Re: Male to Female Ratios

vern wrote:

Corra quoted: "As sure as time, history is repeating itself, and as sure as man is man, history is the last place he’ll look for his lessons."
― Harper Lee, Go Set a Watchman

Hi, Corra, so, I read Go Set a Watchman as soon as it came out, but although I did like it, I didn't find it as, well, I'll just say entertaining as To Kill a Mockingbird. I found myself agreeing with the editor who asked that she rewrite the original manuscript using the pov of Scout which resulted in the classic To Kill a Mockingbird. Just curious as to your opinion in contrasting the two works.

Glad to see you and Dill back in the fray btw; makes for a livelier place. Take care. Vern

I think whoever edited her was brilliant to catch the little reference of Tom Robinson's trial midway through, underline it in red and scratch WRITE THIS. They were one hundred percent right, I think. The final accepted version is much more focused and sneaks up on the theme rather than delivering it bluntly. Watchman feels a bit like the forum Lee had to work in before she could turn her thoughts into art. You know how they say cut the first several chapters after you start a book, because most of that is just you trying to figure out where to start? I felt like that was true of Watchman. In places, I felt like Scout was actually Harper Lee, and Scout's disgust was Lee's disgust. She lost the fiction illusion in places.

Mockingbird critiques from a safer space and therefore likely had more chance to impact, especially in Civil Rights America. There Scout is a child, and a little girl at that. Her father is perfectly lovely, and things happen, and she watches without bluntly saying, "You people are crazy, and here's why." When she does have an inkling of "this isn't right," it's a softer recognition because she's a child. (I personally love Lee's blunt, brutal interrogation of the South in Watchman. But it read more like an essay than a novel, in places. The conversation felt forced, like what she wanted to say to someone and placed into the mouths of her characters.)

But if you read Watchman for the literary history factor, it's incredibly interesting. (I love seeing what she wrote before which was developed into To Kill a Mockingbird. It's interesting to see what themes she kept, and which she tossed.)

SPOILERS follow - I really, really, really like the complication of Atticus's character. I didn't see that coming since he's so wonderful (WONDERFUL) in To Kill a Mockingbird. He was my favorite father in literature. I rather idolized him. Peeling away the layer was horrendous but so -- I don't know, realistic, I think? I actually ended the book feeling really hopeful, but from about three-fourths through until the end, it was agonizing. I couldn't even believe what I was reading. Then I wanted to hug them both. And get in there and join them. And cry. I feel like Lee just reached into America and shook it -- in the very best way. What's interesting in terms of this thread smile is that Watchman makes the outspoken, frank woman into the book's hero. Into the very influence which might promote change. Naturally, I like that.  wink

I think if you've read To Kill a Mockingbird, it's a really interesting accompaniment. But certainly To Kill a Mockingbird is the work of art. IMO.

(That might answer your question? I don't seem to have the brain to analyze today. Also, I read the book two months ago and don't own a copy, so I'm referencing a hazy memory of a two-day read several books and homework assignments ago.)

Quote Post 76

Re: Male to Female Ratios

dagnee wrote:
corra wrote:

"As sure as time, history is repeating itself, and as sure as man is man, history is the last place he’ll look for his lessons."
― Harper Lee, Go Set a Watchman x

I waited six months for this book and then, some hours before it was supposed to be delivered to my Kindle, I read a review stating that the novel is loosely written and has no literary value, as well as revealing Atticus to be a racist, attending KKK meetings. I am boken hearted and now wonder if it is worth reading. What say you...should I read it anyway?

I answered Vern above with what I thought of the book (including a spoiler -- don't read that!) I can't tell you what you should or shouldn't read, but if you want to preserve Atticus as you currently know him? I think you'd be happier not reading it. It makes you think, but it does rather shatter the prior (final?) book. (Prior final? This is getting confusing!) lol

Quote Post 77

78 Reply by Memphis Trace (edited by Memphis Trace 2015-09-18 20:19:08)

Re: Male to Female Ratios

From what I can glean, the original manuscript(s) Lee submitted of Go Set a Watchman and To Kill a Mockingbird was about a young woman disenchanted when she found out her father was just a run of the mill racist after believing as a child that he was an unambiguous saint.

Having just read Go Set a Watchman five or so years after reading To Kill a Mockingbird a second time as an old man—after reading it 40 years prior as a young man—it reads like a sequel rather than the sections of a work elided from a larger work containing both a young, idol worshiping daughter and a grownup daughter realizing her father had feet of clay. I would have to see the original manuscript with the To Kill a Mockingbird lines elided to believe Go Set a Watchman was part of one ms.

Once To Kill a Mockingbird made such a cardboard cutout, two-dimensional saint of Atticus—and a wealthy woman of Lee—I think she wisely decided it was in her best interests as an aspiring writer not to tell the whole story she set out to tell. And I fully understand why she would want to protect the sainthood she established for Atticus: it embodied her own ethic for race relations.

The little I know about Lee, she was was an enlightened daughter of the south, a woman who resisted allowing the prejudices swarming about her to make her into the unrepentant bigot her fictional hero Atticus was.

Without a shred of evidence, I believe Lee contrived the denouement of Go Set a Watchman many years after she had won the hearts and minds of non-Southern America with her heroic Atticus in To Kill a Mockingbird. This to make some sense of how her innocent Scout was able to have her values despite having a father she worshiped with an opposite set of values.

Her denouement in Go Set a Watchman completes the arc of the story of a grownup woman who maintained the goodness she showed as an innocent Scout. In essence, Go Set a Watchman is the telling part, the analyzed part, of the whole story of Jean Louise Finch. To fully admire Lee, I will choose to believe that she courageously, in full command of her wits, chose to finally tell the truer story she set out to tell when she was an aspiring, young writer trying to write the great American novel.

Whatever her motives, the story of a young southern woman's life Lee has told with these novels combined rivals the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn for my trophy as The Great American Novel.

Memphis Trace

Quote Post 78

Re: Male to Female Ratios

Memphis Trace wrote:

From what I can glean, the original manuscript(s) Lee submitted of Go Set a Watchman and To Kill a Mockingbird was about a young woman disenchanted when she found out her father was just a run of the mill racist after believing as a child that he was an unambiguous saint.

Having just read Go Set a Watchman five or so years after reading To Kill a Mockingbird a second time as an old man—after reading it 40 years prior as a young man—it reads like a sequel rather than the sections of a work elided from a larger work containing both a young, idol worshiping daughter and a grownup daughter realizing her father had feet of clay. I would have to see the original manuscript with the To Kill a Mockingbird lines elided to believe Go Set a Watchman was part of one ms.

Once To Kill a Mockingbird made such a cardboard cutout, two-dimensional saint of Atticus—and a wealthy woman of Lee—I think she wisely decided it was in her best interests as an aspiring writer not to tell the whole story she set out to tell. And I fully understand why she would want to protect the sainthood she established for Atticus: it embodied her own ethic for race relations.

The little I know about Lee, she was was an enlightened daughter of the south, a woman who resisted allowing the prejudices swarming about her to make her into the unrepentant bigot her fictional hero Atticus was.

Without a shred of evidence, I believe Lee contrived the denouement of Go Set a Watchman many years after she had won the hearts and minds of non-Southern America with her heroic Atticus in To Kill a Mockingbird. This to make some sense of how her innocent Scout was able to have her values despite having a father she worshiped with an opposite set of values.

Her denouement in Go Set a Watchman completes the arc of the story of a grownup woman who maintained the goodness she showed as an innocent Scout. In essence, Go Set a Watchman is the telling part, the analyzed part, of the whole story of Jean Louise Finch. To fully admire Lee, I will choose to believe that she courageously, in full command of her wits, chose to finally tell the truer story she set out to tell when she was an aspiring, young writer trying to write the great American novel.

Whatever her motives, the story of a young southern woman's life Lee has told with these novels combined rivals the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn for my trophy as The Great American Novel.

Memphis Trace

Awesome MT.  Awesome.

Quote Post 79

80 Reply by corra (edited by corra 2015-09-18 22:25:47)

Re: Male to Female Ratios

Memphis Trace wrote:

Whatever her motives, the story of a young southern woman's life Lee has told with these novels combined rivals the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn for my trophy as The Great American Novel.

Memphis Trace

That is saying something. He is a favorite, yes?

I can't say that I disagree with your suggestion that Watchman was written after Mockingbird. I did notice passages in Watchman that are repeated in Mockingbird but more strategically? I don't have a copy with me, so I can't point out specifics. But I recall (for example) that some of the opening history of Maycomb appears a few chapters into Watchman and is repeated early in Mockingbird with what felt to me as a little more precision and focus. This suggests to me that Watchman (may) be an early draft?

However, I wouldn't put your suggestion past Lee.

You've reminded me I wrote about this book back in July, right after I read it. I'm not sure how I forgot I did that. I feel like it's been a year since I read Watchman, not two months! I would have simply cut and pasted this for Vern if I'd recalled I'd written it. Anyway, I seem to gesture at the same strange sense you mention: that it reads like a sequel.

Here for the ages smile are my thoughts fresh off the read, probably with the tears still drying on my eyelashes.

