Go Set a Watchman

To Kill a Mockingbirdの作者Harper LeeによるGo Set a Watchmanがいよいよ明日発売になります。ニューヨークタイムズでは書評をさっそく載せています。To Kill a Mockingbird未読の人はまずこちらを読んだ方がよさそうな感じです。。。To Kill a Mockingbirdの方はKindleで391円で読むことができます。

Review: Harper Lee’s ‘Go Set a Watchman’ Gives Atticus Finch a Dark Side
JULY 10, 2015
By Michiko Kakutani

In “Mockingbird,” Atticus was a role model for his children, Scout and Jem — their North Star, their hero, the most potent moral force in their lives. In “Watchman,” he becomes the source of grievous pain and disillusionment for the 26-year-old Scout (or Jean Louise, as she’s now known).
While written in the third person, “Watchman” reflects a grown-up Scout’s point of view: The novel is the story of how she returns home to Maycomb, Ala., for a visit — from New York City, where she has been living — and tries to grapple with her dismaying realization that Atticus and her longtime boyfriend, Henry Clinton, both have abhorrent views on race and segregation.
Though “Watchman” is being published for the first time now, it was essentially an early version of “Mockingbird.” According to news accounts, “Watchman” was submitted to publishers in the summer of 1957; after her editor asked for a rewrite focusing on Scout’s girlhood two decades earlier, Ms. Lee spent some two years reworking the story, which became “Mockingbird.”

To Kill a Mockingbirdというタイトルにかけて、To sell a Mockingbird sequelというカバーストーリーを載せたのはBusiness Week。木の葉っぱがドル紙幣になっていて金の亡者になってしまったことをにおわせています。

To sell a Mockingbird sequel. A story about Harper lee, her lawyer

晩年のこの時期の発表にelder abuseではないかと心配されたのですが、実情を探りに地元を取材したレポートで作品そのものとは関係ありません。本人の意思なのかはっきりしませんが、彼女の弁護士が著作権のことなどうるさくいうようになって博物館などにも使用禁止を求めるようになった様子を描いています。

What Does Harper Lee Want?
The author’s second novel, written before To Kill a Mockingbird, is the most preordered book in her publisher’s history. It’s also a book she vowed never to publish
By Claire Suddath
July 9, 2015

抜粋した部分は作品の舞台となったMonroevilleが観光地となっている様子を描いた部分です。

Monroeville is 100 miles from Montgomery, 160 miles from Birmingham, and several bars short of good cell phone reception. And yet every year about 30,000 people travel from all over the world to walk its streets, climb its old courthouse steps, and experience the real-life version of the town called Maycomb in To Kill a Mockingbird. This literary legacy has allowed Monroeville to avoid the grim fate of other dusty towns where manufacturing jobs have vanished. Everything here panders to tourists: There’s the Mockingbird Inn & Suites, Radley’s Fountain Grille (named after the character Boo Radley), and Lee Motor Co., with a mockingbird painted on its white brick wall.

ニューヨークタイムズの書評によるとGo Set a Watchmanは編集者にリライトを要求される前のTo Kill a Mockingbirdのようで人種差別的な内容のようです。なぜ今？しかも、評価が上がらないというのをわかっていながら？と疑問が残ります。Businessweekが報じた今回の動きと合わせるとむしろ彼女の本性はこちらに近いのかもしれない、作られた偶像的な部分ではなく本音をさらしてこの世を去りたいのかとワイドショー的な感想を持ってしまいました。