Book Review: In defence of a sequel to a classic

When Netflix made itself available last week, I was quite pleased to see To Kill A Mockingbird on the list. I had read the book way back, but hadn't seen the movie. And since I'd just finished the sequel, Go Set A Watchman, figured I might as well hit play.
Watching the movie of a book after you've just read the sequel puts you in the peculiar position of retrospectively (but also prematurely) feeling bad for the doom up ahead. Not doom-doom, but wistfulness about the trajectory of certain characters, since you've just found out what happens to them.
The little girl, Scout grows up, and is called Jean Louise more often than Scout. She's no longer bashing up boys in schoolyards and playing with her brother, Jem. Her father-adoration has turned sour as midway through Watchman, she hears and sees something that lets her believe that Atticus is not the man she thought he was.
To the Mockingbird loyalists who refuse to even look at Watchman: I get it. I get the not wanting to ruin a classic with a patchy, inchoate sequel - or whatever the allegations are. But speaking for myself, nothing was ruined. Of course the book doesn't trump the classic - there, I said it. But it's at least an answer to the readers who wondered what happened to Atticus and Jem, and Calpurnia, and wanted to be shown and told. In defence of a book doomed to eternal comparisons with its elder sibling, I breezed through Watchman just fine. I loved the slight déjà vu of how close and unsentimental daughter and father, Scout/Jean Louise) and Atticus still are, how she's still calling him Atticus, and how natural, instinctive and effortless their banter is.
The first half of the book coasts along on nostalgia more than plot - the setting, the language, all the "yonder" and "yessum" is all very nice. But the plot, kind of diaphanous, takes its time to appear, and then all the NAACP and congress and agricultural history bits are not riveting. Still, good solid lines are very much in there.
"When his daughter was miserable, she prowled. And Atticus liked his women relaxed, not constantly emptying ashtrays".
Midway though, some choppy waters are hit when Jean Louise's too dramatic, seemingly irrational, and out-of-character hatred of Atticus begins. Is Atticus a Negro hater or is he not? Daughter has issues with daddy's iffy, bendy principles, his presumed feet of clay. That she begins to hate him just because he's not as heroic as she held him up to be seems a bit stretched. The man's not perfect. So what? You're an adult! I found myself saying to her. Did that make it a lesser book than the classic? Yes, also for other reasons. Is it right though to compare Watchman with Mockingbird? Probably not. But as flawed and mundane -similar then to Atticus Finch - as we are, those comparisons are inevitable.

 'It'll go into whatever archive exists at my death'

The time Harper Lee hand wrote a note of thanks to a fan for his letter. And said she would "treasure it" for the rest of her life

Ten years ago, a man named Mark Cashion wrote a letter to Harper Lee because To Kill A Mockingbird, he says was "the single most important book in my life."
I know this because I read Mark's blog - Exile on Pain Street. He's a New Yorker who had at age 20 read To Kill A Mockingbird on a bench in Central Park. He blogged about this in 2010.
In his words:
"In 2005 I got the notion to write to Harper Lee and tell her how much her book meant to me. I wrote that, because of her book, I'm living a better and more interesting life than someone without a college degree could have expected to. I wrote that I'm a better father to my daughters and honestly don't know what would have become of me if her book hadn't introduced me to reading. I worked hard on the letter and was pleased with the results."
Not only did he get a reply to his fan mail. But here's what she wrote back to him: (see pics). Some days after, he got ANOTHER letter from her.
 "Forgive me if this is a repeat letter; I'm old, my eyesight is failing and I'm FORGETFUL. I may have forgot that I replied to you, but I know one thing: I'll never forget your letter. In 45 years of receiving fan mail, I never had a letter mean so much to me. Thank you for it."
I wrote to Mark asking him if he'd read Watchmen (and if I could use his name in the paper), and this is what he said.
"I did not read Watchmen, nor will I ever. It was published under duplicitous circumstances. If you follow the (substantial) money trail, it leads to people who don't have Ms. Lee's best interests as a priority. She wrote me a second letter because she couldn't remember having written the first letter. And that was only a few days after the fact. If her memory was that faulty 10 years ago, can you imagine the state she's in today?"
nivriti@khaleejtimes.com
 

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