July 2015 -

corra wrote:

I always imagined Jem & Scout would grow up to be lawyers. Probably because of the epigraph which begins To Kill a Mockingbird. I thought that Atticus would raise them to shoot straight up, like steel arrows. It turns out he did.

I tried to explain this book to a friend this morning, & I wasn't sure exactly how. I said, "It was... it was incredibly, incredibly upsetting. And yet somehow very beautiful."

Because I don't know how to exactly explain why I loved it so much, I'll begin at the beginning:

Scout is home on vacation for a few days. No one really calls her Scout anymore, except her father. He needs her to drive him places. The house is gone. Now it's an ice cream shop. A guy she grew up with wants to marry her.

This novel is not To Kill a Mockingbird. It is different. For one, many beloved characters are missing. There is no mention of Boo, & the adventures of Jem, Dill, and Scout on the front lawn of Atticus's house seem to have blown away, like so many childhood memories. Aunt Alexandra exists as a stern presence, scolding Scout for this or that unladylike infraction, but the mother figure in the Pulitzer-winning novel (Calpurnia) is altered, distant, unreachable. Scout is restless and cynical in Go Set a Watchman (not all that altered from childhood Scout). She still curses too much, shouts rather than listening, and relishes her unladylike pants. She still sits at parties & is appalled that this -- this endless chatter about babies & Maude's hat & the weather and husbands -- might be her destiny.

Fortunately, Maycomb brings back memories of the joyful childhood days which seem to be missing in Go Set a Watchman. Amid a marriage proposal and a scandalous dip in the water at Finch's Landing, Scout recalls her early days in Maycomb. Passages follow which are rich with nostalgia. Many reveal the seeds of To Kill a Mockingbird, which would be born out of Go Set a Watchman. Scout briefly recalls the famous trial in To Kill a Mockingbird, and her father's role in it. (Some editor clearly underlined this brief passage with five thousand red lines in the draft and said WRITE THIS!)

Other scenes go well beyond the few years which make up the frame of To Kill a Mockingbird, and these were especially fun to read because we see Scout, Dill, Jem, Atticus and Calpurnia beyond the walls of To Kill a Mockingbird. These scenes don't weave together neatly, the way they do in To Kill a Mockingbird. They're not directed toward a central theme: they are merely enjoyable memories. So they were fun to read, but perhaps would not have been as fun to read, if I didn't already love Scout & her friends.

There are long passages where Scout's an adult too. That's the larger story. Those passages were less rich for me, at first. They lack the detail and charm of the flashbacks, though they do have a thematic direction.

I think what made the novel really work for me in the early part was my familiarity with To Kill a Mockingbird: I craved Dill, Jem, Scout, Atticus, lemonade on the porch, Calpurnia, summers in the front yard, innocence. I craved more Atticus wisdom. Anything Atticus. I laughed out loud during one of the flashbacks, when Dill, Jem and Scout are playing revival and get caught by Atticus and the reverend. Oh, Scout! And Dill, bickering to be the one baptized! Those are the Finch adventures I remember. I loved reading those parts, thematic weave or not!

Then, about three-fourths in, we come to the shattering. Friends, I read with my jaw dropped. Horrible, cutting conversation which felt all too real. I think I've never read anything more disturbing than the chapters which begin about three-fourths in, in Go Set a Watchman. It was upsetting and excruciatingly affecting, because these are characters I love. I actually felt everything Scout feels, I think. It was in the final fifteen pages that the tears began for me, as they always do in the final pages of To Kill a Mockingbird.

As a writer, I find it interesting to contemplate the changes made from this manuscript to the final (To Kill a Mockingbird.) I find the final product subtler, more artistic, and more joyful. This one is blunt, & in places reads like a battering ram disguised as a novel. I do not object to the battering ram.

SPOILERS FOLLOW

It's interesting that in the revision of this novel (To Kill a Mockingbird) the hero is a man. What I notice, looking back on To Kill a Mockingbird, though, is that even in that novel, it was Scout, not her father, who reached for Boo Radley's hand.

This book changes & enriches To Kill a Mockingbird, because it suggests that one can be prejudiced for or against a person, without really knowing that person. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout misjudges the quiet Boo Radley. In Go Set a Watchman, we realize she has misjudged Atticus, too. In both books, the strong, strong message is: do not let your identity be so fully fixated on someone else's that you fail to see for yourself.

Chaos overtakes the novel, after the beautiful flashbacks. It goes dark, there is shouting, there is horrific truth unveiled. Aunt Alexandra's chatter about ladylike behavior, Jem's "I'm a gentleman, like Atticus." These bits start to fray, in the last three-fourths of the novel. What is a gentleman? What is a lady? Both shrink to nothing in the final scene with Calpurnia. But to be -- to be one's own watchman within all of the shouting? That was the magic of Atticus Finch. Whoever he was inside, whoever he was beneath his actions, he created an impression which has been with us for fifty years, which sowed a seed in this reader. Such an enormous seed I couldn't believe what I was reading yesterday, when that solid seed soured.

Disenchantment. Incredible frustration. How can you possibly actually be saying this? What should I believe in such a world? The chaos rising around me. The unimaginable actions of people, both beautiful & horrifically heinous. That's what Go Set a Watchman is about, through the point of view of a girl who still cannot believe what she is seeing, still must make some sense of utter innocence being shattered by the world around her -- only this time, she has nothing to cling to but herself. This time, the hero is not a silent, hard-working man with a set jaw & a pair of glasses. The hero is an awkward girl with a cigarette and a cowlick, who still curses, who doesn't know what she wants to do with her life, who loved a man in a pair of glasses with a quiet way & a newspaper, and who grew up believing that right is right, and wrong is wrong, and you stand up -- and you say it. No matter what.

When Scout screams at Atticus, "You sowed the seeds in me, Atticus!"-- I wanted to stand up and applaud, because I think that's the point in this novel. We are influenced in our childhood, for better or worse. Influenced by our heritage and culture, influenced by how others react to us, and finally (hopefully) influenced by the watchman within us. Atticus planted a watchman in Scout that even he couldn't unseat.

I find the release of this book incredibly timely. I mean, Lee gave us fifty years with the man. Fifty years to say, "Well, at least there's Atticus, though." She gave us hope. Fifty years to Scout's twenty. I feel like shaking him and screaming, "But you planted the seed in me, Atticus!"

I almost feel like, by publishing this book now, Lee is saying to all of us, "Go set a watchman. There is no Atticus, unless you make him out of yourselves. DO it." Because in a way, we are all the children of Atticus Finch, now. We are all the children of an America that we were told was good & honorable.

There is no way to end this review. I'm still reeling.

Quote Post 80

Re: Male to Female Ratios

corra wrote:
Memphis Trace wrote:

Whatever her motives, the story of a young southern woman's life Lee has told with these novels combined rivals the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn for my trophy as The Great American Novel.

Memphis Trace

That is saying something. He is a favorite, yes?

I can't say that I disagree with your suggestion that Watchman was written after Mockingbird. I did notice passages in Watchman that are repeated in Mockingbird but more strategically? I don't have a copy with me, so I can't point out specifics. But I recall (for example) that some of the opening history of Maycomb appears a few chapters into Watchman and is repeated early in Mockingbird with what felt to me as a little more precision and focus. This suggests to me that Watchman (may) be an early draft?

However, I wouldn't put your suggestion past Lee.

You've reminded me I wrote about this book back in July, right after I read it. I'm not sure how I forgot I did that. I feel like it's been a year since I read Watchman, not two months! I would have simply cut and pasted this for Vern if I'd recalled I'd written it. Anyway, I seem to gesture at the same strange sense you mention: that it reads like a sequel.

Here for the ages smile are my thoughts fresh off the read, probably with the tears still drying on my eyelashes.

July 2015 -

corra wrote:

I always imagined Jem & Scout would grow up to be lawyers. Probably because of the epigraph which begins To Kill a Mockingbird. I thought that Atticus would raise them to shoot straight up, like steel arrows. It turns out he did.

I tried to explain this book to a friend this morning, & I wasn't sure exactly how. I said, "It was... it was incredibly, incredibly upsetting. And yet somehow very beautiful."

Because I don't know how to exactly explain why I loved it so much, I'll begin at the beginning:

Scout is home on vacation for a few days. No one really calls her Scout anymore, except her father. He needs her to drive him places. The house is gone. Now it's an ice cream shop. A guy she grew up with wants to marry her.

This novel is not To Kill a Mockingbird. It is different. For one, many beloved characters are missing. There is no mention of Boo, & the adventures of Jem, Dill, and Scout on the front lawn of Atticus's house seem to have blown away, like so many childhood memories. Aunt Alexandra exists as a stern presence, scolding Scout for this or that unladylike infraction, but the mother figure in the Pulitzer-winning novel (Calpurnia) is altered, distant, unreachable. Scout is restless and cynical in Go Set a Watchman (not all that altered from childhood Scout). She still curses too much, shouts rather than listening, and relishes her unladylike pants. She still sits at parties & is appalled that this -- this endless chatter about babies & Maude's hat & the weather and husbands -- might be her destiny.

