I’ve started seeing a few posts about the fact that Harper Lee probably did not really want Go Set A Watchman published, and that people shouldn’t read the book because of that, and I think this brings up greater issues within the art world.
See the thing is that we do this kind of thing all the time. I have at least two books sitting on my shelf right now that were unfinished Tolkien manuscripts found after his death. One was finished by his son, and the other was published in it’s unfinished form. Obviously, there’s an excellent likelihood that, had Tolkien lived to finish them, he would have eventually wanted them published. But he didn’t - a portion of the unfinished manuscript weren’t even written with the rest of the work, but was found “written hastily on a separate piece of paper”. These books weren’t published because Tolkien wanted them published in the condition they were in - they were published because there were people who would be interested in reading them.
The same goes with old paintings. There are many reasons that old paintings have other paintings underneath them. Sometimes if’s because the artist couldn’t afford a new canvas, or because there was something wrong with the first version, or they just had a better idea or whatever. We analyze these paintings and publish reconstructions and aren’t bothered by violating the artist’s wishes.
We do the same thing with all sorts of art - old recordings, sheet music manuscripts, anything we can get our hands on. Some of these were genuinely just lost to time, but just as often, they were thrown out, early drafts of things that we know and love already, that we want to know more about.
So I guess, then, the question is: does it matter if Harper Lee wants this book published? Our cultural behavior thus far would suggest not. If they had not permitted publication before her death, then they would have found a way to publish it after her death. If that were the case, then does waiting until after the author or artist dies make releasing old drafts okay?
And also, how much does the way the work is published affect that perception. I was surprised to get my copy of Go Set a Watchman, and find no publisher’s note at the beginning or end indicating that this is a manuscript that was not intended for publication. There are no essays or analyses included with the publication to indicate it’s importance in academia. This, it seems to me, is where the dishonesty is most bothersome.
In the preface for The Children of Hurin, Christopher Tolkien states, “[I]t has seemed to me for a long time that there was a good case for presenting my father’s long version of the legend of the Children of Hurin as an independent work, between its own covers, with a minimum of editorial presence and above all in continuous narrative without gaps or interruptions , if this could be done without distortion or invention, despite the unfinished state in which he left some parts of it.” This, I think, is the case for publishing many manuscripts. There’s an interest in reading it, so you gear the publication towards the audience most interested.
All of that said, I have the same interest in reading GSAW as I did in reading the Tolkien books. Yes, I’m interested in the story. But I’m also interested in the work’s relationship with the author’s other creations. GSAW isn’t interesting as a sequel to TKAM, it’s interesting as a historic document, and as another tool with which to examine the story of TKAM.
So, yes, I think that there should be a serious discussion about the shady dealings around the publication of GSAW, but I think we need to consider also how we look at posthumous publications and releases, and where to draw the line when considering the author’s or artist’s wishes in publication.
prguitarman
tangentwithtanner
