Harper Lee; Here Comes the Backlash
UPDATE: Several more news stories now question whether Harper, who is deaf and nearly blind, knew what she was signing when she authorized the publication of Go Set A Watchman. Paste magazine concludes that Harper Lee’s lawyer, “Tonja Carter may be a rogue operator taking advantage of a less-than-capable author who never wanted this book published at all.”
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After great excitement over the news that a second novel by Harper Lee, Go Set A Watchman (Harper; HarperLuxe; HarperAudio) has been discovered and will be released this summer, the naysayers have arrived.
In a New York Times Opinion piece, Bookslut editor in chief Jessa Crispin begs, “Don’t Do It, Harper Lee,” pointing out that today’s internet culture is unforgiving when disappointed and reminding people that the book was “rejected by Ms. Lee’s original editor in the ’50s” and therefore “may be substandard.”
Then there’s the fears that Lee was pressured into agreeing to its publication, which brought a swift rebuttal by Lee, via her attorney, that she is “happy as hell” about it and the public’s response to the news.
That lawyer, Tonja Brooks Carter, described as a “gatekeeper between the author and the outside world,” is profiled by the Wall Street Journal ‘s “Law Blog” which reports that Harper Lee got to know her through her sister Alice Lee.
This may sound eerily familiar. Last year, Marja Mills published The Mockingbird Next Door: Life With Harper Lee, (Penguin Press, July, 2014), in which she writes lovingly about befriending the two Lee sister and moving next door to them. Lee, however, denied involvement with the book and accused the author of using her sister Alice to get to her. Shortly after Mills’ book was published, Lee reaffirmed her position and, as reported by Entertainment Weekly‘s online column, “Shelf Life,” added, “rest assured, as long as I am alive any book purporting to be with my cooperation is a falsehood.”
This story is unlikely to end until the book is published in July.