Fortunately, Maycomb brings back memories of the joyful childhood days which seem to be missing in Go Set a Watchman. Amid a marriage proposal and a scandalous dip in the water at Finch's Landing, Scout recalls her early days in Maycomb. Passages follow which are rich with nostalgia. Many reveal the seeds of To Kill a Mockingbird, which would be born out of Go Set a Watchman. Scout briefly recalls the famous trial in To Kill a Mockingbird, and her father's role in it. (Some editor clearly underlined this brief passage with five thousand red lines in the draft and said WRITE THIS!)

Other scenes go well beyond the few years which make up the frame of To Kill a Mockingbird, and these were especially fun to read because we see Scout, Dill, Jem, Atticus and Calpurnia beyond the walls of To Kill a Mockingbird. These scenes don't weave together neatly, the way they do in To Kill a Mockingbird. They're not directed toward a central theme: they are merely enjoyable memories. So they were fun to read, but perhaps would not have been as fun to read, if I didn't already love Scout & her friends.

There are long passages where Scout's an adult too. That's the larger story. Those passages were less rich for me, at first. They lack the detail and charm of the flashbacks, though they do have a thematic direction.

I think what made the novel really work for me in the early part was my familiarity with To Kill a Mockingbird: I craved Dill, Jem, Scout, Atticus, lemonade on the porch, Calpurnia, summers in the front yard, innocence. I craved more Atticus wisdom. Anything Atticus. I laughed out loud during one of the flashbacks, when Dill, Jem and Scout are playing revival and get caught by Atticus and the reverend. Oh, Scout! And Dill, bickering to be the one baptized! Those are the Finch adventures I remember. I loved reading those parts, thematic weave or not!

Then, about three-fourths in, we come to the shattering. Friends, I read with my jaw dropped. Horrible, cutting conversation which felt all too real. I think I've never read anything more disturbing than the chapters which begin about three-fourths in, in Go Set a Watchman. It was upsetting and excruciatingly affecting, because these are characters I love. I actually felt everything Scout feels, I think. It was in the final fifteen pages that the tears began for me, as they always do in the final pages of To Kill a Mockingbird.

As a writer, I find it interesting to contemplate the changes made from this manuscript to the final (To Kill a Mockingbird.) I find the final product subtler, more artistic, and more joyful. This one is blunt, & in places reads like a battering ram disguised as a novel. I do not object to the battering ram.

SPOILERS FOLLOW

It's interesting that in the revision of this novel (To Kill a Mockingbird) the hero is a man. What I notice, looking back on To Kill a Mockingbird, though, is that even in that novel, it was Scout, not her father, who reached for Boo Radley's hand.

This book changes & enriches To Kill a Mockingbird, because it suggests that one can be prejudiced for or against a person, without really knowing that person. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout misjudges the quiet Boo Radley. In Go Set a Watchman, we realize she has misjudged Atticus, too. In both books, the strong, strong message is: do not let your identity be so fully fixated on someone else's that you fail to see for yourself.

Chaos overtakes the novel, after the beautiful flashbacks. It goes dark, there is shouting, there is horrific truth unveiled. Aunt Alexandra's chatter about ladylike behavior, Jem's "I'm a gentleman, like Atticus." These bits start to fray, in the last three-fourths of the novel. What is a gentleman? What is a lady? Both shrink to nothing in the final scene with Calpurnia. But to be -- to be one's own watchman within all of the shouting? That was the magic of Atticus Finch. Whoever he was inside, whoever he was beneath his actions, he created an impression which has been with us for fifty years, which sowed a seed in this reader. Such an enormous seed I couldn't believe what I was reading yesterday, when that solid seed soured.

Disenchantment. Incredible frustration. How can you possibly actually be saying this? What should I believe in such a world? The chaos rising around me. The unimaginable actions of people, both beautiful & horrifically heinous. That's what Go Set a Watchman is about, through the point of view of a girl who still cannot believe what she is seeing, still must make some sense of utter innocence being shattered by the world around her -- only this time, she has nothing to cling to but herself. This time, the hero is not a silent, hard-working man with a set jaw & a pair of glasses. The hero is an awkward girl with a cigarette and a cowlick, who still curses, who doesn't know what she wants to do with her life, who loved a man in a pair of glasses with a quiet way & a newspaper, and who grew up believing that right is right, and wrong is wrong, and you stand up -- and you say it. No matter what.

When Scout screams at Atticus, "You sowed the seeds in me, Atticus!"-- I wanted to stand up and applaud, because I think that's the point in this novel. We are influenced in our childhood, for better or worse. Influenced by our heritage and culture, influenced by how others react to us, and finally (hopefully) influenced by the watchman within us. Atticus planted a watchman in Scout that even he couldn't unseat.

I find the release of this book incredibly timely. I mean, Lee gave us fifty years with the man. Fifty years to say, "Well, at least there's Atticus, though." She gave us hope. Fifty years to Scout's twenty. I feel like shaking him and screaming, "But you planted the seed in me, Atticus!"

I almost feel like, by publishing this book now, Lee is saying to all of us, "Go set a watchman. There is no Atticus, unless you make him out of yourselves. DO it." Because in a way, we are all the children of Atticus Finch, now. We are all the children of an America that we were told was good & honorable.

There is no way to end this review. I'm still reeling.

Thanks, Corra, for your deep insight in this post as well as the previous one. Upon reading Go Set a Watchman, I found myself wanting to stop and pack the book away. Of course I didn't because I kept believing that somehow it would be revealed that the new Atticus was just a guise to some not as yet fathomed end. It was not to be.

I accept that To Kill a Mockingbird is the result of rewriting Go Set a Watchman though I do retain some doubt that it was all just a marketing ploy. However the initial storyline came about, I'm really glad it worked out the way it did for I most likely would have never read To Kill a Mockingbird had Go Set a Watchman been the first published. And that would have been a big loss not only to me but I'm pretty sure to thousands/millions of others who would have dismissed it also.

I love your way of analyzing and putting your thoughts to paper. So glad you dropped in for this discussion. Take care. Vern

Quote Post 81

82 Reply by Memphis Trace (edited by Memphis Trace 2015-09-19 10:22:32)

Re: Male to Female Ratios

corra wrote:
Memphis Trace wrote:

Whatever her motives, the story of a young southern woman's life Lee has told with these novels combined rivals the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn for my trophy as The Great American Novel.

Memphis Trace

That is saying something. He is a favorite, yes?

I can't say that I disagree with your suggestion that Watchman was written after Mockingbird. I did notice passages in Watchman that are repeated in Mockingbird but more strategically? I don't have a copy with me, so I can't point out specifics. But I recall (for example) that some of the opening history of Maycomb appears a few chapters into Watchman and is repeated early in Mockingbird with what felt to me as a little more precision and focus. This suggests to me that Watchman (may) be an early draft?

However, I wouldn't put your suggestion past Lee.

You've reminded me I wrote about this book back in July, right after I read it. I'm not sure how I forgot I did that. I feel like it's been a year since I read Watchman, not two months! I would have simply cut and pasted this for Vern if I'd recalled I'd written it. Anyway, I seem to gesture at the same strange sense you mention: that it reads like a sequel.

Here for the ages :) are my thoughts fresh off the read, probably with the tears still drying on my eyelashes.

July 2015 -

corra wrote:

I always imagined Jem & Scout would grow up to be lawyers. Probably because of the epigraph which begins To Kill a Mockingbird. I thought that Atticus would raise them to shoot straight up, like steel arrows. It turns out he did.

I tried to explain this book to a friend this morning, & I wasn't sure exactly how. I said, "It was... it was incredibly, incredibly upsetting. And yet somehow very beautiful."

Because I don't know how to exactly explain why I loved it so much, I'll begin at the beginning:

Scout is home on vacation for a few days. No one really calls her Scout anymore, except her father. He needs her to drive him places. The house is gone. Now it's an ice cream shop. A guy she grew up with wants to marry her.

This novel is not To Kill a Mockingbird. It is different. For one, many beloved characters are missing. There is no mention of Boo, & the adventures of Jem, Dill, and Scout on the front lawn of Atticus's house seem to have blown away, like so many childhood memories. Aunt Alexandra exists as a stern presence, scolding Scout for this or that unladylike infraction, but the mother figure in the Pulitzer-winning novel (Calpurnia) is altered, distant, unreachable. Scout is restless and cynical in Go Set a Watchman (not all that altered from childhood Scout). She still curses too much, shouts rather than listening, and relishes her unladylike pants. She still sits at parties & is appalled that this -- this endless chatter about babies & Maude's hat & the weather and husbands -- might be her destiny.

Fortunately, Maycomb brings back memories of the joyful childhood days which seem to be missing in Go Set a Watchman. Amid a marriage proposal and a scandalous dip in the water at Finch's Landing, Scout recalls her early days in Maycomb. Passages follow which are rich with nostalgia. Many reveal the seeds of To Kill a Mockingbird, which would be born out of Go Set a Watchman. Scout briefly recalls the famous trial in To Kill a Mockingbird, and her father's role in it. (Some editor clearly underlined this brief passage with five thousand red lines in the draft and said WRITE THIS!)

