At the very least, they would have talked to Harper Lee about it, right? To get her, you know, permission?
Who knows! Yesterday Vulture ran one of the most confusing interviews I’ve ever seen from Harper Lee’s editor, Hugh Van Dusen, who doesn’t seem to know what room he’s in at the moment:
Why is this book finally showing up now, after all these years?
"The version I was told was that the book was in either a safe deposit box or a bank vault, and it was wrapped in a manuscript of To Kill a Mockingbird and nobody noticed it for all these years. I don’t know this for a fact, but one must imagine that Harper Lee — we call her Nelle — just never told anybody about the book and then forgot it existed. Her lawyer, Tonja Carter, who is also Nelle’s very close friend, was apparently looking through this safety deposit box and found [Go Set a Watchman]. I guess she then went to her friend said what it is this? Nelle said, and this is all public knowledge, that her editor at the time at Lippincott, the original publisher of To Kill a Mockingbird, said to her this isn’t what you want to write; you want to write something about Scout when she was a girl. So Nelle went back and wrote a new book: To Kill a Mockingbird."
HOO BOY, it is never a great sign when the answer to a direct, simple question is “THE VERSION I WAS TOLD.” Because, right, “I’ve seen a 40 million figure”…your editor doesn’t just bung away your only other book into a safety deposit back for fifty years when your only novel is that huge of a bestseller? And then right after Harper’s sister/lawyer/advocate dies, this book just happens to turn up, and you just happen to set a release date? This feels like the publishing equivalent of “these jeans just fell off a truck, forty dollars, cash.”
Harper is a famously private person. Does she have any ambivalence about the fact that the publication of the book is going to result in a lot of new publicity?
"I don’t think so. In our press release she says, “After much thought and hesitation I shared [Go Set a Watchman] with a handful of people I trust and was pleased to hear they considered it worthy of publication. I am humbled and amazed that this will now be published after all these years.” "
Wait, she says it or your press release says it for her? You don’t think she has any ambivalence? You’re literally unsure about the degree of her ambivalence?
Has the book been edited? Or is what will eventually be on bookshelves untouched from what was in the safety deposit box?
"If it has been edited, nobody’s told me. It’s the novel she wrote and showed to her editor at Lippincott, who didn’t think it was the book Nelle should be writing. So Nelle wrote another book. I don’t know this for a fact, but I doubt very much that anyone at Harper has edited it. My understanding is that it will be exactly what she wrote in the mid-1950s."
“Nobody’s told me.” “My understanding is.” You guys should have a meeting about this, probably! I don’t know, MAYBE it’s not the case that a bunch of publishers eager to capitalize on a hugely profitable name are taking advantage of a very elderly woman who lives in a nursing home and has diminished capacity. I hope that this is not the case! But if you are going to release another book of hers, maybe make sure that you are going through all of the appropriate steps! Coordinate your message among your team members! Decide if you are going to edit the book or not, and then tell the editor, because that seems like information the editor should have. Right?
