Anyone read Go Set a Watchman yet?

[GK4Herd]

My daughters bought the much anticipated Harper Lee sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird for me. (Actually TKAM is the sequel) I'm heading to Orlando tomorrow and will probably read it next week on vacation. No spoilers, but I'm hearing in the reviews that Atticus is portrayed differently in this one. Anyone read it yet?

 

[HerdandHokies]

Haven't read it but the history is interesting. This book was written first, then the publisher (I think) had her re-write it from a completely different perspective so it'd sell better. My understanding is that neither is a sequel and they basically take place in completely different timelines.

 

[herdfan429]

I'll put it this way I've seen bookstores offering refunds for the book for how Atticus is portrayed.

 

[HerdandHokies]

They really just should have ctrl-r ed his name out of it to reduce confusion. It's not the same character.

 

[GK4Herd]

An interesting take on Atticus from the NYTimes...

"Even in Atticus’s most racist statements in “Watchman,” there are real-life parallels to how national conservatives, not just Southern reactionaries, understood racial changes taking place at the time. In one passage, Atticus tells his daughter, “Honey, you do not seem to understand that the Negroes down here are still in their childhood as a people.” The line echoes a 1957 editorial published in National Review in the midst of the congressional debate over the civil rights bill. The magazine asked whether the white Southerners could take measures to maintain political control over predominantly black communities: “The sobering answer is Yes — the white community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race.”

The Atticus Finch of “Mockingbird” has always been an overburdened figure. In 1960, when the novel was published, the South had just ended a decade of fierce reaction. Where were the decent white Southerners, many people wondered, who could lead the region through this crisis? The stoic, civic-minded Atticus Finch gave Americans hope. But that comfort has come at the cost of easy answers for complex issues. Whatever its flaws as a work of fiction, “Go Set a Watchman” brings a moral and political complexity to Atticus Finch that is overdue."




The article...

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/16/o...ffers-a-lesson-in-southern-politics.html?_r=0v