Other scenes go well beyond the few years which make up the frame of To Kill a Mockingbird, and these were especially fun to read because we see Scout, Dill, Jem, Atticus and Calpurnia beyond the walls of To Kill a Mockingbird. These scenes don't weave together neatly, the way they do in To Kill a Mockingbird. They're not directed toward a central theme: they are merely enjoyable memories. So they were fun to read, but perhaps would not have been as fun to read, if I didn't already love Scout & her friends.

There are long passages where Scout's an adult too. That's the larger story. Those passages were less rich for me, at first. They lack the detail and charm of the flashbacks, though they do have a thematic direction.

I think what made the novel really work for me in the early part was my familiarity with To Kill a Mockingbird: I craved Dill, Jem, Scout, Atticus, lemonade on the porch, Calpurnia, summers in the front yard, innocence. I craved more Atticus wisdom. Anything Atticus. I laughed out loud during one of the flashbacks, when Dill, Jem and Scout are playing revival and get caught by Atticus and the reverend. Oh, Scout! And Dill, bickering to be the one baptized! Those are the Finch adventures I remember. I loved reading those parts, thematic weave or not!

Then, about three-fourths in, we come to the shattering. Friends, I read with my jaw dropped. Horrible, cutting conversation which felt all too real. I think I've never read anything more disturbing than the chapters which begin about three-fourths in, in Go Set a Watchman. It was upsetting and excruciatingly affecting, because these are characters I love. I actually felt everything Scout feels, I think. It was in the final fifteen pages that the tears began for me, as they always do in the final pages of To Kill a Mockingbird.

As a writer, I find it interesting to contemplate the changes made from this manuscript to the final (To Kill a Mockingbird.) I find the final product subtler, more artistic, and more joyful. This one is blunt, & in places reads like a battering ram disguised as a novel. I do not object to the battering ram.

SPOILERS FOLLOW

It's interesting that in the revision of this novel (To Kill a Mockingbird) the hero is a man. What I notice, looking back on To Kill a Mockingbird, though, is that even in that novel, it was Scout, not her father, who reached for Boo Radley's hand.

This book changes & enriches To Kill a Mockingbird, because it suggests that one can be prejudiced for or against a person, without really knowing that person. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout misjudges the quiet Boo Radley. In Go Set a Watchman, we realize she has misjudged Atticus, too. In both books, the strong, strong message is: do not let your identity be so fully fixated on someone else's that you fail to see for yourself.

Chaos overtakes the novel, after the beautiful flashbacks. It goes dark, there is shouting, there is horrific truth unveiled. Aunt Alexandra's chatter about ladylike behavior, Jem's "I'm a gentleman, like Atticus." These bits start to fray, in the last three-fourths of the novel. What is a gentleman? What is a lady? Both shrink to nothing in the final scene with Calpurnia. But to be -- to be one's own watchman within all of the shouting? That was the magic of Atticus Finch. Whoever he was inside, whoever he was beneath his actions, he created an impression which has been with us for fifty years, which sowed a seed in this reader. Such an enormous seed I couldn't believe what I was reading yesterday, when that solid seed soured.

Disenchantment. Incredible frustration. How can you possibly actually be saying this? What should I believe in such a world? The chaos rising around me. The unimaginable actions of people, both beautiful & horrifically heinous. That's what Go Set a Watchman is about, through the point of view of a girl who still cannot believe what she is seeing, still must make some sense of utter innocence being shattered by the world around her -- only this time, she has nothing to cling to but herself. This time, the hero is not a silent, hard-working man with a set jaw & a pair of glasses. The hero is an awkward girl with a cigarette and a cowlick, who still curses, who doesn't know what she wants to do with her life, who loved a man in a pair of glasses with a quiet way & a newspaper, and who grew up believing that right is right, and wrong is wrong, and you stand up -- and you say it. No matter what.

When Scout screams at Atticus, "You sowed the seeds in me, Atticus!"-- I wanted to stand up and applaud, because I think that's the point in this novel. We are influenced in our childhood, for better or worse. Influenced by our heritage and culture, influenced by how others react to us, and finally (hopefully) influenced by the watchman within us. Atticus planted a watchman in Scout that even he couldn't unseat.

I find the release of this book incredibly timely. I mean, Lee gave us fifty years with the man. Fifty years to say, "Well, at least there's Atticus, though." She gave us hope. Fifty years to Scout's twenty. I feel like shaking him and screaming, "But you planted the seed in me, Atticus!"

I almost feel like, by publishing this book now, Lee is saying to all of us, "Go set a watchman. There is no Atticus, unless you make him out of yourselves. DO it." Because in a way, we are all the children of Atticus Finch, now. We are all the children of an America that we were told was good & honorable.

There is no way to end this review. I'm still reeling.

corra,

Your review is grounded much more carefully than mine that follows. It feels like you examined Go Set a Watchman almost sentence-by-sentence and side-by-side with your abiding memory—and love for To Kill a Mockingbird. I looked at Go Set a Watchman after becoming a bit disenchanted with To Kill a Mockingbird nearly 5 years ago.

Yes, the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a favorite. It became my favorite book in the early 80s. It started me reading everything Twain wrote. It was the first time I'd read it. Since then, it and Twain, have always bobbed to the surface when I'm asked what my favorite book(s) and author(s) are. Civil rights has been at the top of my agenda of things that need fixing for all of my adult life, so I look at books like he Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Go Set a Watchman with a jaundiced eye.

For a lot of years after I read To Kill a Mockingbird at about age 27, I listed it as my favorite novel. When I read it again at age 67, after living for 45 years in Washington, DC, through the most turbulent civil rights years, I found Atticus to be two-dimensional, and pretty much an unbelievable character.

He was unbelievable for me because of all I witnessed, knew secondhand, and read about how civil rights champions were treated during the time in which To Kill a Mockingbird was set, I believe Atticus would have been killed, or at least been otherwise dissuaded from his brave stand.

After reading Go Set a Watchman, I now understand how Atticus survived To Kill a Mockingbird. Basically, I am imagining he was attending the “White Citizens” meetings all the while he was being heroic to Scout and Jem. After reading Go Set a Watchman and imagining how Atticus might have faced down his “Citizens” cohorts at their meetings, To Kill a Mockingbird regained the believability that made it resonate so much for me as an innocent.

Go Set a Watchman killed my starry-eyed hero worship for Atticus the civil rights champion, and at the same time reminded me of how humans face the dilemmas of major cultural shifts, AND it made a bigger hero of Atticus. To me, a man going against his culturally embedded principles to stand on the moral high ground as an example for his children is about the biggest hero possible; if a man is too hidebound in his ways, at least he can see the good in not passing it on to his children.

To summarize my feelings about the effect of Go Set a Watchman: It makes Atticus a believable Alabama lawyer of the era, and makes what he did in To Kill a Mockingbird, vis-a-vis Scout and Jem, much more heroic.

Giving Atticus feet of clay makes a 3-dimensional character of him. In the hands of a good screenwriter, I think a movie that combines what we now know about Scout and Atticus with what we saw on the surface of Scout and Atticus in To Kill a Mockingbird will be a an enduring triumph. Go Set a Watchman tells me the true story of what To Kill a Mockingbird showed.

In the end, I guess I have come to feel the country wasn’t ready for a complicated hero—like Atticus has become for me—when To Kill a Mockingbird was published in 1960 and made into a movie in 1962. From what I understand, To Kill a Mockingbird caused a lot of young people to take up the banner for civil rights.

If the content of Go Set a Watchman had been published first, or before the movie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Kill_a … ird_(film) To Kill a Mockingbird, I think it would have delayed passage of the Civil Rights Act by at least 20 years.

Two years after the movie, To Kill a Mockingbird, CORE’s Summer of Freedom peopled by many white activists going shoulder to shoulder with blacks was sparked. I believe To Kill a Mockingbird inspired and emboldened many Freedom Riders https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_Riders, some of whom, like Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississip … 27_murders were martyrs. Their murders contributed to Congressional passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, federal legislation to enforce social justice and constitutional rights.

Memphis

Quote Post 82

Re: Male to Female Ratios

I really appreciate your insight on these novels, Memphis. I wasn't around for the Civil Rights movement, so I don't have that memory to wear along with the read. I have read about the movement, but I've never experienced it. I can't imagine experiencing it. My mother has told me a bit about what it was like, and I've taken that information with me into my reading of To Kill a Mockingbird, knowing that it impacted that part of our history.

I love your suggestion that Atticus is even more heroic now. I completely agree with you! Though I hadn't worked that out until you mentioned it. Didn't Abraham Lincoln want to ship off the enslaved Americans to Liberia? And wasn't the change in his opinion due to a good long conversation with Frederick Douglass in the White House? I think I read that somewhere. In a lot of ways, Atticus reminds me of Abraham Lincoln. I could see Lincoln fighting for a cause based on justice and law -- even if personally he didn't quite believe it. The fact that Douglass met and impacted Lincoln's life makes me feel hopeful about Atticus.

