
Harper Lee to publish Mockingbird 'sequel' - InternetGiant
http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-31118355
======
chimeracoder
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.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harper_Lee#After_To_Kill_a_Moc...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harper_Lee#After_To_Kill_a_Mockingbird)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harper_Lee#Lawsuit_to_regain_c...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harper_Lee#Lawsuit_to_regain_copyright)

[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".)

~~~
ijk
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.

~~~
stormbrew
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.

~~~
ijk
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.

I'm hoping for a happy ending here, though.

------
nathanb
Embarrassingly, I first misread this as Harper Lee working on a sequel to the
Hunger Games finale Mockingjay, and I was so confused....

I was forced to read To Kill a Mockingbird for school. I started reading it
with a bad attitude. After I finished it, I immediately turned back to the
first page and reread it, not with a school mindset but with a "this is
amazing literature that I need in my life" mindset.

If she was writing this "sequel" at the same time she was writing the
original, they're likely to contain the same themes and the same timeless way
of looking at life, society, and what it means to be human. I don't know if
any novel could survive the pressure of being a long-delayed sequel of To Kill
a Mockingbird, but I'm definitely willing to let it try!

~~~
spike021
Apparently she was writing this novel first and incorporated flashbacks, which
were so descriptive that someone (might've been her editor) strongly suggested
she separate them into their own novel.

I think it'll be great.

~~~
unreal37
Yes, this "sequel" was apparently the original book she wrote before her book
editor told her to focus on when Scout was a child (the flashbacks). And they
just found the manuscript hidden in a box a few months ago apparently.

~~~
nathanb
Yeah, am I the only one who's skeptical of the whole "hidden in a box" part?
More like "hidden until we thought we could convince her to publish".

------
TwiztidK
A writer working on a biography of Harper Lee came to my high school 6 or 7
years ago to give a presentation about her. He told us that she had written
another book but didn't want to publish it due to the pressure she felt from
the success of To Kill a Mockingbird, so she planned on having it published
after she died. This is probably the book he was talking about.

I can't remember exactly who the writer was, but he spoke about his experience
interviewing Kurt Vonnegut for his biography, so it was probably Charles
Shields.

~~~
unreal37
Apparently, they only just found this manuscript hidden in a box "in the fall
of 2014", so it was probably not the new book that person was talking about.
In fact, this was the original book before "To Kill a Mockingbird" was
written.

------
chengiz
It seems everybody here loves "To Kill a Mockingbird". To me, it's a well
written but ultimately shallow novel. Finch is your typical woman's fantasy
man: great at fatherhood, great at his work, morally upright, totally
scrupulous, and yes, best shot in the county. The black people in the novel
rarely get a voice, except one of platitudes, and the race relations stuff is
totally black and white (excuse the pun), with no particular insight. It
counts as literature only because of its propitious timing around the Civil
Rights movement. It's a fine school reading list book but that is all it is.

~~~
a8da6b0c91d
> a fine school reading list book

I'm pretty sure a book can't get on those lists any more without a theme of
oppression or alienation. I'm not joking. Almost everything they make kids
read any more is somehow about injustice or bigotry.

Apropos Southern Gothic lit, I'm chuckling at the thought of a typical 9th
grade english teacher trying to tackle a much better book like Flannery
Oconnor's "The Violent Bear it Away." Doesn't quite fit the essay templates
they raise the kids on.

~~~
cbd1984
Then you have High School AP English, where "As I Lay Dying" is a standard
text.

I think "Catch-22" is as well.

Say what you will about those books, they're not necessarily essay-ready in
the same way "To Kill A Mockingbird" is.

------
xianshou
On the basis of regression to the mean
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_toward_the_mean](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_toward_the_mean)),
or what we might call the "J.K. Rowling effect," it would be far too much to
hope that the sequel will match the original. Nonetheless, this has got to set
some sort of record for the gap between a novel and its sequel.

Interestingly, there is a list of gaps between film sequels
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_longest_gaps_betwee...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_longest_gaps_between_film_sequels)),
and the longest gap is over 63 years, but there is no such list for books!

~~~
tjr
The article shares though that she originally wrote the book around the same
time as _To Kill a Mockingbird_ , or more precisely, she wrote this book
first, and was advised by her editor to expound upon some segments of it to
write _To Kill a Mockingbird_ instead.

