Go Set A Watchman

Harper Lee, “Go Set A Watchman,” Harper Collins, 2015, 278 pp.

Harper Lee, born in 1926, died in 2016, one year after the publication of this book. She only wrote two books (maybe three): this book and “To Kill A Mockingbird.”  Go Set A Watchman, was written before Mockingbird in the late 50’s but was turned down by publishers who convinced her to rewrite the book with “Scout” as a child, not an adult.   I would not recommend this book to anyone who has not first read Mockingbird, it is the contrast between the two books which I found most interesting.

The main thing you need to know about Go Set a Watchman (a title derived from Isaiah 21:6)* is that its author, Harper Lee, was born in Monroeville, Alabama, in 1926 and lived there until her death.  In her early twenties, Harper Lee had lived for a few years in New York where she worked on the reservations desk of an airline and began to write this book.  The plot involves Jean Louise Finch, 26 years old, coming home to Maycomb, Alabama, to visit her aging, father, Atticus.  It is apparently just after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision.  On getting home, Jean Louise is confronted by the racist attitudes of Atticus Finch, her father, who associates with the KKK, and Henry (“Hank”) Clinton, her “white trash” boyfriend—all apparently much disturbed by the NAACP and the recent Court decision. Yet, on page 109, the reader learns that Atticus had once “accomplished what was never before or afterward done in Maycomb County: he won the acquittal for a colored boy on a rape charge.

Another interesting tidbit is the mention of the character Dill who in real life was her childhood friend Truman Capote in their childhood town of Monroeville, Alabama.  Lee worked with Capote in the early 60s on the novel “In Cold Blood” and did most of the research, and some suspect much of the writing.

Addenda:  *allegedly in the context of this book, Go Set A Watchman means: “Somebody needs to be the moral compass of this town.”

In Watchman, Jean Louise expresses horror at the Supreme Court's disregard of the tenth amendment.  I found this disturbing that Lee apparently is not familiar with the fourteenth amendment and its impact on the 10th amendment.