Watson responds to the impending release of "Go Set a Watchman," the sorta-kinda prequel to "To Kill a Mockingbird."
Unless Jim Horwitz somehow got his hands on a review copy, he's basing this on the reviews, which is where I was able to track down that quote.
I hadn't planned to read the book, and, when I went back to see what I had already written on the topic, I see that my follow-up posting spun off a Watson from February, in which Jim was dreading the release of this "new" book into a changed world.
Those first announcements didn't reveal much about the content of the novel, and the response centered mostly on questions about Harper Lee's current ability to agree to publication of a manuscript she had adamantly refused to release in earlier days.
I have since read that state officials had been concerned enough to go talk to her and make sure she was competent to make the decision, and gave the project a green light.
Still, even if she decided, with full clarity and without mental reservation or external pressure, that 55 years of silence were enough, there remains the question of artistic integrity.
Which is to say, the investigation doesn't certify it as a good decision, only a legally valid one.
Creative people at the peak of their capacity make bad decisions all the time, as one of my very favorite vintage Norms reminds us, and, in fact, today's xkcd is on the topic of new Star Wars movies, which I won't post here because the mouseover gag is part of the discussion and worth seeing for itself.
Certainly, Kid Norm's and my judgments aside, they've sold plenty of tickets to Star Wars prequels, so, if that's the measure, then making more of them is a good decision. And I'm sure "Go Set a Watchman" will turn a profit.
And, even from a purely artistic point of view, maybe it's too rigid to suggest that you only get one bite of the apple, and that integrity rests on knowing when to show it to the public, after which you are required to let it stand.
Besides which, If you consider "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" to be a sequel to "Tom Sawyer," or "Ulysses" to be a sequel to "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man," then there is precedent for building upon the unexplored aspects of a character.
However, "Go Set a Watchman" is more comparable to "Stephen Hero," the earlier version of "Portrait," the pages of which James Joyce had thrown into the fire, from which his wife Nora rescued most of it.
It was published after his death (ie, without his consent and against his clear wishes), but is considered more of a secondary source for scholars of the novel it spawned than a free-standing work of art to be read on its own, and the 1945 NYT review notes that not only the novel, but also the novelist, grew considerably between this "schoolboy's production" and the finished piece:
What did Joyce learn about his profession between the two drafts of his first novel? Primarily he learned, as Gertrude Stein once observed to Hemingway, that "remarks" do not make literature. He learned selection, concentration through the telescoping of disparate materials in some single concrete symbol or situation, the beauty that comes from controlled relations. Novel-writing was not to be just "talking into a typewriter"; the novel was not a catch-all for whatever passed through a writer's head; as an art it had to be grounded in the intelligible and not the abstract.
Reading the first chapter of Harper Lee's first draft of Mockingbird suggests she had some similar things to learn as well.
It's not that it's "bad" but it simply isn't very good, and I have to think that, if she had any real intention of presenting it as a novel, she would have insisted on it going through at least her hands for a final edit, if not through the hands of an actual book editor.
Which is to say that I suspect her "consent" was, at best, less along the lines of "Yes! Let's do this!" and more a matter of "Oh, go ahead then."
However, I am guessing.
Here's what I know for sure: As mentioned here before, I've got a book on "The Sun Also Rises" that shows pages from Hemingway's first draft, analyzing the changes he made and discussing the events of the novel as they relate to actual events in his life, and it is a much-cherished look inside the creative process that led to that classic work. I'm very glad I read it.
But it has completely changed, if not "ruined," the way I read the novel itself, revealing all the wires, the painted-over spots and the protruding nail heads in its structure.
As a writer, I consider the sacrifice of that one, well-loved piece of art worthwhile for the professional insights I have gained.
However, unless you are a medical student, I think you should think hard before attending an autopsy, and that, if you do decide to go have a look, it should probably not be an autopsy of anyone you knew and cared about.
As the NPR reviewer suggested, however you feel about "Go Set a Watchman," whatever the values of its insights, you won't be able to un-read it.
You can’t pretend like this book doesn’t exist. So, now, you have to say, OK, this is one picture of Atticus Finch, but there’s another picture of him too. ... You can’t discount this book’s existence now. It lives with “To Kill a Mockingbird”, side by side with it.
I was listening to a report on Vermont Public Radio about subsidies to encourage and assist young farmers yesterday, and one of the "old hands" involved in the program was named "Scout." At first, I thought that she was a little young to be advising 20-somethings, but then realized that she could easily be in her 40s or 50s.
She's lived a long time with that name, and I kind of hope she doesn't read "Go Set a Watchman."
And then there's this:
Berke Breathed has begun drawing Bloom County again, and, judging from the more than 4,700 "likes" already posted within the first hour, it's a popular decision.
But I wouldn't stand on one foot waiting for the rebirth of Calvin & Hobbes.
Now here's your moment of zen:
To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,
To throw a perfume on the violet,
To smooth the ice, or add another hue
Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light
To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish,
Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.
-- The Life and Death of King John, Act IV, scene 2
Comments
You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.