I've just been studying the politics behind the Harlem Renaissance. There is so much complication under the surface of history. I strongly appreciate that we see that complication in Atticus now.

I do indeed love To Kill a Mockingbird. It's one of my favorite novels. I think when I read it next, the read will be even richer because of Watchman.

Cheers, Memphis! smile

Quote Post 83

Re: Male to Female Ratios

vern wrote:

Thanks, Corra, for your deep insight in this post as well as the previous one.

I'm not sure it was so deep, but you're welcome! wink

Quote Post 84

85 Reply by Memphis Trace (edited by Memphis Trace 2015-09-21 16:50:56)

Re: Male to Female Ratios

corra wrote:

I really appreciate your insight on these novels, Memphis. I wasn't around for the Civil Rights movement, so I don't have that memory to wear along with the read. I have read about the movement, but I've never experienced it. I can't imagine experiencing it. My mother has told me a bit about what it was like, and I've taken that information with me into my reading of To Kill a Mockingbird, knowing that it impacted that part of our history.

I love your suggestion that Atticus is even more heroic now. I completely agree with you! Though I hadn't worked that out until you mentioned it.

Memphis Trace wrote:

As the bits of information dribble out about how Go Set a Watchman and To Kill a Mockingbird were part of the whole story Lee meant to tell, I am fascinated by the editing that went on and the decisions made to elide Atticus's sub rosa role as a leader of the resistance to integrating blacks into the community.

Whoever decided that telling the story from the memories of a 6-9 year-old's in the POV of an adult must have realized they were putting before interested readers a false picture of Atticus. I can only believe it was Lee who, by relenting to that must have decided Atticus would never be exposed as a closet leader of the town's racists.

While Atticus's exposure in Go Set a Watchman as a sub rosa racist in To Kill a Mockingbird makes him an even bigger hero for me as a father, it casts a bright light on Harper Lee the writer. Some could say Lee chose to tell a lie (or at least not the whole truth) in To Kill a Mockingbird. I support this kind of editing, because I believe Lee's motives were pure to start with—those motives being to show the difficulties white southerners faced with the changing times. The southerners who supported integration in the south badly needed an unambiguous hero like Atticus to spark changes.

The only regret I have with the denouement in Go Set a Watchman was that there wasn't a deeper look at what Atticus went through with the Citizen's Council during the trial. To give Atticus his full due in To Kill a Mockingbird, I am left to imagine how he dealt with his role as a segregationist while posing as a saint for his children. As a father during that time, a father with some southern sensibilities, but one who was more aligned with the sensibilities Atticus imbued in Jean Louise, I have some sense of how difficult was Atticus's pose in To Kill a Mockingbird.

I wish there had been more time—or Lee had started earlier—to sort out the redemption of Atticus in Go Set a Watchman. In some ways, it felt like the editor (or Lee) was trying to redeem Lee the author for not telling the whole truth about Atticus in To Kill a Mockingbird. An uneeded redemption in the big picture to my way of thinking.

Atticus's reasons why he never told the grownup Scout of his secret life, seemed too contrived. I am going to have to read that whole denouement after digesting my thoughts about it, to see if there wasn't more to Atticus's coming out of the closet than just that he wanted it to spur Jean Louise to stand up and be counted, to show her stuff, to do something big Atticus could be proud of.

Didn't Abraham Lincoln want to ship off the enslaved Americans to Liberia? And wasn't the change in his opinion due to a good long conversation with Frederick Douglass in the White House? I think I read that somewhere. In a lot of ways, Atticus reminds me of Abraham Lincoln. I could see Lincoln fighting for a cause based on justice and law -- even if personally he didn't quite believe it. The fact that Douglass met and impacted Lincoln's life makes me feel hopeful about Atticus.

Memphis Trace wrote:

I've not heard the Lincoln/Fredrick Douglas story. For the most part I am dubious of historical works. I believe fiction is the place where the great truths of men's advancement (or decline) are told. I like to read about our shuffle to the grave through the eyes of thinkers unfettered by the constraints of dubious agendas, lost records, or secret conversations. I like well-thought out fiction that rips at the fabric of history as written by historians.

I reckon my latest mantra is We become what we choose to remember.

I've just been studying the politics behind the Harlem Renaissance. There is so much complication under the surface of history. I strongly appreciate that we see that complication in Atticus now.

Memphis Trace wrote:

I'm glad Atticus has been restored to me as a three-dimensional character as well as being kept a hero. I'm glad Lee kept her wits about her long enough to publish the greater truth of To Kill a Mockingbird.

I do indeed love To Kill a Mockingbird. It's one of my favorite novels. I think when I read it next, the read will be even richer because of Watchman.

Memphis Trace wrote:

It's almost like getting a transcript of a longheld family secret for me.

Cheers, Memphis! :)

Cheers for you,

Memphis

Quote Post 85

86 Reply by corra (edited by corra 2015-09-25 20:26:46)

Re: Male to Female Ratios

Memphis Trace wrote:

I've not heard the Lincoln/Fredrick Douglas story. For the most part I am dubious of historical works. I believe fiction is the place where the great truths of men's advancement (or decline) are told. I like to read about our shuffle to the grave through the eyes of thinkers unfettered by the constraints of dubious agendas, lost records, or secret conversations. I like well-thought out fiction that rips at the fabric of history as written by historians.

It is perhaps, also, where one might find the great truths of women's advancement. smile Do you mean you prefer historical fiction because it turns history into art? Into an exploration of the "who are we and why are we here" question -- into moments like Hamlet's soliloquy?

I think my favorite sort of history is primary source material. Perhaps because I get to think up my own agenda? I just love the hunt -- the discovery as I read old papers and put together my own little incomplete patchwork idea of things. Probably my next favorite is biographies and memoirs (certainly biased as well.) Then classics (a sort of primary source material for me. Example: Clarissa by Samuel Richardson. You want crazy history? Read that!)

I think part of the fun of history is exploring why the agenda is present in a document in the first place. For example, what someone insists is true is often in reaction to the reality of a moment, which didn't make it into any documents but can be inferred. I was going through court reports, letters, some journal entries, and pamphlets from Early Modern Britain several months ago. There were so many books on manners printed which outlined the rules for women: "Be good wives, be good mothers, pray this many times, do not wear this sort of skirt, do not speak in church." An historian could read those pamphlets and assume that women must have been very pious and quiet in the early modern era. Or one could conclude that there must have been a lot of women who weren't being pious and good to require all those advice manuals on how to be pious and good.

(I) think a great part of the fun is contemplating the very agenda that is present in any sort of literary work, be it creative or history. I like to contemplate the force of those agendas. People who write historical fiction are reflecting upon their own creative and subjective interpretation of the subjective analysis of limited source material. There really is no way to get a clear look at history without being there. (I think.)

I read a potentially good historical fiction once, about the captivation of Mary Rowlandson by Native Americans. The author tried to reimagine her original captivation narrative (from the 1600s) by giving her more obvious intellectual autonomy. She let us into the fictional Mary's mind. The original narrative (which I read right after the novel) is a Puritan story which was written after she was returned to New England from captivity. The narrative's audience was clearly the Puritan community, who were facing a lot of violence due to King Philip's War. The narrative strongly suggests that following God saved Mary, and that the Native Americans are evil. The clear agenda was to keep everyone strong in faith and united against the opposition.

The author of the historical fiction I read reimagined Rowlandson's captivity narrative as being propaganda published by one of the men in the community. Mary Rowlandson (in the novel) is coerced into writing it according to his rules. She doesn't love her husband in the novel, and while she's in captivity she falls in love with a Native American. During captivity, instead of praying and looking to God, she prays and thinks about female oppression and compares the more liberal Native American lifestyle for women against the Puritan lifestyle. (This while working as a slave.)

I tell you what, Memphis. I didn't know what to think. I enjoyed the read just at the story level, and I didn't mind the suggestion that Rowlandson may have been transformed by her experience, and that naturally that fact didn't make it into the history. But then, without any documentation that she was coerced by Puritan leaders to write, I wondered about the erasure of her actual story? If what she actually wanted to write was the captivity story as it stands, what are we doing three hundred years later rewriting her tale into something that makes more sense to us? We need the women of the Puritan era to have a concept of freedom that matches our own? Challenging the agenda of Rowlandson's tale either illuminates female history in America (which I like) or pretties it up for our own era, thereby diluting history (which I don't like). I've read a lot of female perspectives from the era, and they weren't (as far as I can tell) questioning things heavily. Some were certainly -- but others viewed the male-dominated structure as shielding and exactly right.

All of which I bring up only to suggest that there are shades of agenda in historical fiction, as well. This author (perhaps fairly) wanted to consider a historical woman from an alternate viewpoint -- to tell what may have happened and never made it into documented history. I appreciate that, and I question that, simultaneously.

I like well-thought out fiction that rips at the fabric of history as written by historians.

So do I! I also like well-thought out history that rips at the fabric of history as written by other historians. smile Ultimately the best thing to do is get in there and research it yourself, I think. Read a few different interpretations. The truth is somewhere in the middle of everything that has been written. Which may be precisely what you mean. I believe the very best historical fiction can fill in some of the interpretation without sacrificing what is documented fact. (For example, well-known dates.)

