Past and Present Dangers
Jul. 12th, 2015 07:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakIn theory, I know that the History Exchange won't go live until the 19th, but in practice, I keep checking it. Ah, that itchy feeling of wanting to read the other stories and wanting others to read yours...
Speaking of reading, To Kill a Mockingbird doesn't have the iconic status in my part of the world which it has in the US (and Britain?). Of course it's been translated, and I did read it as a teenager, not in school but because the aunt I was staying with during my vacation had a copy and I had read all her other books already. I liked it, was suitably outraged by the injustice and charmed by the family, but I had no idea it was considered a classic elsewhere, nor did I feel the need to read it more than once. When I saw the film version on tv about a decade later, I remember thinking "wasn't Scout more central in the novel? Why is there so much Jem and Atticus in the movie instead?" , but otherwise also liked the film. (BTW, at that point DS9 was already running, but I certainly had no idea that Joseph Sisko, Ben's father, was played by the same actor who played Atticus Finch's client.) The "like" never extended to "love". It was only after starting to consume English language media on a regular basis that I realised quite how iconic Mockingbird was in the English speaking world, and specifically Atticus Finch.
(Truefax: they changed birds and verbs for the German title, which is "Who Disturbs a Nightingale?" - "Wer die Nachtigall stört", which meant some confusion on my part at first once I read allusions to the original English title.)
All of which means I had no emotional stakes when earlier this year the news got out that Harper Lee's earlier written yet never published novel Go set a Watchman would be released this year, at least as far as the book itself was concerned. The "do we even know whether or not this is something she'd want since she's such a recluse and hardly communicates with the outside world"? debate did affect me, because the idea of an author unable to control what texts are released under her name is disturbing to me. (Switching genres and literary status, this is why V.C. Andrews' family endlessly churning out ghost written books under her name after her death remains repulsive to me. By all means, licence sequels and what not, but be honest about it and have them published under the names of their authors. I don't care whether the author in question used to write highly praised literature or pulp fiction, only texts she or he actually wrote should be published under their name.) Especially considering that the fictionalized version of Harper Lee in the movie Capote was a very endearing character, and when I subsequently read a non-fiction Capote biography, this came across as a good depiction. However, a lot of articles later the general media consensus seemed to have been that this was indeed Harper Lee's novel and she wanted to have it published, and so ended my emotional concernedness. I wasn't very curious about the novel itself. I would, I thought, eventually get around reading it, but it wasn't a priority.
Which has changed since yesterday, when I read the spoilery advance review in the New York Times. At this point, I immediately pre-ordered it in its kindle edition. Not because the review was all praise, but because it was all shock, and what it was shocked about made me go "This sounds fascinating". Because apparantly instead of the nostalgia trip lots of people thought they'd be getting, it's a tale of disillusionment, with the adult Scout/Jean Louise realising her father and childhood hero Atticus has become a cranky old man spouting racist bigotry when confronted with the civil rights movement. The flashback parts of the novel, which would develop into To Kill A Mockingbird when her editor told Harper Lee to focus on them and write a novel set exclusively in Scout's childhood, still feature Atticus Finch the righteous, but of course the context is very different if you have them embedded in a story where in the heroine's present day (which for today's reader is the far past again, but that wasn't the original intention) he's quite different.
...or is he? No way of saying without reading the novel first, but this analysis of Atticus Finch as presented in "To Kill a Mockingbird" points out the limits of his stand. (And draws an interesting parallel to Dickens-as-analyzed-by-George-Orwell, i.e. Orwell's point that while Dickens' indignation at all the 19th century England injustices he saw and attacked in his novels, he never offers an alternative to the system other than "a change of hearts", because basically, he doesn't want a new system, he wants the old one without the horror (and doesn't realise the horror is the inevitable product of the system). Which doesn't mean Dickens' wasn't sincere or courageous, or, argues the article, that Atticus Finch isn't in To Kill a Mockingbird when he defends a black man, but he does so because this particular black man is innocent of the charge. Which isn't the same was wanting an entirely new society.
The main reason, though, why I suddenly want to read this novel as soon as I can is that it now offers an emotional experience I can identify with. Not re: my father, but I have several older relations and also old (literally, as in aged) friends utterly unrelated to me who as they aged started to reveal more and more bigotry. The challenge to see someone you care about, who cares for you, who has many qualities which made you love or like this person, spout views that are full of bias or sometimes even active hate is painful, acute, and very, very present. I don't expect a novel, no matter how well written, to make it easier for me, but I really want to know how it depicts it.
