BOOK REVIEW: Harper Lee's "Go Set a Watchman" and "To Kill a Mockingbird"

To Kill a Watchman, Or—Go Set a Mockingbird?

A Review of an American Classic and its Long-Lost…Relative

Anthony J. Elia ~ Revision September 24, 2015

Two months ago, Harper Lee’s “new” book Go Set a Watchman was released.  We all rushed to our local bookstores, or Amazon, or the public library, and got our copies.  My colleague, Nick Buck, and I acquired our copies along with new reprints of To Kill a Mockingbird and read these two volumes back-to-back.  We wanted to see the similarities and the differences; we wanted to know how much To Kill a Mockingbird had changed from the text of Go Set a Watchman, because there were stories in the media that Watchman was some sort of first or early draft of the Pulitzer winning novel.  In fact, Harper Lee herself made the claim that Watchman was Mockingbird’s “parent.”  So how far did the apple fall from the tree?

I first need to make a confession: this present review is not my first review of the two books, which I purposely reviewed as a pair.  In mid-July, I expanded my initial review of Watchman and Mockingbird, while I had intense conversations with Nick, who was also grappling with these novels, and wondered about the inconsistencies in the Atticus character.  Why did he change?  or DID he really change?  Was it something that could be reconciled within the narratives of both books?  Or was it merely something explicable as “oh, Harper Lee just changed her mind… no sense in looking for consistency?”  We also wondered who (or what) these books were about—Atticus, Scout, or someone/thing else?  In the search for answers, more questions arose.

My preliminary concerns and struggles with this book were about consistency.  We all love and demand consistency in our world, in our storybook characters, and in the lives of our favorite authors, even when we ourselves cannot have consistent lives—not even moderately consistent lives. 

So I wrote a review.  And it kept growing, because I had more and more to say, and by the time I thought I was done, the review was no longer a review.  It was nearly nine pages of exegesis.  I gave a plausible narrative arc to Atticus’ change, noting nuances in his behavior perhaps overlooked in Mockingbird, and referenced the rise of the NAACP in national politics in the 1950s, distinct from the 1930s.  I looked at the context of African-American scholarship in 1935, and the success of works published by W.E.B. DuBoise (like “Black Reconstruction in America”) that year.  I even analyzed the parallels between Mockingbird characters and their ancient Roman equivalents:  Titus Pomponius Atticus was Cicero’s best friend; and Calpurnia was the name of one of Julius Caeser’s wives.  But the more I thought about this, the less convinced I was that much of this mattered.  If any names mattered, they were ones like “Ewell” (a medieval spelling of “Evil” counterpoised with the “good” characters of the novel) and “Finch” (Harper Lee’s maternal family name).

Part of the debate I had with my colleague was about the authorship of Mockingbird.  And for both of us, we asked “How could the author of Watchman write Mockingbird?—they are so radically different books.”  The countless reviews of Watchman are really now a morass of speculation—to which, admittedly, I may be simply adding!  Fresh Air’s Maureen Corrigan called Watchman a mess, and I bristled.  There is a feeling that many Harper Lee fans don’t like hearing criticism about her or her books.  I think that’s true.  Yet, part of me wanted to agree—the book is a mess.  On the other hand, one could easily say, “well, it’s a very post-modern novel,” which may seem a cop-out for a poorly edited text, but nonetheless may be true.  It really is a post-modern (or “modernist” in literary terms) novel that basks in choppy style and erratic prose.  And that’s where an editor in the late 1950s, unimpressed with “modernist” literature, and knowing that it wouldn’t sell, saw a very rough draft, and not the next Finnegan’s Wake.   One of these editors, Tay Hohoff was on my radar, and I wanted to learn more about her.

The big change in my thinking about these novels came late in the summer, when I read half a dozen other books, which put my thoughts and these novels in perspective.  Two of these books were biographical (Charles J. Shields’ “Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee” published in 2006; and Marja Mills’ “The Mockingbird Next Door: Life with Harper Lee,” published in 2014).  The other books were When the Church Bell Rang Racist (1998) by Donald Collins, A Ministry to Man: The Life of John Lovejoy Elliott (1959) and Cats and other People (1973) by Tay Hohoff, and Between the World and Me (2015) by Ta-Nahisi Coates—the last of these, though indirectly related, is relevant to the racial themes of these novels.

