"To Kill a Mockingbird" Author Harper Lee may have written a third novel

CNN ^ | 07/13/2015 | Wyatt Massey, Special to CNN

[SeekAndFind]

Two startling revelations about long-hidden work by "To Kill a Mockingbird" author Harper Lee have stunned readers awaiting Tuesday's release of her new book, "Go Set a Watchman."

Lee's attorney, Tonja Carter, hinted Monday in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that the reclusive author may have written a third novel.

Carter wrote that she recently examined the contents of a safe-deposit box in Lee's hometown of Monroeville, Alabama, and saw the manuscript for "Watchman" lying "underneath a stack of a significant number of pages of another typed text."

"Was it an earlier draft of 'Watchman,' or of 'Mockingbird,' or even, as early correspondence indicates it might be, a third book bridging the two? I don't know," Carter said. Experts, under direction from Lee, will be asked in the coming months to authenticate the pages, she said.

This disclosure comes on the heels of early reviews of "Watchman," published over the weekend, indicating that "Mockingbird's" principled lawyer Atticus Finch, who in that book defended a black man falsely accused of raping a white woman, has developed racist views.

Set 20 years after "Mockingbird," "Watchman" finds Scout Finch returning to her fictional Maycomb, Alabama, hometown in the 1950s from New York to find with dismay that her father has attended a Ku Klux Klan meeting and rails against desegregation.

The revised portrait of Atticus has horrified many fans of "Mockingbird," as it had been left to their imaginations to continue the story.

In the 55 years since its release, the 1960 novel has become a staple of high school reading lists and one of the most beloved books in American literature. The Academy Award-winning 1962 film, with Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch, only added to its legacy.

Until this week, "Mockingbird" remained Lee's only published novel.

[lee martell]

Some people cannot handle the demands and expectations of fame, not that I’ll ever know about it firsthand.
The famous have various ways of tolerating their status. I recall reading that twenty something years ago, Diana Ross had a clause in her contract that anyone not actively working with her was not to even look at her. I’ve heard the same things about Hillary during her time as First Lady.

[latina4dubya]

i named our two dogs Truman Capote and Harper Lee... :)

[Anitius Severinus Boethius]

I can’t stand her politics, but Barbara Streisand developed crippling stage fright early in her career. She was fine in the studio or on a movie set, but she can barely function in front of a live audience.

[lee martell]

I didn’t know that about Barbara. I didn’t think she was afraid of anything other than conservatives. Each performer is different. Lucky for Streisand, she found enough support to use the studio or movie set and became a huge star. For that, I do respect her. Surprisingly at her age, Barbara still has most of her voice.

[JoeProBono]

[tanknetter]

Of course it supports their ideals.

Older Southern White Heterosexual Males are all racist a**holes. All it takes to realize it is the kind of big-city enightenment that Scout seems to have had in the space between the two books.

Progressives are all about tearing down, trashing and replacing ideals. They’re usually THRILLED if doing so undermines things like the admiration and respect a child has for a parent.

[StAntKnee]

Seems odd that every year or so, somebody finds a new ms. Guess the Howard Hughes biography scandal makes me cynical. Also the “shocking” info that Atticus is a KKK meeting attendee. That’s just click bait for book buyers. No way possible that a plot twist like that plays out to be true.

Nothing against
Harper Lee and TKAM, two of my favorite memories about growing up. Just feeling that her name and rep are being exploited.

Hey, I hope I’m wrong.

BTW, you read the bio, Mockingbird?

Your take?

[mom.mom]

When do we get the Salinger manuscripts? I thought they were to start releasing them this year?

[Captain Peter Blood]

I just through reading the Op Ed by Ms. Carter in Monday's Wall Street Journal, Lee's attorney, and that article raises more questions than answers.

So in 2011 you have Nelle Lee's literary agent and a appraiser for Sotheby’s come to Alabama to go through Miss. Lee's safety deposit box to catalog it and look for the original copy of “to Kill A Mockingbird”.

I am supposed to believe that these people, along with Ms. Carter, went through this box and did not properly inspect and catalog the full contents of it. In addition Ms. Carter left the room for an extended time and did not properly supervise the examination of this box. On the surface I find a great degree of total incompetence.

So spring forward three years later and all of sudden Nelle Lee says something about having written a earlier novel, “Go Set A Watchman”, that no one has ever heard of.
Then said lawyer goes back to look at the contents of Safe Deposit Box and miracles or miracles not only does she find the original typed manuscript of “To Kill A Mockingbird”, she finds the unpublished “Go Set a Watchman”.

How is it you have these experts there three years earlier and none of them bothered to examine everything in detail in that box or catalog it properly. Are we supposed to believe they are all that incompetent.

I smell a lot of controversy here and sadly Ms. Lee is not in a position to be of much help. Frankly I would say it has shades of the Clifford Irving affair back in the 1970’s with his Howard Hughes book hoax.

The truth on this will surface and it will either be proven this book is legitimate or a elaborate hoax.

[Captain Peter Blood]

The truth on that is Harper Lee helped Truman write “In Cold Blood”. Now as to whether Truman ever helped her write is a possibility.

They both grew up in Monroeville and had a number of similar experiences and memories. So maybe it is possible Truman helped write “Go Set A Watchman”, it might explain the differences in the character Atticus Fitch.