end, really for my sake more than anyone else's, so here we go.
Not for nothing has Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird been required reading for pretty much every single person to pass through the American school system in the last several decades - if such a thing as a perfect book exists, I think most people will concede that Mockingbird is it. In that "take five books to a desert island" hypothetical scenario, I'd be ok with just taking Mockingbird and using the other four as kindling; making no short change about it, I love this book. With this in mind, you would think I'd be first in line at a Barnes & Noble today to pick up its newly-published "sequel" (or is it a prequel?), Go Set a Watchman... but amazingly, I'm not, and no one is more surprised than me.
For anyone who's not familiar with the nitty-gritty publishing mire that's been in the news the last few days, the Cliff's Notes version is that Harper Lee wrote this new book, Watchman, FIRST, sometime in the late 1950s; she sent it off to an editor, who then sent it back to her with the request that she go back in and expand upon certain parts of the text that had to do with her upbringing in 1930s Alabama... the rest, as they say, is history. What's being released today is that first, original draft, claimed by a source near Harper Lee to have been "recently discovered" and deemed worthy enough for wide public release. It follows a grown-up Scout from her life in New York City on a visit back to her home in Alabama. What she finds there is what's gotten the American reading public so distraught since it was first uncovered several days ago, and it's the reason I find myself so conflicted over this book as a concept: Atticus Finch is now allegedly a racist.
I can see now why Harper Lee was so dead set against releasing Go Set a Watchman for as long as she was; to be perfectly honest, every new rumor of her failing health and advanced age make me think some kind of foul play may or may not have been involved in gaining her consent for Watchman's publication all these years later. As a self-professed writer, I'll confess, I'm more than a little curious to see if some of the elements of Mockingbird are contained as kernels within Watchman, to find out if there's a genesis or arc of those elements from a craft point of view. But for the sake of Atticus Finch alone, I find myself leaning more and more towards the notion that I might just leave those kernels to the imagination, and let this book go unread.
In a parody "Literary March Madness" bracket organized by the English department at Holy Cross this last spring, the quiet Alabama lawyer was selected as the ultimate champion by significant popular vote, beating out the usual crowd-pleasers like Edgar Allan Poe and Frodo Baggins; in a ranking several years ago of the all-time greatest big screen heroes, the American Film Association ranked Atticus (as famously portrayed by Gregory Peck) their #1 male protagonist out of THOUSANDS of possible candidates, capping a top-ten that included the larger-than-life figures of Superman, Indiana Jones, and Luke Skywalker. This is a character who clearly resonates deeply with the audiences who encounter him in some way or another, and it shows; no other character from literature strikes me as being so unanimously and deeply cherished, because perhaps no other character is as unquestionably heroic.
Atticus never bursts his way through a steel-plated wall firing heat vision out of his eyes or wielding a lightsaber in a way consistent with other members of that top-ten listing; although he's known as the best shot in his county, he hides the fact until absolutely necessary, and only for the protection of his children. He is just a good man, an ordinary lawyer who stands up for justice above all else and calls for his children (and through them, us) to do the same. He is, rather than a hero we can simply admire, one that we can all hope to aspire to, effectively representing America at its best in circumstances that characterize America at its worst.
I'm not about to ordain myself here as a preacher in the church of high school literature or pretend that following the example of a made-up, fictional character will solve America's current epidemic of racial problems (problems that I, from a place of privilege, have NO right to sermonize about) - but yet at the same time, I do think that we as a species need a symbol or a hero to aspire to, some benchmark against which we can set ourselves, and this decent country lawyer is as pure a one as has ever existed. I, for one, intend to keep him that way, in my own imagination at the very least. Atticus is a figure, fictional though he is, that has inspired countless people over the years into doing some good in the world; God only knows how many people even joined the legal profession in the first place because of this one shining example as their precedent. If this symbol of pure goodness, of dignity and integrity and respect, of all the things that we as Americans and human beings can hope to be, becomes tinged... what then does that mean for us?
Maybe the aged, more jaded Atticus of Go Set a Watchman does actually jive with this existing ideal, or perhaps the reports of his all but donning a white hood in this new novel are sensationalized, in which case I'll happily be proven wrong -- but from all accounts, I doubt it, and for that reason do I think should the whole idea of it be left alone. Or, in other words,
"Mockingbirds don’t do one thing except make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corn cribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird."
I'm not at all trying to dissuade the masses from buying as many copies of Go Set a Watchman as possible; I have no doubt that it'll top all the best-selling charts for weeks, if not months, to come, and for Harper Lee's sake, I truly wish this is the case. I know several friends who already pre-ordered their copy, and I eagerly await their reviews on what could hopefully even turn out to be a well-written, enjoyable, entertaining story that features some of the best-loved characters in the history of American literature. "They're certainly entitled to think that, and they're entitled to full respect for their opinions... but before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience."
Miss Jean-Louise, stand up. Your father's passing.
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