Nothing much occurred this weekend in the standoff between corrections, Miami Criminal Defense lawyers and FACDL (the Bermuda Triangle) except that we received more emails that corrections officers are giving lawyers a hard time about seeing their clients and are making snarky comments about this blog, and that FACDL has scheduled a meeting with two corrections officials pictured below who have promised to get to the bottom of this problem. Stand by.
 |
| These jailers will solve the problem, You can trust them. |
GO SET A WATCHMAN.
A writer's drafts are private. Period. They should not be published without the express consent of the writer.
Go Set A Watchman is a draft of To Kill A Mockingbird. Harper Lee submitted Go Set A Watchman (GSAW) in the 1950's. It was rejected but an editor told Lee that she was interested in the back stories of Scout and her father when Scout was a child.
Lee re-worked the book and from that To Kill A Mockingbird emerged. GSAW, while a novel, ended up as a draft of To Kill A Mockingbird.
Lee had more than 50 years to re-submit GSAW for publication for all the reasons people now want to read it. It's a good (not great) novel; it gives a fascinating insight to the construction of Mockingbird and an insight into the creative process of an author. All of these are wonderful reasons to want to read GSAW. But GSAW belongs to Harper Lee and she had more than fifty years to consider those reasons, and all the objective evidence is that she firmly and completely decided NOT to publish GSAW.
Now Lee is 89, a stroke in 2007 left her mostly deaf and blind, confined to a wheelchair and nursing home, with (an unscrupulous) attorney acting as her guardian, a lawsuit against her former literary agent over the copyright to Mockingbird and a fight with Lee's family over who will manage her finances. And against this backdrop some shyster claims to have stumbled upon the manuscript of GSAW?
This is not some great literary find of a lost novel from a great author. This is a novel rejected for publication that served as a draft for Mockingbird. Those close to Lee knew the story and the existence of GSAW as, obviously, did Lee, and the novel was not submitted for publication.
Oprah Winfrey wanted Lee on her show several years ago. Lee refused but eventually agreed to meet Winfrey for lunch. Lee explained that for most of her life when people met her they thought and wanted her to be Scout- the charming and precocious tomboy who narrates Mockingbird. But, as Lee explained, she really was Boo Radley, the mysterious and shy recluse who was mocked by the neighborhood children and misunderstood by most of the town (and played by a very young Robert Duvall in the movie).
The publication of GSAW amounts to nothing more than the exploitation of an elderly and incompetent author who, when she was at the height of her powers, and through her whole life, made a conscious decision to leave her first draft/rejected novel in the locker she stored it.
The rest of the world is going along with this horrendous exploitation of an elderly artist, but that doesn't mean you have to.
Leave Lee alone the way Boo Radley wanted to be left alone.
Don't buy the book.
See You In Court.
Excellent insight. Only on occasion do we agree, but this post was totally accurate based on my own informal inquiries. It is simply exploitation of an elderly woman at its absolute worst. Well done Mr. Rump for bringing this to the attention of the public!
ReplyDeleteI heard there were three Corrections Officers trying to solve the problem, and their correct picture is below.
ReplyDeleteWait a minute. Did you read it? And yet we shouldn't?
ReplyDeleteBut you bought it.
ReplyDeleteFrom listening to all of the news programs on Sirius, it was reported that her older sister (whom she looked up to) did not want her to publish it because she thought it to be an inferior novel. Her sister has since passed away.
The uproar over Atticus is, I imagine, unwarranted. It sounds as though he is a normal man with normal conflicts of right and wrong. Everyone, regardless of color or ethnicity, has prejudices and biases. Whether they vocalize them or not is the difference. However, anyone who says that they do not is either in denial, a liar or both.
So it appears that Atticus is human. I'll decide what I think of the quality of the writing after I have read the book - which I fully intend to do.
Who are you to tell people what to read?
ReplyDeleteI did NOT buy the book. Nor have I read it. I base my observations about it being a good but not great book based on the reviews. But I am urging people not to buy the book not based on content but based on the circumstances I have described.
ReplyDeleteThe problem at TGK was started as a result of the low life attorneys with slum offices west of the REG who are aligned with the scum bail bonds people.
ReplyDeleteNow that Judge Leifman has been awarded something for his mental health work, can we get to the more serious issue of his "red light camera ticket" ruling?
ReplyDelete