In light of my readings, the authorship question returned.  The relationship between Harper Lee and Truman Capote came into view, while any speculation of his involvement was effectively dead.  Too many scholars had piled heaps of evidence against that, and I personally thought that Lee probably had more to do with writing Capote’s In Cold Blood, than the opposite.  In fact, Marja Mills points out that in the late 1970s, Lee was deep into writing an In Cold Blood-style book.  But apparently Lee became too involved in the project and felt in danger, due to the subjects she was researching, so she abandoned it.   Might this be the third book?   Speculations about her “other books” have continued to mount:  there are stories that there was a “middle book” between the plots of Watchman and Mockingbird, as well as the episode that Shields reports regarding a novel Lee wrote about deer hunting that was stolen out of her NYC apartment many years ago.  But even more curious is the nugget we get from Lee herself at the very end of Mills’ book.  It reads: “Nelle [i.e. Harper Lee] had told me over the years that she resented any speculation that her editor, Tay Hohoff, had a larger role in shaping the manuscript than she did, as Nelle saw it.  And the rumor that Capote wrote any of it was still infuriating, she made clear, and absurd,” (Mills 270). 

So Capote is off the table.  I buy that.  But what about Hohoff?  In some accounts, there are implications that Hohoff reworked Watchman into Mockingbird in a significant way, but these have never really been substantiated.  How significant?  Harper Lee says not significant at all.  But let’s back up a moment, and look at some evidence.  Lee called Watchman the “parent” of Mockingbird.  An archival revelation this summer at Columbia University showed manuscripts at its Rare Books and Manuscripts Library deposited by Lee’s publisher Lippincott in the late 1950s to be of two names—Watchman, deposited by chapter, then later crossed out and replaced with To Kill a Mockingbird (and we should note, the first title submitted to Lippincott was Atticus).  But these are two different books—today.  And clearly, these two books, as published, are vastly different not only in their emphasis on characters and character development, but style.  In many ways, Watchman is more raw, ragged, and honest than Mockingbird.  Reading about Harper Lee’s personality, I can see her penning Watchman, while Mockingbird seems out of character, almost pastoral and packaged in righteousness and goodness.  I’ll state emphatically, though, that I still believe she wrote both.  My question is how much did she change under the influence of Hohoff? 

I set out to read at least two Hohoff books, thinking I probably wouldn’t find anything.  But I was surprised by what I did find.  In the first pages of A Ministry to Man, Hohoff writes in a beautiful, bucolic, and sentimental prose, reminiscent of old country and farm life.  When I put it next to Lee’s description of Maycomb (specifically, two paragraphs) in the first chapter of Mockingbird it was startlingly similar.  What also struck me about Hohoff’s first chapter in this book was that these first pages deal with abolition, slavery, and race.  The book, a biography of John Lovejoy Elliot, is a story about a man, who found a hero in Abraham Lincoln, and become a founder and leader of the Ethical Culture Society.  The principles of this nation-wide society included morality, self- and social-reform, and educating youth as a primary goal in society.  Hohoff was finishing this book as a young Harper Lee gave her the manuscript of Watchman.  It is hard for me to believe that the world and moral character of John Lovejoy Elliott did not come into conversation.  In fact, I would suggest that Hohoff may have persuaded Lee to make Atticus more like Lovejoy Elliott in Mockingbird, than like her father, A.C. Lee, in real life, after whom Atticus was initially modeled.  In many ways, A.C. Lee was closer to the earlier Watchman Atticus, but ironically, became more like the Mockingbird Atticus and Lovejoy Elliot after the success of Mockingbird.  Did Hohoff have Lee read A Ministry to Man?  Did she say “Nelle, read this! and re-write?” 

When a new minister, Rev. Ray Whatley, preached in 1952 at the First United Methodist Church in Monroeville, and his sermons were focused on social justice and race, A.C. Lee was compelled to correct the minister.  He sat the preacher down one day after church and immediately declared “Get off the ‘social justice’ and get back on the gospel,” (Shields 123).  For Harper Lee’s father, church was the place to find God and seek salvation, not deal with mundane ideas of social justice.  He was part of the institutional racism that the church held onto in the early 1950s, and was part of the church administration that ultimately let Rev. Whatley go.  A.C. Lee was gradually changing during the Civil Rights era, and finally becoming a supporter of African-American rights under the influence of his daughters.   As for Atticus advocating for Tom Robinson, according to Shields, this was likely inspired by the 1933-4 case of Walter Lett, whose circumstances were similar to those described of Tom Robinson in Mockingbird. 