Speaking of reading, To Kill a Mockingbird doesn't have the iconic status in my part of the world which it has in the US (and Britain?). Of course it's been translated, and I did read it as a teenager, not in school but because the aunt I was staying with during my vacation had a copy and I had read all her other books already. I liked it, was suitably outraged by the injustice and charmed by the family, but I had no idea it was considered a classic elsewhere, nor did I feel the need to read it more than once. When I saw the film version on tv about a decade later, I remember thinking "wasn't Scout more central in the novel? Why is there so much Jem and Atticus in the movie instead?" , but otherwise also liked the film. (BTW, at that point DS9 was already running, but I certainly had no idea that Joseph Sisko, Ben's father, was played by the same actor who played Atticus Finch's client.) The "like" never extended to "love". It was only after starting to consume English language media on a regular basis that I realised quite how iconic Mockingbird was in the English speaking world, and specifically Atticus Finch.
(Truefax: they changed birds and verbs for the German title, which is "Who Disturbs a Nightingale?" - "Wer die Nachtigall stört", which meant some confusion on my part at first once I read allusions to the original English title.)
All of which means I had no emotional stakes when earlier this year the news got out that Harper Lee's earlier written yet never published novel Go set a Watchman would be released this year, at least as far as the book itself was concerned. The "do we even know whether or not this is something she'd want since she's such a recluse and hardly communicates with the outside world"? debate did affect me, because the idea of an author unable to control what texts are released under her name is disturbing to me. (Switching genres and literary status, this is why V.C. Andrews' family endlessly churning out ghost written books under her name after her death remains repulsive to me. By all means, licence sequels and what not, but be honest about it and have them published under the names of their authors. I don't care whether the author in question used to write highly praised literature or pulp fiction, only texts she or he actually wrote should be published under their name.) Especially considering that the fictionalized version of Harper Lee in the movie Capote was a very endearing character, and when I subsequently read a non-fiction Capote biography, this came across as a good depiction. However, a lot of articles later the general media consensus seemed to have been that this was indeed Harper Lee's novel and she wanted to have it published, and so ended my emotional concernedness. I wasn't very curious about the novel itself. I would, I thought, eventually get around reading it, but it wasn't a priority.
Which has changed since yesterday, when I read the spoilery advance review in the New York Times. At this point, I immediately pre-ordered it in its kindle edition. Not because the review was all praise, but because it was all shock, and what it was shocked about made me go "This sounds fascinating". Because apparantly instead of the nostalgia trip lots of people thought they'd be getting, it's a tale of disillusionment, with the adult Scout/Jean Louise realising her father and childhood hero Atticus has become a cranky old man spouting racist bigotry when confronted with the civil rights movement. The flashback parts of the novel, which would develop into To Kill A Mockingbird when her editor told Harper Lee to focus on them and write a novel set exclusively in Scout's childhood, still feature Atticus Finch the righteous, but of course the context is very different if you have them embedded in a story where in the heroine's present day (which for today's reader is the far past again, but that wasn't the original intention) he's quite different.
...or is he? No way of saying without reading the novel first, but this analysis of Atticus Finch as presented in "To Kill a Mockingbird" points out the limits of his stand. (And draws an interesting parallel to Dickens-as-analyzed-by-George-Orwell, i.e. Orwell's point that while Dickens' indignation at all the 19th century England injustices he saw and attacked in his novels, he never offers an alternative to the system other than "a change of hearts", because basically, he doesn't want a new system, he wants the old one without the horror (and doesn't realise the horror is the inevitable product of the system). Which doesn't mean Dickens' wasn't sincere or courageous, or, argues the article, that Atticus Finch isn't in To Kill a Mockingbird when he defends a black man, but he does so because this particular black man is innocent of the charge. Which isn't the same was wanting an entirely new society.
The main reason, though, why I suddenly want to read this novel as soon as I can is that it now offers an emotional experience I can identify with. Not re: my father, but I have several older relations and also old (literally, as in aged) friends utterly unrelated to me who as they aged started to reveal more and more bigotry. The challenge to see someone you care about, who cares for you, who has many qualities which made you love or like this person, spout views that are full of bias or sometimes even active hate is painful, acute, and very, very present. I don't expect a novel, no matter how well written, to make it easier for me, but I really want to know how it depicts it.