Quote Post 86

Re: Male to Female Ratios

corra wrote:
Memphis Trace wrote:

I've not heard the Lincoln/Fredrick Douglas story. For the most part I am dubious of historical works. I believe fiction is the place where the great truths of men's advancement (or decline) are told. I like to read about our shuffle to the grave through the eyes of thinkers unfettered by the constraints of dubious agendas, lost records, or secret conversations. I like well-thought out fiction that rips at the fabric of history as written by historians.

It is perhaps, also, where one might find the great truths of women's advancement. smile

Memphis Trace wrote:

I thought when I wrote men's I should have written man's—as the graceful collective for humans, and meant to change it but forgot. I have resisted in my writing and conversation life the sensitivity of writing his/her and other affected gender collectives when meaning the collective human race we belong to. I know it to be prideful writing not pride of gender I'm beset with. All that said, man's was the proper word I meant to use to convey my thoughts, afflicted as they may be by narcissism.

Do you mean you prefer historical fiction because it turns history into art? Into an exploration of the "who are we and why are we here" question -- into moments like Hamlet's soliloquy?

Memphis Trace wrote:

To the extent I know what I mean, I believe history, compared to fiction, to be the artful dodge, and it is up to the great writers of fiction to parse these artful dodges into an account that captures the kernel of truth in man's slow accumulation of IQ. I guess I believe the great storytellers have no agenda for slanting history—or herstory, if you will—and by processing the raw data will arrive at a truer account than the great historian.

As someone who likes to reduce the chaos of existence to as few words as possible, I am currently holding that We—collectively and individually—are what we choose to remember.

I think my favorite sort of history is primary source material. Perhaps because I get to think up my own agenda? I just love the hunt -- the discovery as I read old papers and put together my own little incomplete patchwork idea of things. Probably my next favorite is biographies and memoirs (certainly biased as well.) Then classics (a sort of primary source material for me. Example: Clarissa by Samuel Richardson. You want crazy history? Read that!)

Memphis Trace wrote:

Yours is certainly the scholarly way to discover man's history, and should serve you well as a thinker and a fictioneer with an agenda to write the greater truths. It has not been the shining path I've taken. I've learnt my history more by gossip and unlearning what I've been told. If you are a contrarian, your path, corra, is along the high, hard road.

A fictional character I created best expresses what I believe: What you remember is what you are. An unvarnished memory is worth more to me than a hundred well thought out truths.

I think part of the fun of history is exploring why the agenda is present in a document in the first place. For example, what someone insists is true is often in reaction to the reality of a moment, which didn't make it into any documents but can be inferred.

Memphis Trace wrote:

With your thought—which didn't make it into any documents but can be inferred—you've more eloquently stated why I believe it is up to fictioneers to write the real truth of man's advancement.

Most of my adult life has been in the suburbs of history, reacting to untruths. I've fancied myself as someone who sees into the agendas of the historians inside the gates by virtue of being exposed to the reactions of the citizens outside the gates.

I was going through court reports, letters, some journal entries, and pamphlets from Early Modern Britain several months ago. There were so many books on manners printed which outlined the rules for women: "Be good wives, be good mothers, pray this many times, do not wear this sort of skirt, do not speak in church." An historian could read those pamphlets and assume that women must have been very pious and quiet in the early modern era. Or one could conclude that there must have been a lot of women who weren't being pious and good to require all those advice manuals on how to be pious and good.

Memphis Trace wrote:

It took a courageous woman, Emmeline Pankhurst https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmeline_Pankhurst to finally set Britain on a proper course. Not to mention to kick start America's proper course with her powerful and pivotal Freedom or Death speech delivered in Hartford, Connecticut in 1913 to American suffragettes. I learned in research for a story I've been futzing with that Katharine Hepburn's mother https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katharine … on_Hepburn was the American women's leader who invited Pankhurst to Hartford.

(I) think a great part of the fun is contemplating the very agenda that is present in any sort of literary work, be it creative or history. I like to contemplate the force of those agendas. People who write historical fiction are reflecting upon their own creative and subjective interpretation of the subjective analysis of limited source material. There really is no way to get a clear look at history without being there. (I think.)

Memphis Trace wrote:

¿Being there? ¿As the best way to get a clear look at history?

Gonna have to disagree with you there, Corra, and try to bolster your dubiety. The History Machine—while I've been here—has churned out brumous propaganda meant to obfuscate rather than illuminate. Being there has served more to confuse than to teach me. Or as Mark Twain said, "Education consists mainly of what I have unlearned." I liked Jerzy Kozinski's look at Being There http://www.amazon.com/Being-There-Jerzy … 0802136346

I read a potentially good historical fiction once, about the captivation of Mary Rowlandson by Native Americans. The author tried to reimagine her original captivation narrative (from the 1600s) by giving her more obvious intellectual autonomy. She let us into the fictional Mary's mind. The original narrative (which I read right after the novel) is a Puritan story which was written after she was returned to New England from captivity. The narrative's audience was clearly the Puritan community, who were facing a lot of violence due to King Philip's War. The narrative strongly suggests that following God saved Mary, and that the Native Americans are evil. The clear agenda was to keep everyone strong in faith and united against the opposition.

The author of the historical fiction I read reimagined Rowlandson's captivity narrative as being propaganda published by one of the men in the community. Mary Rowlandson (in the novel) is coerced into writing it according to his rules. She doesn't love her husband in the novel, and while she's in captivity she falls in love with a Native American. During captivity, instead of praying and looking to God, she prays and thinks about female oppression and compares the more liberal Native American lifestyle for women against the Puritan lifestyle. (This while working as a slave.)

I tell you what, Memphis. I didn't know what to think. I enjoyed the read just at the story level, and I didn't mind the suggestion that Rowlandson may have been transformed by her experience, and that naturally that fact didn't make it into the history. But then, without any documentation that she was coerced by Puritan leaders to write, I wondered about the erasure of her actual story? If what she actually wanted to write was the captivity story as it stands, what are we doing three hundred years later rewriting her tale into something that makes more sense to us? We need the women of the Puritan era to have a concept of freedom that matches our own? Challenging the agenda of Rowlandson's tale either illuminates female history in America (which I like) or pretties it up for our own era, thereby diluting history (which I don't like). I've read a lot of female perspectives from the era, and they weren't (as far as I can tell) questioning things heavily. Some were certainly -- but others viewed the male-dominated structure as shielding and exactly right.

All of which I bring up only to suggest that there are shades of agenda in historical fiction, as well. This author (perhaps fairly) wanted to consider a historical woman from an alternate viewpoint -- to tell what may have happened and never made it into documented history. I appreciate that, and I question that, simultaneously.

Memphis Trace wrote:

And I think you are as right to question the truth of fiction as to question the truth of history. Looking at what you've told me, I would say that the author of the tale superimposed upon Rowlandson an uncommon prescience that tells a greater truth than what the Puritan propagandists demanded of their returning captives. Was it the Puritans who burned witches? Which reminds me to recommend The Last Witchfinder http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/30/books … .html?_r=0 by James Morrow. The way I read your synopsis of the tale, Rowlandson blanched at telling a greater truth, opting to tell what the propagandists chose her to remember and the author was free to set the record straight in a reimagining.

I like well-thought out fiction that rips at the fabric of history as written by historians.

So do I! I also like well-thought out history that rips at the fabric of history as written by other historians. smile Ultimately the best thing to do is get in there and research it yourself, I think. Read a few different interpretations. The truth is somewhere in the middle of everything that has been written. Which may be precisely what you mean. I believe the very best historical fiction can fill in some of the interpretation without sacrificing what is documented fact. (For example, well-known dates.)

Memphis Trace wrote:

You are probably surer of what I mean than I am, Corra. I am choosing to label what I choose to remember as the truth of my shuffle to the grave. I sort of look at the advancement of our mores and culture to be the truth that should have been the history codified in print, but wasn't. Mine is a backward look at man's advancement, an advancement hindered by and a history put into print by those in power, but reimagined from the mountain of man's accumulated moral structure and more eloquent language. I guess I'm saying what we truly know has been built brick by brick, word by word, thought by thought from living an examined life.

A slow crawl—¿Maybe because of man's imagination limitations?—this thing we call history: man condemned to repeat what he is unwilling to unlearn.

Memphis

Quote Post 87

88 Reply by corra (edited by corra 2015-09-27 17:09:04)

Re: Male to Female Ratios

Memphis Trace wrote:

I thought when I wrote men's I should have written man's—as the graceful collective for humans, and meant to change it but forgot. I have resisted in my writing and conversation life the sensitivity of writing his/her and other affected gender collectives when meaning the collective human race we belong to. I know it to be prideful writing not pride of gender I'm beset with. All that said, man's was the proper word I meant to use to convey my thoughts, afflicted as they may be by narcissism.