So a huge gap between publications, but I would expect the writing to be
similar.

~~~
wpietri
For the impact to be similar, it will take a lot more than similar writing. I
will read this -- I would read Harper Lee's grocery lists with interest -- but
I expect that it will be a minor literary footnote, not another beloved
landmark book.

~~~
celticninja
But is that because of the expectation due to the preceding piece of work or
can it be judged on its own merit?

------
fnordfnordfnord
For anyone who hasn't seen it. "Hey Boo" is a pretty good documentary about
Mockingbird and features Harper Lee.
[http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/harper-
lee-...](http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/harper-lee-hey-
boo/about-the-documentary/1972/)

------
renglis
60 years on and it remains relevant and insightful into the events of today.
We should all reread it.

I look forward to the new book.

------
pervycreeper
Despite widespread changes in social attitudes on some topics, To Kill a
Mockingbird is still as relevant to today's world as it was when it was
originally published.

~~~
puranjay
That's because it is a timeless tale about the goodness of people, of faith
and charity and humanity. Those are everlasting values.

My girlfriend reads the book at least once a year. She says it keeps her
grounded and optimistic. I started doing the exercise last year and I have to
say, she is right.

~~~
wpietri
True. But also because it's a sensitive and nuanced examination of the fucked-
uppedness of US culture with regards to race. I certainly hope that isn't
everlasting, but the book remains depressingly relevant.

~~~
pervycreeper
That's an unfortunately narrow misreading. There are much more universal
themes than that in the book.

~~~
SerpentJoe
There's nothing unfortunate about acknowledging the racial themes in To Kill A
Mockingbird, and doing so doesn't diminish any of the other messages. It would
be a shit book if it were only about one thing. One of the things it's about
is race, unpleasant as it may be.

~~~
pervycreeper
That's correct, but the GP comment is unfortunate in that it is either a
deliberate misinterpretation of my comment, or one made from a very
superficial understanding of the text.

------
wmeredith
I'd be interested to hear more about the creative dynamic between this new
book and To Kill a Mocking Bird. It says she put this new one aside 60 years
ago to write TKaMB, but it features the characters later in their lives. I
wonder if she was sketching out backstory to flesh out the characters and that
was more compelling, so she pivoted and wrote To Kill a Mocking Bird instead?

~~~
swamp40
It sounds to me like her editor thought the flashbacks to Scout's childhood
were the best part of the unfinished book - so as you said, she pivoted to the
good stuff.

~~~
mercer
While I expected it to annoy me, for some reason in this particular situation
I love the fact that we're using very _current_ terminology in the context of
a 'classic' from the 60s. Perhaps because it 'anchors' the term and makes it
seem more like a useful word to describe a phenomenon that has always existed,
rather than annoying, very-specific jargon.

~~~
spike021
Maybe at the time they would be referred to as 'memories'.

~~~
celticninja
He meant pivot. It has become a bit of a buzzword and perhaps people think
that it has only just come into practice, however it was always around it just
hadn't been reduced to a single word.

~~~
spike021
Oh I see.

------
fmax30
To kill a mocking bird was the first novel i read in my life. I was only 11
(in 6th grade) at the time and took around 3-4 months (summer break) to
complete it, to be honest this was the book that made me realize that reading
english literature can be an extremely amazing and insightful experience.
Granted i didn't understand many things that were in it at the time but it
kept me hooked.

Also i remember thinking that jean was a boy till i was 20-30 pages in
realizing that she was in fact a girl.

~~~
danielweber
Jem turned out to be a boy. When I started the book, all my classmates were
sure she was truly outrageous.

------
etep
Wow. Am currently reading "The Mockingbird Next Door" by Marja Mills. Brifely,
Marja gained unprecedented access to the private life of Nelle Harper Lee. It
is extremely interesting, and I am quite surprised at this turn of events.
Good news!

------
jqm
I'm sure the first book was very good but I never read it and feel negatively
about it. Why? Simple. Because it was on the high school required reading
list. I looked around at the teachers, looked around at the town, looked
around at the larger society in which I lived, and decided very early I was
having no part of indoctrination.

It's too bad. Because it probably is a good book. The bible might be as well.
But I'll never know because suspicion of indoctrination ruined it for me.
Maybe this is a personal failing. But putting books on the high school
required reading list is a good way to make thinking people suspicious of
motive in my view.

------
ojbyrne
I thought I was seeing an onion headline at first.