In another Hohoff book, Cats and other People, which was published just before her death in 1974, we get a memoir of animals in her life.  Though a simple and unassuming read, there are hints which bring me back to how Mockingbird took its shape—though the book was written after Lee’s novels, it conveys a descriptive youth and details that may have informed conversations between Lee and Hohoff during the editing process of Watchman/Mockingbird.  Ms. Hohoff’s father, like Lee’s, was an attorney, who helped labor unions; she mentions Sunday services at the Methodist church when she was a girl (though she was a Quaker); and her recall of her own childhood years seems like the pristine Mayberry of youth, shared with family, neighbors, and critters—like Scout’s Maycomb.  Reading this book was useful to gauge any similarities between Lee and Hohoff, but ultimately inconclusive. 

Other questions remained for me, though, and certain episodes kept me wondering why Harper Lee composed her work in the way she did.  Why, for example, was Jem undeveloped in Watchman, but a solid character in Mockingbird?  Or, why was Dill wandering in Italy in Watchman, as a passing thought, but a fixture in Mockingbird?  The answers may be simple, but not always satisfying.  Lee’s mother died the same summer as her son Edwin (Harper’s older brother, and model of Jem).  When discussing this with Nick, we wondered why Scout had her transformation in Watchman at the late age of 26, and not say, as an 18 year old experiencing the world outside for the first time.  But Lee herself was 25-6 at the time of this family tragedy and the moment she went out to write a soul-searching novel, which is what I think Watchman is.  It’s also the same age that Truman Capote (the model for Dill) goes off to Italy.  These real life occurrences and others (like the random rabid dog scene in Mockingbird, which was based on a real event in Monroeville in the 1930s) infiltrate Watchman and Mockingbird to represent a literary reality, and two distinct novels.   

We will likely never know the full extent that Hohoff played in reshaping Mockingbird, though I imagine the debates about these works will continue to unfold in new and unexpected ways.  I am glad that Watchman was published.  I think it may be considered somewhat unrefined, but I feel I understand most of what Lee was trying to convey.  It  also helped me to better understand Mockingbird.  Reading these other works—by Hohoff, Mills, and Shields—also gave me a better sense of the novels, their context, meaning, and influence.  I did mention two other books, by Collins and Coates, which I found helpful to understanding both Harper Lee and her world—Collins describes the systematic racism that was inherent in the Methodist churches in Alabama in the time leading up to the Civil Rights Movement, giving context to various scenes in both Watchman and Mockingbird; while Coates’ book is a manifesto, written as a letter to his son about what it means to be an African-American man in this country—and as Nick and I discussed, presents us with a perspective on why Tom Robinson makes the decisions he does before being killed. 

Watchman and Mockingbird highlight the problems and structures of racism in our society.  Both focus on Atticus, but each is more about Scout and the development of her awareness in the world.  At the same time, we might even suggest that Mockingbird is a mystery novel, in the style that Harper Lee admired and tried her hand at later on.  But perhaps there is another interpretation: Is the real protagonist Harper Lee and her elusive life story?  Or is it us—the readers and fans—who so desperately want to know who Harper Lee really is, what her motives were, and everything associated with these novels?  The true power of both of these novels is that for more than half a century after they were written, we are still debating the relevance of the ideas of Harper Lee.

Anthony J. Elia is director of CTS Library and Educational Technology.  He has led the “Dickens and Christianity” reading group at CTS since early 2014.  He has published widely in library science, theology, and music, including “An Unknown Exegete: Uncovering the Biblical Theology of Elizabeth Barrett Browning” and Damascus at Night: A Ballet for Orchestra about the Syrian Civil War.  

A Book Review: THE LOVE THAT MATTERS, by Charles H. Featherstone

BOOK REVIEW

By Anthony J. Elia

3 June 2015

REVIEW OF: The Love That Matters: Meeting Jesus in the Midst of Terror and Death, by Charles H. Featherstone

“Memoirs are the backstairs of history,” ~ George Meredith

“The past is never dead.  It’s not even past.” ~ William Faulkner

            I first learned Czech from a Korean-born Slavic philologist at the University of Chicago.  When I finally made it to Prague to study for a summer, my Bohemian-born teachers thought I spoke Slovak, because of my accent.  Like Charles Featherstone, I took up this complicated and beautiful language; unlike Charles Featherstone, I didn’t learn it in the army and I never fully overcame the Slovak accent.

