Go Set a Watchman

I loved To Kill a Mockingbird even when I "was forced" (not really) to read it in 6th grade (or maybe 7th?) and, to make a conservative guess, I'd say I've probably read it at least 10 times since then. Anyway, I was all kinds of excited about Go Set a Watchman coming out, despite the ethical implications of its publication. I will also immediately read the lost Salinger books if and when they ever come out.

There have been a lot of terrible reviews, which is really pretty ironic because apparently Harper Lee's hatred of the press kept her from further publishing ventures and some reviews have been vicious. Like this rather harsh tweet from Adam Gopnik of the New Yorker said the book was a "failure as a novel."

I'm not even sure 50 Shades of Grey was a "failure as a novel" despite being, you know, what it is.  

So, what's so terrible about this book? It has very little plot structure - basically, a 26 year old Scout returns to Maycomb, Alabama to find that her elderly father spouts racist nonsense about the NAACP and black people not being responsible enough to vote. The Onion summed it up nicely: "Atticus shocks readers as a white man who has become a conservative blowhard with age." Scout sits in the same courthouse where she watched her father defend Tom Robinson, only, now her father and erstwhile boyfriend sit idly by while a racist asshole eggs on the town's menfolk. Jean Louise is naturally distressed to find that her father hero is not the person she thought he was, and then the book becomes a series of conversations in which her boyfriend, uncle and father gently mansplain that their racism is necessary and beneficial.

"Look, honey. Have you ever considered that men, especially men, must conform to certain demands of the community they live in simply so they can be of service to it?" Scout's response to this is steady denial, but mostly heartbreak - that the town and people she held dear can hold opinions so different than her own. That's a sentiment that really hit home for me. It's not unusual for me to hear relatives I love saying stupid, racist things when I go home. It's not unusual for my small hometown to be in the news for some idiotic racist act. Those things hurt worse than the acts of casual racism they are, because I feel like I learned some of my core values there - compassion, respect, acceptance. Scout feelings mirror mine: "Everything I have ever taken for right and wrong these people have taught me - these same, these very people."

So while Go Set a Watchman isn't nearly the masterpiece To Kill a Mockingbird is, it certainly doesn't fail as a novel - I think it fills a quite useful place as a novel in expressing this, yes, slightly juvenile idea that our heroes have flaws - and that discovering that can be part of growing older and growing wiser. I would have benefited from learning that when I was in 6th or 7th grade but I found it gratifying to read it now.