I was only teasing, in lieu of the thread conversation which precedes this exchange. smile However, speaking as a woman? "Mankind" covers only half the species. We are actually "humankind." Using "man" rather than "human" may sound better in writing to some (and I certainly see your point about how choppy writing becomes when one must make his/her somehow match its antecedent), but "man" or "mankind" still suggests that the female perspective is the secondary perspective on the actual experience, which is male. If I referred to humanity as "womankind" or to history as "female" advancement, and suggested that this sounded better in writing than "humankind," and really it all means the same thing, you would perhaps see the difference.

corra wrote:

There really is no way to get a clear look at history without being there. (I think.)

Memphis Trace wrote:

¿Being there? ¿As the best way to get a clear look at history?
Gonna have to disagree with you there, Corra, and try to bolster your dubiety. The History Machine—while I've been here—has churned out brumous propaganda meant to obfuscate rather than illuminate. Being there has served more to confuse than to teach me. Or as Mark Twain said, "Education consists mainly of what I have unlearned."

I think we may be speaking from two opposing perspectives on history. I (believe) you are suggesting that distance from history makes it far more possible to have an uncluttered view of it: a bird's eye look absent from the agendas of the moment.

I see the sense in that perspective. I'll illuminate my own viewpoint, which may better explain what I mean: I visited Chickamauga a while ago, & I was struck by the silence, the beauty, the peace at the site. It was incredibly lovely.  Autumn leaves colored the scene like a tapestry. Deer clustered here & there on the landscape, & children laughed as they toured a site that must have made laughter impossible in 1863.

There's a monument (The Wilder Brigade Monument) at Chickamauga which allows visitors to climb up high over the battlefield and look down over the whole of it: a birds-eye view. This monument was not standing during the actual battle. I was struck (metaphorically) by the idea of that monument: as visitors after the fact, we can climb up and see it all, from the first historic moment of the battle to the last. But we can never experience it as it actually was -- before anyone knew the turns the war would take, when no one knew who would move where on that battlefield. The battlefield was chaos in 1863. No one knew how it would turn out -- and that's why no matter how many facts we accumulate, how many different witnesses to the moment, how many different perspectives and conjectures and agendas, we can never get back to the actual historical truth of any of it. Distance actually opposes true understanding. We bring the prejudices of our own era, the knowledge of our own anachronistic discoveries, backward in time. I say we can never really get at the truth of history because I will never, ever view life as a seventeenth century woman in colonial America the way a woman of the time would have viewed it. I've experienced life in the twenty-first century. I can assess it: but I can never see it as they did.

I think we both have perfectly valid viewpoints. smile

Memphis Trace wrote:

Mine is a backward look at man's advancement, an advancement hindered by and a history put into print by those in power, but reimagined from the mountain of man's accumulated moral structure and more eloquent language. I guess I'm saying what we truly know has been built brick by brick, word by word, thought by thought from living an examined life.

I think I understand what you're saying here. You are a philosophical assessor of history (it sounds like), while I am more interested in the camera view, in the moment. That's probably why you take to fictional perspectives on history, while I strongly pull to the primary documents -- what we have of them. There are so many ways to explore history, and I certainly respect yours.

Anyway, thanks for your perspective, Memphis! All the very best.

Quote Post 88

Re: Male to Female Ratios

corra,

Thanks for this.

I will have to read it several times to see how it dovetails with my belief that great fiction tells a truer story of man's climb from the swamp than great history.

Somewhere in this aphorism [[[A careful reader finds more truth in good fiction in one night than he is able to find in a true story in a lifetime. A careful writer will find the truth during a lifetime for a careful reader.]]] (that I'm still working to perfect) is what I try to practice as an aspiring reader and an aspiring storyteller.

After I've studied your analysis more carefully, I will respond less cryptically.

Memphis

Quote Post 89

Re: Male to Female Ratios

You're welcome! It appears I've still misunderstood your perspective. Still an interesting look at the deconstruction of those documents, though. smile

I quite like that aphorism. Thank you for sharing it.

Right now I'm reading A Farewell To Arms. More truth may be there than in the archives of actual history, is your point? I can't say I disagree with that line of thinking. Art as the great lens on life. I (may be) beginning to understand. Pardon me for being thick!

Quote Post 90

91 Reply by corra (edited by corra 2015-11-05 20:51:13)

Re: Male to Female Ratios

Well, Memphis. I've tried to reread all of the above with "A careful reader finds more truth in good fiction in one night than he is able to find in a true story in a lifetime" in mind, and --

I've not heard the Lincoln/Fredrick Douglas story. For the most part I am dubious of historical works. I believe fiction is the place where the great truths of men's advancement (or decline) are told. I like to read about our shuffle to the grave through the eyes of thinkers unfettered by the constraints of dubious agendas, lost records, or secret conversations. I like well-thought out fiction that rips at the fabric of history as written by historians.

--  reads quite differently now! I have to confess that I wasn't understanding you at all for much of this thread (obviously). I thought you meant you like to get your history (actual historical facts) directly from historical fiction! I couldn't work that out. That's why I told you that whole story about the novel I read about Rowlandson. I was trying to say, "No! Don't rely on historical fiction alone! You're just getting potentially faulty interpretation! Faulty because it's tarnished by knowledge of what happened AFTER. You have to pair that stuff with primary source material!"

My apologies. This thread is not my finest hour! In my defense, I often visit here while deep in homework (as a break), and so I often read with one eye still on the stacks!

I'm going to give this one more attempt:

Forget historical fiction. You're talking of literature as a whole -- art, the human culmination, life brought down to the drop. Human truths in literature are more authentic for you than facts found in historical sources. History repeats itself and is swayed by its interpreters anyhow. What matters is what humanity made of it, and that is in fiction. Fiction lies but not as history lies: fiction lies to get at truth, while history lies to obliterate truth. History is obliterature. (Ha! That last part was just for funny.)

I will have to read it several times to see how it dovetails with my belief that great fiction tells a truer story of man's climb from the swamp than great history.

Ah! I can read this passage now and understand it, but somehow I wasn't processing it earlier. You're not saying fiction actually is history (the archives of history, I mean). You're saying that fiction is the reaction to history, and within it is the lies we speak, perhaps, and the truths we cannot help. And within humanity's journey, that art is what matters.

Well, I'm too ravenously curious about history to entirely agree, but I believe I get your point now -- which should have been glaringly obvious. You said it quite plainly above. If I've still misinterpreted your view, we shall shake hands and talk about the weather, for I am obviously not following.

Pardon me for being a brick and a half, Memphis!!

(Can I get a "By George, she's got it"? CAN I?) wink

Quote Post 91

92 Reply by Memphis Trace (edited by Memphis Trace 2015-11-06 17:46:35)

Re: Male to Female Ratios

corra wrote:

You're welcome! It appears I've still misunderstood your perspective. Still an interesting look at the deconstruction of those documents, though. :)

I quite like that aphorism. Thank you for sharing it.

Right now I'm reading A Farewell To Arms. More truth may be there than in the archives of actual history, is your point? I can't say I disagree with that line of thinking. Art as the great lens on life. I (may be) beginning to understand. Pardon me for being thick!

¿Being thick? I don't think so, corra... I can gather from your postings that you are reading voraciously and, whether history or fiction, that is where it can be found. If you question authority as you read, I believe it will help you get thinner. I have never found a surer way than reading to provoke thinking.

I'm a little over 2/3s of the way through the Finca Vigia Edition of The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway: my long ago promise to myself to see what all the Hemingway fuss of my younger days was about. Hemingway devotees tell me that his short stories are where it is at. If they are where it is at, the writing in most of them is half again too subtle for me to find it.

I find I am caught up in his writing, much in the same way I get caught up in reading most writing in a workshop. I seldom am satisfied that a Hemingway story is finished—sometimes that the story is even started—when I get to the end of one.

As a young man, I read The Sun Also Rises and liked it a lot. I read it again a year or so ago and found it a chore, paying out counsel on how to write it better as I read. I am determined to like Hemingway, so I will move on to his later novels once I finish his short stories. Currently, though, I am burdened with the suspicion that the biggest Hemingway devotees are Hemingway scholars, those interested readers of his fiction who also are possessed of a goodly knowledge of his life and times. Is that what great literature is? Am I to be forever excluded?

I read Beckett's play, Waiting for Godot, a year or so ago, because someone said the humor in a scene in one of my stories (or one of their stories) was reminiscent of Beckett's absurdist humor. I found out http://www.samuel-beckett.net/BerlinTraffic.html before I read it, that it was "voted the most significant English language play of the 20th century in a British Royal National Theatre poll of 800 playwrights, actors, directors and journalists." I missed all that while I read it.

When I finished reading it, I rushed to my Kindle to buy Waiting for Godot (Maxnotes® Literature Guides) by Rita Wilensky. According to Maxnotes®'s promise, the book "was intended to help absorb the essential contents... and to help you gain a thorough understanding... designed to do this more effectively than any other study guide."

Maxnotes® put the play into a perspective that made me really, really enjoy and appreciate it when I read it again. But it also begged for an answer to the question: Exactly for whom was Beckett writing the play?

One of the things I believe, and love, about many contemporary storytellers is that they are making their art accessible to such as me without my having to know anything about them or their agendas. To me the genius in storytelling is making it pleasurably accessible, creating storylisteners of the barely literate.   