            Languages and educations are funny things.  They take you places like weary taxicab drivers, who pick you up after that long flight from Tijuana, Denver, or San Juan, and take you to a presumably safe place.  But depending on the driver you’re given, you end up taking very different routes, and ending up in very different places.  Life itself is like that, in fact.  And sometime you don’t actually end up in safe places.

            For some time I’d known that Charles Featherstone was writing a book, a memoir.  I didn’t know what it would cover in his life, nor did I know that it would turn out to be the masterfully written volume The Love That Matters: Meeting Jesus in the Midst of Terror and Death.  What I did know was a guy named Charles and his wife Jennifer, who lived and worked in the community where I was employed nearly a decade ago.  At least, I thought I knew Charles.  But there is much more I now know.  And I’m glad for that.

            I don’t recall when we first met—maybe he does—but I do remember his personality: bold, maybe at times brash, but tempered; loud, but sensitive; shocking, but nuanced; intense, but reflective; passionate, yet withheld.  Charles worked in the library, where I was a librarian.  We often chatted, and had rather brief conversations, but conversations that seemed to be weighty, worthwhile, and meaningful.  They weren’t the oft superficial, self-interested, or banal conversations one might have in most quotidian encounters.  Charles had an earnest presence to his speech, his thought, and his spirit.  I knew that I had to take him seriously.  I also knew that he and his wife Jennifer were special people, who worked hard, sometimes struggled financially, and had big hearts—really big hearts.    I once remember when Charles took up a job as a cab driver while in seminary.  I’m sure I never told him this, but when I discovered his new occupation, it cemented in my mind that Charles was the real deal—a student studying for ministry who was compelled to work long shifts and drive around a sprawling city for low wages with unknown passengers, just to make ends meet: now that took a man with special character.  I had a lot of respect for someone like that.

            Charles is a big guy with presence, as he notes in his book, who is often misunderstood—“people are afraid of you” I think was the line one of his fellow students commented.  I was never afraid of Charles.  I actually found his assertive presence and booming voice refreshing.  It was not make believe, this was no Disney-character saying grace over pot roast.  But I think the real reason I wasn’t afraid of Charles was that he curiously reminded me of my grandfather, a life-long Lutheran himself, who didn’t take crap from anyone, and also commanded an imposing posture and presence. 

            My grandfather died about two months ago, and in that time since, I decided to read Charles’ memoir.  And I’m glad I did, because it is a remarkable work.  And reading it now, in the space of that lingering memory of my recently departed grandfather, who had a great deal of influence on me as a child, was a good time to read this book.  The book made me think of these parallels in a very stark and real sense.  My grandfather was a brilliant man, who spoke confidently, and could engage with just about anyone on any topic.  He was also a man, like Charles, who was often misunderstood or mischaracterized.  Charles is uncannily similar in this way, with the addition of some fairly fascinating world travel, a command of Arabic and Czech, and a damn good conversion story.

            In some ways, it’s hard to write a review of a book by someone you know.  You run the risk of being too soft, too obsequious, too flattering, and not honest enough.  To quote Charles toward the end of his book, “I feel like a fraud” writing this review.  But that’s not totally true.  What I will make full admission of here is the lesson I learned from this memoir—being an honest and open writer will set you free.  And so, in this way, I don’t “feel like a fraud” writing this.  This book feels so honest—even if it is only one side of many stories (because, like any memoir, there may be people, who might contest certain episodes)—that I felt the reality of human existence in every page.  I felt what one reviewer of this book called “ragged, raw, and real.”  What I kept thinking as I went from page to page was “Saint Augustine would be jealous reading Featherstone!”—Augustine’s pear tree feels embarrassingly modest, like someone’s hair is out of place, compared to some of the torment, uncertainty, or betrayal experienced by the author of this memoir.

            Perhaps the most compelling aspect of this work is the ability of Charles to convey the emotive, visceral pain of his experiences.  When he talks about being wronged or hurt or bullied or even pigeon-holed, you feel his anger, his rage, his presence of mind; you also want to come to his rescue, talk to the people with whom he placed his trust and then let him down, or figure the best way out of a tricky situation.  At least, that’s what I felt.  And perhaps that is because I know Charles, and many of the actors in his life drama, which in broad terms is either a passion play or a fools’ opera.  Either way, it’s powerful and complex, and incredibly important to recognize and respond to.