~~~
mrkipling
...why?

~~~
savanaly
I get it. To take the joke even farther, you might imagine a headline from The
Onion along the lines of "God working on sequel to The Bible". Not funny when
I state it all dryly of course, but hopefully you can see the joke now?

~~~
shiven
Wait a minute, I thought the Quran was that sequel. Wasn't it?

~~~
dragonwriter
Perhaps; authorship is disputed, and some claim the Book of Mormon is the
sequel from the original author.

(Of course, its worth noting that that the problem goes back further than that
and that "the Bible" is itself a combination of the Hebrew Scriptures and a --
of disputed provenance, like the others -- sequel to that work.)

------
samatman
Perhaps David Gerrold will complete the War Against the Cthorr after all!
We've only been waiting on that for twenty years...

~~~
dsr_
You mean this?

[https://plus.google.com/wm/4/+DanielKeysMoran/posts/dQx3oqkH...](https://plus.google.com/wm/4/+DanielKeysMoran/posts/dQx3oqkHjqz)

------
icantthinkofone
Great. But what does this have to do with Hacker News?

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
This _is_ HN.

~~~
icantthinkofone
You make no sense at all. My complaint is about the numerous postings of
"general news" here on HN. If I wanted general news, I would not come here to
find it and, instead, would go to my favorite actual news sites. HN is not a
general news collection point.

Hence my question, why is this here?

EDIT: Now that I think about it, I'm wondering if you are just agreeing with
me.

------
mw44118
To Kill a Mockingbird perpetuates the idea that women make false rape
accusations. We shouldn't celebrate such a hurtful topic.

~~~
chaostheory
Rape is a problem. However false rape accusations are also a real problem and
not just an imaginary one.

[http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2014/09/false...](http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2014/09/false_rape_accusations_why_must_be_pretend_they_never_happen.html)

It varies by country but in the US, it's estimated that 8% of rape cases are
false accusations.

~~~
fletom
The article you link to does not support your claim of 8%. It mentions data
"averaging 8 percent to 10 percent" but then goes on to point out that:

> Not all reports classified as unfounded are necessarily false. In some
> cases, women who were victims of rape were disbelieved, pressured into
> recanting, and charged with false reporting only to be vindicated later
> on—the kind of awful story that adds to people’s skittishness about
> discussing false accusations. Some police departments have been criticized
> for having an anomalously high percentage of supposedly unfounded rape
> charges: Baltimore’s “unfounded” rate used to be the highest in the nation,
> at about 30 percent, due partly to questionable and sometimes downright
> abusive police procedures, such as badgering a woman about why she waited
> two hours to report a street assault. By 2013, an effort to provide better
> training and encourage full investigation of all complaints reduced that
> rate to less than 2 percent.

The problem is that you cannot rely on a police officer's opinion that a rape
accusation is false. It could too easily be based on a sexist perception of
the woman reporting the crime. The rape of sex workers, women who use drugs
and alcohol, and women who have many sexual partners has never been taken as
seriously by law enforcement.

On the other hand, we have actual scientific data from the CDC showing that
20% of women have been raped:
[http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss6308a1.htm?s_cid=...](http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss6308a1.htm?s_cid=ss6308a1_e)

What we need is an equivalent study that asks men if they have ever been
falsely charged with rape. My guess is that the number is quite small.

~~~
chaostheory
I was citing the FBI for the 8% estimate.

> On the other hand, we have actual scientific data from the CDC showing that
> 20% of women have been raped:
> [http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss6308a1.htm?s_cid=...](http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss6308a1.htm?s_cid=..).
> What we need is an equivalent study that asks men if they have ever been
> falsely charged with rape. My guess is that the number is quite small.

What are you arguing? Since false rape accusations can't be measured well,
they shouldn't be considered a problem and they should be ignored?

------
bshimmin
I think this will be a massive seller, though (depressingly) probably nothing
in comparison to a new Harry Potter.

I also think it'll be great.

~~~
celticninja
Why hate harry Potter? it probably encouraged many more people to pick up a
book, some of whom may never have read a book otherwise, and then they may
have gone on to read classics such as To Kill a Mockingbird.

~~~
RavingGoat
I agree. Harry Potter is a great "gateway drug".

------
taivare
ask HN: seems to be down, sorry, off topic, I want to publish eBook/only, and
have all revenues go to charity. not a lot of info on web, regarding this
subject. One author who put a Link on the end of his eBook is all.

