I was incredibly excited to see this news upon seeing the headline in the New York Times, and surprised, because Harper Lee has been a recluse for almost her entire life since writing To Kill a Mockingbird, and has repeatedly insisted that she had no desire to publish another book ("I wouldn't go through the pressure and publicity I went through with To Kill a Mockingbird for any amount of money. Second, I have said what I wanted to say and I will not say it again."[0])
After doing a bit of digging, however, I'm a bit concerned. Now, Lee is almost 90, and has suffered a stroke that seems to have had lasting effects. She filed a lawsuit in 2007 against the son-in-law of her former agent, claiming that he took advantage of her mental state during her recovery and duped her into assigning him the copyright to To Kill a Mockingbird[1]. For much of her adult life, her sister handled press relations and shielded Lee from these pressures. Her sister passed away three months ago, and suddenly this new book comes to light[2].
I really hope these suspicions are wrong, and that there's nothing shady at play here. I'm excited to read the book, but I can't help but be skeptical of the timing.
[2] (I dislike linking to Gawker Media sites on principle, but Jezebel actually wrote a good post digging into the details of this - "Be Suspicious of the New Harper Lee Novel".)
I'm certainly thinking of running the ebook through a statistical analysis to see if the patterns in the writing match. If they were both written in the same time period by the same author, they should be pretty similar.
I do hope there's nothing untoward going on here and that this book lives up to the legacy of To Kill a Mockingbird, but the possibility is at least worth examining.
Huh? I don't think anyone is really doubting the authenticity of the book. At least not yet. They're doubting that Harper Lee has actually authorized its release with full knowledge of what that means.
Oh, it's not the most likely hypothesis; not having access to the book yet I can't even say if it'd even be a relevant question. My most likely depressing scenario is that it's a less interesting novel that wasn't published at the time because it simply wasn't as interesting, and Harper Lee isn't in a position to evaluate it because she hasn't read it in fifty years.
After doing a bit of digging, however, I'm a bit concerned. Now, Lee is almost 90, and has suffered a stroke that seems to have had lasting effects. She filed a lawsuit in 2007 against the son-in-law of her former agent, claiming that he took advantage of her mental state during her recovery and duped her into assigning him the copyright to To Kill a Mockingbird[1]. For much of her adult life, her sister handled press relations and shielded Lee from these pressures. Her sister passed away three months ago, and suddenly this new book comes to light[2].
I really hope these suspicions are wrong, and that there's nothing shady at play here. I'm excited to read the book, but I can't help but be skeptical of the timing.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harper_Lee#After_To_Kill_a_Moc...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harper_Lee#Lawsuit_to_regain_c...
[2] (I dislike linking to Gawker Media sites on principle, but Jezebel actually wrote a good post digging into the details of this - "Be Suspicious of the New Harper Lee Novel".)