I hope I don't have to read a Maxnotes® Literature Guide of Hemingway's stories to love them. Everybody tells me that Hemingway used simple language (as opposed to Faulkner) to tell big stories. It will be the last big comedown if I find I have to have it (Hemingway) all 'splained to me.

Memphis

Quote Post 92

Re: Male to Female Ratios

Norm d'Plume wrote:

I have binders full of women to choose from.

My old binders full of women have staple holes around the midsection area after being removed from magazines carrying the articles I enjoy reading. smile

~Tom

Quote Post 93

Re: Male to Female Ratios

Currently, though, I am burdened with the suspicion that the biggest Hemingway devotees are Hemingway scholars, those interested readers of his fiction who also are possessed of a goodly knowledge of his life and times. Is that what great literature is?

I wouldn't think so! There's a lasting debate in literature about what great literature is, and a debate about how to approach it. Some feel that knowing the author's life sullies the work: art for art's sake! It ought to stand alone. Others find the historical perspective more rewarding than the art. Others can't imagine trying to read a work of literature without knowing the context of the author's life and times.

I don't know a great deal about Hemingway. I like his work because it was revolutionary. He was one of the Modernist writers who transformed literature. That sense that his work has barely begun and isn't quite finished? I think that was purposeful. He was coming out of the Victorian era, which wanted to tie a pretty bow around novels -- punish the bad characters, reward the good characters, and end things happily ever after. He's questioning that in his work. Is there a happily ever after? Is their justice? Is there a pretty bow at the end of the story? Or isn't life really a relentless struggle to hold yourself together and be as honorable as you can in a world which dishonors and crushes?

He was writing after The Great War shattered illusions. Everything people believed in was scattered all over the floor, including the Victorian vision. Instead of reading Dickens's novels, people are heading to the silver screen to be inspired by images which move and say nothing. I think this contributed to the way literature changed with Hemingway. He's challenging the reader to experience deeply what he leaves unsaid. Here is the stage, here are the players, they said the following, these thoughts crushed the mind, and that is all.

I'm not sure if that helps?

Quote Post 94

95 Reply by Memphis Trace (edited by Memphis Trace 2015-12-08 05:49:45)

Re: Male to Female Ratios

corra wrote:

Currently, though, I am burdened with the suspicion that the biggest Hemingway devotees are Hemingway scholars, those interested readers of his fiction who also are possessed of a goodly knowledge of his life and times. Is that what great literature is?

I wouldn't think so! There's a lasting debate in literature about what great literature is, and a debate about how to approach it. Some feel that knowing the author's life sullies the work: art for art's sake! It ought to stand alone. Others find the historical perspective more rewarding than the art. Others can't imagine trying to read a work of literature without knowing the context of the author's life and times.

For most of my writing and reading life, I have belonged to the tribe that wants to read the story purveyed by the words on the page, not the words as translated by others through the prism of the writer's biases those others know about. There is a magic—perhaps the magic—for me in seeing a picture emerge from the cryptic symbols men have chosen to convey thoughts, and for believing that I see the same picture the writer means to convey.

Indeed, I would say this magic is the most important beauty of the most abstract of the arts: Storytelling. ¿What other art must rely so heavily on an interested voyeur translating the symbols that convey the pictures in the thoughts of an artist into a picture that can be seen, heard, smelled, tasted, and/or felt? It is a communion with the growth of knowledge through the ages at the behest of the artful use of the language.

It is not that I don't like to know about the writer's life and times and biases, even if it's mostly true that I don't, but I'm guessing that I like to learn of those things only after I feel I have successfully "seen" the picture the experts believe—from study of the artist—was truly drawn. ¡I think my preference for the way I receive communication may come from being asked, sometimes forced, to interpret the abstractness of the Bible based on the pictures the artists drew; these artists claiming they were drawing pictures based on having seen, heard, tasted, smelled, and/or felt God: Talk about the greatest need to suspend one's disbelief!

I don't know a great deal about Hemingway. I like his work because it was revolutionary. He was one of the Modernist writers who transformed literature.

I will take your word for it that Hemingway's work is revolutionary. For most of my writing workshop life, I have been subjected to the idea that his work was a reactionary response to the flowerdy communication of the artists who came before him, an attempt to make his work accessible to folks who don't know all the big, handsome words—and who become lost, groping in the dim light of the long sentences, that artists such as Faulkner were so fond of.

I question what the experts who've tried to sell me on the Hemingway revolution have concluded were his motives. In my study so far of his work—by reading it and seeing how accessible it is to me, an interested reader—I am finding that Hemingway puts the fence of his Iceberg Theory between me and the pictures he draws with his words.

Here is what Hemingway says about accessibility:
If a writer of prose knows enough of what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. A writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing. Emphasis mine.

I loudly applaud Hemingway's desire to write accessibly and with dignity. BUT in reading Hemingway, I wonder, "What could he have been thinking? He has left out the dignified parts Faulkner put in that drew pictures of men who moved and smelt and felt and tasted and stared and deciphered..." About which Faulkner said, The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again.

¿My bias for Faulkner showing through? Hardly, I beg.

Though I cut my teeth on Faulkner, Hemingway was attempting to change literature in a way I fully support.

That sense that his work has barely begun and isn't quite finished? I think that was purposeful.

If what he was trying to sell was purposeful, that he fails by eliding things that would make his stories truer and more accessible to storylisteners makes his attempt a pig in a poke rather than dignified to me, UNLESS one becomes an expert on Hemingway's life and times and can say with some authority that they know what was meant by what Hemingway left out.

He was coming out of the Victorian era, which wanted to tie a pretty bow around novels -- punish the bad characters, reward the good characters, and end things happily ever after. He's questioning that in his work. Is there a happily ever after? Is their justice? Is there a pretty bow at the end of the story? Or isn't life really a relentless struggle to hold yourself together and be as honorable as you can in a world which dishonors and crushes?

Hemingway's style—so far and except for a few fine successes, and before I set to on his novels—is for me the same as February's style: Short and brutish, and to boot, short of dignity.

He was writing after The Great War shattered illusions. Everything people believed in was scattered all over the floor, including the Victorian vision. Instead of reading Dickens's novels, people are heading to the silver screen to be inspired by images which move and say nothing. I think this contributed to the way literature changed with Hemingway. He's challenging the reader to experience deeply what he leaves unsaid. Here is the stage, here are the players, they said the following, these thoughts crushed the mind, and that is all.

IF the Iceberg Theory was merely an invitation to study his life within the context of the times, then I will have to classify him as one more failed narcissist. If, once I've finished his long stories, his Iceberg Theory reveals to me, an interested and inexpert reader, some ultimate truth about the art of communicating accessible and dignified prose, I will applaud his success with "leaving out" as counter-intuitive genius made manifest.

In the meantime, where do we writers get off saying to interested readers, look at me, study me, look at the mirror I look into, within the context of my times... and learn life.

I'm not sure if that helps?

Since I've known you on TNBW, corra, you have helped by questioning. Your questions are never unhelpful to me. They provoke me to examine my writing life.

Memphis

Quote Post 95

Re: Male to Female Ratios

Memphis Trace wrote:

Your questions are never unhelpful to me. They provoke me to examine my writing life.

Likewise. smile

Quote Post 96

Re: Male to Female Ratios

Memphis Trace wrote:

In the end, I guess I have come to feel the country wasn’t ready for a complicated hero—like Atticus has become for me—when To Kill a Mockingbird was published in 1960 and made into a movie in 1962. From what I understand, To Kill a Mockingbird caused a lot of young people to take up the banner for civil rights.

I'm sorry to hear of Ms. Lee's death this morning. I'm glad I read (and reread) her novels last summer. I thought of this conversation when I heard this morning. Books are powerful, as was hers, as is hers. x

(This remark isn't directed at you specifically, Memphis. I just wanted to quote a part of that conversation.)

Quote Post 97

Re: Male to Female Ratios

corra wrote:
Memphis Trace wrote:

In the end, I guess I have come to feel the country wasn’t ready for a complicated hero—like Atticus has become for me—when To Kill a Mockingbird was published in 1960 and made into a movie in 1962. From what I understand, To Kill a Mockingbird caused a lot of young people to take up the banner for civil rights.

I'm sorry to hear of Ms. Lee's death this morning. I'm glad I read (and reread) her novels last summer. I thought of this conversation when I heard this morning. Books are powerful, as was hers, as is hers. x

(This remark isn't directed at you specifically, Memphis. I just wanted to quote a part of that conversation.)

Yeah, I just heard about her death. She made a big crease on my thinking with her work, both early and late in my writing and reading life.

Memphis

Quote Post 98

Re: Male to Female Ratios

I was just listening to Pandora, thinking of her, when this came on. x

Quote Post 99

Re: Male to Female Ratios

corra wrote:

I was just listening to Pandora, thinking of her, when this came on. x

Thanks for this. A trip down memory lane for me. A more insightful reader of To Kill a Mockingbird than I am, cast the movie. I may break my long abnegation of the silver screen to watch it again.

Quote Post 100