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Harper Lee: Life of a Writer 15 Plans to Publish and Issues of Nelle Harper’s Life-Long Wishes and Present Competence In February of 2015, less than three months after Alice’s death, Nelle Harper’s lawyer announced she had just discovered the manuscript Go Set a Watchman (a manuscript Nelle Harper’s literary advisors said her lawyer had seen four years earlier). Joe Nocera, writing for the New York Times, speculated that Nelle Harper’s lawyer held onto her discovery of the man- uscript until Alice died, and Alice would no longer have control over Nelle Harper’s affairs. According to Nelle Harper’s nephew, he had read the manuscript years earlier and it was never “lost.” Her lawyer sent it to Nelle Harper’s agent, Andrew Nurnberg, and HarperCollins agreed to publish the work. Nelle Harper had indicated before her stroke that she didn’t want any- thing else published because when you are at the top, there’s only one way to go. (One thinks of Joseph Heller.) And to a friend, “I wouldn’t go through the pressure and publicity I went through with To Kill a Mocking- bird for any amount of money. . . . I have said what I wanted to say, and I will not say it again” (Butts interview). Stephen Peck, Gregory Peck’s son and a friend of Nelle Harper’s, was one of those who believed the publica- tion of Go Set a Watchman was a bad idea that would harm the reputation of To Kill a Mockingbird. The very few of Nelle Harper’s friends allowed in to see her, as well as her publisher and lawyer, assured the public that she remained very bright and tremendously pleased that the old novel was to be published. But questions arose about why Nelle Harper, a notoriously private person, who had always, all her life, said she didn’t want anything else published, even refused to give speeches and interviews, especially because of the public attention and scrutiny, would now, after approximately 55 years, decide to publish a novel that Tay Hohoff had said was unfit for publication. Many more people, who had seen her recently in private and public (at her sister’s funeral and at an Alabama Shakespeare production) questioned her mental ability to make independent choices so at variance with her lifelong propensities. One close friend indicated that her macular degeneration and her stroke had left her 95 percent blind, profoundly deaf, and confined to a wheelchair. He indicated that “her short-term memory is completely shot and poor in general” (Butts interview). Her lawyer reported that Nelle Harper was crushed by the widespread expressed suspicion of her state of mind and decision-making ability, but immediately the question arose: Who conveyed to her these critical com- ments that would be so painful to her? Nelle Harper was blind and could not read them for herself.