            When I first read the book, I thought that maybe he spent too much time on his youth and childhood.  But as I considered it further, the duration of those sections is important—they are powerful, expressive, sad, profound, unexpected, heartbreaking, and real.  

For about a quarter of the book, Charles transports you into that world of childhood, youth, and adolescence, as if you were reading Tolstoy’s reflections.  He emerges with a fair share of scratches and wounds, and subsequently (or consequently) seeks outlets—in the army, in writing, in Islam, in Solzhenitsyn, and finally in Jesus. 

The path that Charles takes us down remarkable and surprising.  The characters he encounters, talks to, prays with, thinks about, or protects himself against are a Who’s Who of characters out of a post-modern Dickens novel—from street gangs in Chicago to Mexican restaurant mascots in Dubai, all the way to encounters with Elridge Cleaver and members of the U.S. Congress.  The themes of the book are part- spiritual wanderlust, part tale of survival, where each of these narratives comes together to find a place and meaning for Charles.  His life moves through the continuum of change and adaptation to environments. It is also a life marked by a persistent hope—a hope that every so often pops up its little head, to make sure all is clear.

Amid all this, something happened.  What happened was 9/11. 

Charles lived through September 11^th.  He literally was there, when it happened; in the buildings of the World Trade Center.  And he recounts the horror of this moment, those moments, and the experience of slowed time, crisp and clear blue skies, sunlight, whizzing sounds, thuds, crashes, and the gnashing of metal, glass, and concrete, as the planes impacted.  He smelled the burning that day; he saw people falling hundreds of feet to their deaths.  He felt the pain and anguish of the day.  And amid this, his religious identity was tested.

I don’t know how many people went through conversions that day.  I don’t know how many people had the initial pangs of questioning their faith.  But this memoir is the only one I know that has grappled with such a distinct theological shift, from the foot of the tragedy. 

In so many ways, the events of that September morning brought Charles to church, and ultimately to seminary.  And in so many ways, the experience of 9/11 seems to be the turning point of the narrative.  Yet, when I finished the book, I wondered if the turning point was later, in seminary—or, maybe the turning point is the end of the book, the realization of an unknown future in light of all the tragedy and hardship endured?  I say this about Charles’ time in seminary, because like many things associated with “the church,” and with organized religion, many of us have grand and holy expectations of goodness, because…, well, because it is the church.  And yet, we find that institutions are all guilty of sins of behavior, hypocrisy, omission, commission, and inconsistency.  Charles does not seek power in the church, but I think he did seek goodness, acceptance, recognition, and some sort of truth—whatever that truth may have been.  Facing the realities of any institution and its centralized or diffuse powers, especially when cloaked (or hidden behind) the language and love of the Gospels, can be a sobering, if not traumatic experience; and one that is often troubling to those who go through any such process of religious participation or education.  And because of this, I wonder if this is the true turning point of this memoir.

            I know this was a difficult book to write, and probably even more difficult book to publish, especially considering what implications or blowback it might create.  I’m glad he wrote this book.  I understand that the decisions of the church and the bishops involved in his case have responsibilities, and have made their decisions.  At the same time, if I were in a church community, and a church leader was able to be so articulately open about their “sinful” past, I think that a community would feel like this was refreshing, engaging, and open; something that was desired in a religious leader.  But maybe not.  Not all faith communities in the church are like that.  We are human beings with human foibles and failures, as people, as communities, as churches, as leaders.  People also like to be inconsistent, while requiring their leaders to be consistent.  We’re a funny breed.    

            Having read this memoir, I feel like if I had a cabin in the woods somewhere, I’d give it to Charles and Jennifer to let them enjoy the simple life and write more books like this.  I know that Charles has other stories.  I’ve heard them.  And I want to see more in print. 

            Like Faulkner said, the past is not dead.  It’s not even past.  I can see that clearly from this book.

            God bless Charles Featherstone.  God bless his wife Jennifer, and give them peace and stability in the roughness of this world we call home. 

Now go out and buy this book.  And go buy a dozen copies for your friends, and their friends.

PS- if I were doling out stars, this would be a 5/5.  Most definitely.