I am usually sceptical of sequels,
prequels, midquels and sidequels, although they can occasionally be
worth reading for various reasons. I am hugely sceptical of all kinds
of Ur-texts, other than for purely academic purposes. There is, for
instance, a whole book of early versions of The Master and
Margarita, where you can trace all the intricate reworkings in
plots and characters, but they are nothing like the final version
(and, of course, there isn't even a final version of this particular
novel). I am not an archive person, but I have for professional
reasons read early unpublished drafts of some famous novels, and they
are just that, early drafts. If you are working on a specific text
from a specific angle, early drafts can be illuminating. But it's
important to remember that they are drafts, not intended for public
perusal.
I was sceptical toward Harper Lee's so
called new novel ever since it was mentioned, and in the hype just
previous to publication I became still more sceptical. I read the
first chapter released some days earlier and was not impressed. If I
had read this first chapter out of context I would say it was
sentimental garbage and never considered reading any further.
However, some colleagues had also read the chapter and thought it was
good, and I am always prepared to take colleagues' advice and give a
book a second chance. I also felt that I could not go on saying that
the book was rubbish and merely a publisher's gig (a million copies
pre-ordered!) unless I had actually read it. I decided that I would
read it for what it was, without comparing it to Mockingbird.
As a professional reader, I can do it.
I bought a Kindle copy and started
reading the second chapter on the release day. It went from bad to
worse. The characters did not interest me, the dialogue was pathetic
and used to carry the plot in a most amateurish way; the narrator's
voice was didactic, everything was spelt out. There was no conflict,
no plot development, nothing at all to attract my attention.
Profoundly bad writing. Again, I would have put it away under
different circumstances, but I hadn't even reached the episodes
discussed in the pre-reviews: the darker sides of Atticus Finch. So I
went on. There were a couple of slightly more vivid passages, always
flashbacks into the protagonist's adolescence, with some painfully
trivial episodes such as her terror when she gets her period or
believes that she is pregnant because a boy kissed her on the mouth.
I persisted, and then suddenly, when
she discovers that her adored father is a racist, it became intensely
good. It was still a typical example of belated parental revolt,
accompanied by realisation that all her happy childhood was an
illusion (for instance, that their black servant Calpurnia wasn't as
devoted as little Jean Louise believed). The good part was perhaps
ten pages, followed by an unbearable sermon by Jean Louise's uncle
and an explicit quarrel with the father that, if anything, shows that
Jean Louise is indeed more prejudiced than he. And they live happily
ever after. Sort of.
One star on Goodreads.
It so happened that the cottage where I
spent my holiday week had a good library that included To Kill a
Mockingbird, so I started reading it immediately after finishing
Go Set a Watchman.
To Kill a Mockingbird has
never been a great favourite, but it is an important book if you are
a reader and more so if you are a professional reader. I first
encountered it as a stage version, performed by the State Children's
Theatre in Moscow, all the more surprising because the famous film
was rated 16+. We had to read it in my English class in college, but
I don't think I understood much of it then, definitely not
what was so great about it. Which is the narrative perspective. Scout
is looking back on her childhood, “when enough years had gone by to
enable us to look back”; but she is still very young to understand
what happened, and she definitely did not understand what was
happening as she experienced it. People around her believe that they
can discuss anything in front of her and even allow her to watch a
rape case trial, because she is too young to understand. As a
narrator, a lightly older version of herself, Scout does not question
her own ignorance and does not offer a better understanding. On the
contrary, at the time of narration, she is mostly focused on the fact
that her brother once had has arm broken. This is exactly the kind of
event that a young child would be interested in, and everything else
is just a backdrop. The poignancy of the novel is the total
discrepancy between what the narrator is saying and what the reader
is supposed to infer. To see the backdrop in spite of the narrator
obstructing it. This is why I have always said that to use
Mockingbird in schools is pointless and even unethical: you
have to be a mature reader to cope with this narration. (You also
need to know a lot about American history, but that's a different
matter). Mockingbird is similar to What Maisie Knew:
employing a child as a lens, at the child's expense.
This aspect is still stunning on
re-reading. Otherwise, I had no memory of the slow plot in the first
half of the novel, mainly telling about two or three summers full of
games, interspersed by horrors of school. Had it been told in the
Watchman mode it would have been tedious; as it is, it serves
as a very long prelude where glimpses of Atticus Finch's human rights
engagement may be traced, and Boo Radley's possible crucial role in
the plot is hinted at. The famous courtroom scene is quite short, but
long enough to see how it has been pruned down from the uncle's
speeches in Watchman. Generally, although Mockingbird
is endlessly better than the draft, some of the draft's flaws are
tangible.
Because I read one text immediately
after the other I could spot verbatim passages, but they were few and
far between. The Tom Robinson case takes half a page in Watchman,
just as an example of how
Atticus has changed. But then, Jean Louise of Watchman
may misremember. She has an idealised memory of her father. We don't
know what he really was like.
To
compare Atticus in the two texts or, moreover, claim that Atticus of
Watchman can change
our view of him in Mockingbird
is nonsense. They are two completely different fictional characters
who happen to have the same name. Neither is Jean Louise in Watchman
the same character as Scout in Mockingbird.
She may be an early version, tested and dismissed.
I am
glad I have read Watchman,
and still more glad I had an occasion to re-read Mockingbird
and confirm that it isn't a masterpiece it is always presented as.
Maybe, as often happens, most people know the story from the film. It
has an important political agenda and has been hugely influential.
Every student of literature should read it. Recommend it to your
mother-in-law's cousin? Depends on their reading preferences.
As to
Watchman, the
publisher has made a lot of money out of a soap bubble, as publishers
do. If I were ever to teach creative writing, the two texts would be
perfect on the syllabus, to show what a long road there is from the
first draft to the final one.
