'Finch' fries, 'Boo'
burgers as Harper Lee's hometown greets new novel
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[July 14, 2015]
By Rich McKay
MONROEVILLE, Alabama
(Reuters) - In the southern hometown of author Harper
Lee, a freight truck unloaded the first of 7,000 copies
of “Go Set a Watchman” at a small bookshop just ahead of
midnight, minutes before Tuesday's release of Lee’s
first published novel in 55 years.
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A friend recently told Lee that the sequel to "To Kill a
Mockingbird" is currently the most pre-ordered book on
Amazon.com.
“You lie,” she said, according to her longtime friend Prof.
Wayne Flynt of Auburn University, who plans to celebrate with
the town of Monroeville in southwest Alabama.
The elusive Lee herself, Miss Nelle to her friends and now 89,
might make a rare appearance in the town she made famous, said
Flynt.
“But don’t count on it too much,” he said. “She changes her mind
a lot and doesn’t much like attention. She lives moment to
moment.”
But the small town Lee modeled Depression-era Maycomb on in
"Mockingbird" is focused on this moment.
At midnight, outside Ol’ Curiosities and Book Shoppe in downtown
Monroeville, shopkeeper Spencer Madrie signaled to a crowd
mingling with Gregory Peck look-alikes waiting for the sequel to
the Pulitzer Prize-winning "Mockingbird."
"I’ve had people calling from as far away as from England
looking for the book early," said Madrie, who will emboss copies
of the book so folks will know it was bought in Lee’s hometown.
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"But we had no special treatment, even in this town. We have to
wait like everyone else."
People cheered when the shop's doors opened at midnight.
Among those waiting was Robert Champion, who said he wanted to
take each novel on its own merit.
"I don't compare the two," he said. "It's not the same book.
Nothing will take away from 'To Kill a Mockingbird'," he said.
Alabama Governor Robert Bentley has proclaimed Tuesday "Go Set a
Watchman" day in the state, saying in a Twitter posting that the
release of the new book "is an exciting time for our state, and
Harper Lee is a great source of pride."
"Mockingbird" has sold more than 40 million copies world-wide.
"Watchman" is set in the 1950s, not the 1930s Depression era of
"Mockingbird", but it was written first and never published.
Lee has said her editor at the time convinced her to turn the
book into a coming of age story from Scout Finch's perspective
as a child. She agreed and the result was "Mockingbird" while
the manuscript for "Watchman" was set aside and apparently
forgotten.
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The new book sees tomboy “Scout” as grown-up Jean Louise Finch. Her
now aged father - gentle, idealist lawyer Atticus Finch - is
depicted as a racist and a bigot in a turn of character that has
dismayed readers who have regarded him for decades as a paragon for
doing right against all the odds.
LAWN PARTIES, WALKING TOURS
Despite the changes in Finch's character, all day Tuesday the real
Maycomb plans to celebrate. There will be public readings at almost
every corner, lawn parties with lemonade and mint juleps, and
"Finch" fries and "Boo" burgers on offer at a local café.
There will be walking tours of the domed 1900-era courthouse, now a
museum, that served as the model for Finch's defense of a black man
falsely accused of raping a white woman.
"It’s a full day," said Amy Hill of the Monroe County Heritage
Museum. "Miss Nelle really put us on the map and we’re excited about
the new book."
Flynt, who lectures on southern culture, will start reading
"Watchman" out loud to any who’ll hear on Tuesday morning.
The book comes at a time when the nation is again in the grips of
confronting the American South’s underbelly of racism after the
slaying of nine parishioners at Charleston church at the hands of a
white supremacist.
“The timing is accidental, but this is a conversation that America
needs to have,” Flynt said. “When her first book came out in 1960,
we were finally energized on race. It was part of everyone's
consciousness.”
Flynt says fans of Atticus Finch might have trouble accepting the
older incarnation of him in "Watchman."
“It’s a very different and flawed Atticus,” Flynt said. “You have an
older man who was dealing with his world of the 1950s. We believed
him to be a perfect man, only to find out that he has feet of clay
up to his elbows.”
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Flynt doesn’t expect "Go Set a Watchman" to be as popular as "To
Kill a Mockingbird."
But he believes it will be more real.
(Editing by Jill Serjeant)
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