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Date: 2015-07-12 08:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-07-12 10:39 am (UTC)From my perspective, the archive not opening until the 19th would be a godsend, alas.
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Date: 2015-07-12 03:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-07-12 04:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-07-12 02:00 pm (UTC)I'm not in a huge hurry to read the book -- I read it at 12 or 13, never had it assigned for school but was aware many people did, perhaps inevitably given my age, was much more interested in Scout than in Atticus's. Never reread it as an adult + honestly can't recall if I ever have seen the movie -- though I was aware it was one of my dad's favorites & he considered Atticus's a model father.
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Date: 2015-07-12 03:05 pm (UTC)No, I didn't have that impression. Unless he revised it now that Go Set a Watchman shows Harper Lee doesn't see Atticus uncritically? (The shocked NY Times review doesn't mention Scout's own attitude re: Civil Rights, other than it obviously not being her father's and boyfriend's. ) One of the other articles I've read also quotes Harper Lee writing in a letter in the 50s (i.e. when the novel was written) she has to bite her tongue every time she visits her hometown, or else she'd start an argument. So I think it's most likely she wanted Atticus to be a great father, willing to stand up for something he considers unjust, but also a product of his time and sharing some of the attitudes, which gets worse as he gets older.
It occurs to me that Atticus being a good father to his children also might play into the different roles he plays in either novel. In To Kill a Mockingbird, his children really are all children, and his attitude re: Tom and the others is paternalistic in the positive sense - he wants to protect, to defend - which they need him to, at this point and place. But a decadel later, when it's not an issue of protection but of demand for equality, and the children have grown up on all levels - very different emotional situation.
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Date: 2015-07-12 03:21 pm (UTC)I just came across an interesting article re: Lee's real life father (who actually seems to have come around re: integration in his later years though that may have been a process that evolved as his daughter's books were being written).
Interestingly, though it's not specified in the article, the Book Riot editor quoted in the piece is one of the people referenced who has a young son named Atticus. (My niece is named Harper, for related reasons...funny enough she was born a few years before the 50 year anniversary of TKAM and a lot of people were confused by the name -- where's that come from? Is it a girls' name? - but in 2011 when Harper Lee was all over the news that name -- along with Atticus -- skyrocketed in popularity. None of this nearly as much fun as when Demi Moore named her daughter 'Scout' in the 90s but it's an interesting book in its influence for that reason alone...)
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Date: 2015-07-12 05:24 pm (UTC)Speaking as an American (albeit a liberally-raised white Northerner with Quakers in my background) who was interested in reading Go Set a Watchman, once I found out what happens to Atticus's character, I cannot bring myself to read it. I first read Mockingbird as a high-schooler, one of the very few required books I enjoyed reading during sophomore year (even if my English teacher at the time was atrocious and terrible at presenting it). I love Scout Finch to pieces, and see a lot of myself in her. I loved Dill and Jem, Calpurnia and Miss Maudie, Aunt Alexandra and Boo Radley, Tom Robinson and Heck Tate. And I *adore* Atticus Finch, one of the sole protagonists in fiction of the era who spoke of how evil slavery and racism was. The film is one of my favorite movies, mostly due to how perfect Gregory Peck is as Atticus.
And I'm not saying people cannot and do not go through such radical changes as they age. It's certainly all too common, not to mention a wonderful parallel to Jem's discovery that Atticus is legally-fallible in Mockingbird. I'm saying that it hits too close to home, with my grandmother and my uncle doing very similar things to Atticus in Watchman, becoming more intolerant and racist and hateful. I'm saying that, at this time in American history, when a black person is killed every 28 hours by the police and/or a white person, the depiction of Atticus's racism will only be celebrated as a return to "the right way".
I'm sure Watchmen will be a beautifully-written book, but I won't be reading it.
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Date: 2015-07-13 11:46 am (UTC)If it's any consolation, as
I'll definitely write a review of the novel, so you can find out more without having to read it, if you care to. However I'm at a conference the next two days, so it might take a while, independent of how good or bad it is.
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Date: 2015-07-13 03:16 pm (UTC)I'll admit to being somewhat torn between curious and appalled. I'm probably slightly less invested in Mockingbird than above, but it'd hit hard.
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Date: 2015-07-12 11:17 pm (UTC)I had no interest in rereading the original or getting the new one until I started reading the reviews. Now I can't wait to get my hands on it.
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Date: 2015-07-13 11:46 am (UTC)