16 Reading Harper Lee In February of 2015, an investigation by the Alabama Securities Com- mission and the Department of Human Resources was launched into the possible coercion and abuse of Nelle Harper with regard to publication of Go Set a Watchman. By April 2, 2015, the agencies found no evidence of abuse or neglect (Kellogg, “Alabama Closes”). The Publication of Go Set a Watchman Go Set a Watchman was released, largely unedited except for, according to publisher, Jonathan Burnham, “a very light copy edit” (Suddath, “What Does Harper Lee Want?”). Unfortunately, the “light edit” did not catch a critical mistake in the key passage on page 265 where the word “con- scious” is used instead of “conscience.” Even the part of speech is faulty. The record-breaking distribution and sales of the novel in July of 2015 was met with mixed reviews. Diane Johnson in “Daddy’s Girl,” a review of the novel in the New York Review of Books (September 24, 2015), wrote, “The first reactions were of wary disappointments,” “cursory, often clumsy.” Still, it enjoyed a brief few weeks on the New York Times best- seller list. Many ardent fans of To Kill a Mockingbird and Atticus vowed never to read it, especially attorneys who had been inspired by Atticus to enter the field of law. Mick Brown, writing for the Telegraph (July 10, 2015) asked the ques- tion, “Would it have been kinder not to publish Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman?” based on his reading of one chapter. “But one fears that those in search of the vivid and much-loved Scout are in for a disappoint- ment. . . . perhaps it would have been a greater kindness to her reputa- tion, and to the millions who cherish To Kill a Mockingbird, not to have published it at all.” Lauren Strickland contended that because, from all accounts, Nelle Harper was “in no state to approve the publication of Go Set a Watchman” and because she had never wanted anything else of hers published in her lifetime, it was unethical to read the novel (“Is It Ethical?”). Doris Forest, in a letter to the New Yorker of July 7, 2015, expressed the views of many Harper Lee fans: “I hope that readers of the novel will see it as a publisher’s hustle at the expense of a beloved author, who unfortu- nately was in no position to stop its release.” Diane Johnson summed up all the extraliterary questions that attach themselves to the release of the second, “less accomplished” novel: the way in which it was discovered the part of the editors of both novels Nelle Harper’s mental and physical condition the quality of Go Set a Watchman and where the millions of dollars it was bringing in were going.
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