An Interview with Liz the Great

Full disclosure:  The love of words brought my late mom and Liz Kennedy together.  I'm glad Liz stayed in touch with me because she's someone I admire.  After taking her B. A. in English Lit. at Brown, she earned an M. S. at Emporia State University.  She's also been a teacher, a museum educator, a mom and for the last several years the resident expert in children's literature at the website, about.com.  Her column, (http://childrensbooks.about.com/) is a must-read if you want the skinny on current kid-lit.  She was kind enough to (virtually) sit down with me and talk about one of our favorite things : books.

Me:  Liz, you’ve created an amazing career as an expert in children’s literature.   What journey brought you to this point?

LK:  Serendipity and my love of reading and learning were factors. I love to read, libraries and bookstores are my favorite places, and I have a background in education. However, what particularly helped at the beginning is that I also knew html, which when I got started 15 years ago, was very important to writing for the Web. My husband taught me.

Me: What were your favorite books as a child?  Do you still re-read any of them now?

LK: My all-time favorite children’s book is The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. My mother gave me her copy of the novel, which is beautifully illustrated. It’s the first book I ever read that made me feel I was actually there - inside the story, experiencing what the characters were experiencing - an unforgettable feeling. I try to reread the book every year.

Me:  As an expert, you’ve written about hundreds of books.  Which ones made the biggest impression on you?

LK:I tend to be a visual person so particularly enjoy well-illustrated picture books and books, fiction and nonfiction, in which the author’s words create pictures in my mind of locations, characters, experiences, etc.

Me:  Children’s literature has changed over the years.  What are the trends you have noticed?

LK: There is an increased emphasis on more diversity in children’s books that I hope will result in more books that reflect the diversity we see in everyday life.

The definition of middle grade books is expanding; it used to be that publishers used “middle grade” to refer to books for ages 8 or 9 to 12, and “young adult” to refer to books for ages 12 to 18, but now many publishers are also referring to books for ages 10 to 14 as middle grade.

Me:   Let’s get out your crystal ball.  Any guesses about the future of children’s lit?

LK: I see a bright future, with books available in not one, but many, formats, including traditional books, audiobooks and eBooks.

I do, however, have a concern about funding for libraries. Public libraries are crucial to a literate population. For many children and families, they are their only source of books and book-related programs. Libraries are an important part of a community’s quality of life. Yet, too often, public libraries are woefully underfunded.

Me:       A big part of children’s literature comes from the joy of reading aloud.  Do you have any favorites or memories of books being read out loud?

LK: When I was five years old, my mother read me the first few Betsy-Tacy books by Maud Hart Lovelace, which I loved. I also loved reading aloud to my own kids and did so for a number of years, from Pat the Bunny and Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? to The Chronicles of Narnia.  

Me:  You’ve got two book-related wishes.  What kinds of books would you like to see more kids reading, and which literary character or writer would you like to have dinner with and why?

LK: 1. I’d like see kids reading more books for fun, books they want to read, rather than just books that have a certain number of AR points or that meet some other kind of arbitrary criteria.

2. I’d love to have dinner with author and illustrator Brian Selznick whose middle grade books have expanded the definition of “picture book.” I think he is a genius. His latest book, The Marvels, an amazing book, comes out in September and I’ll be reviewing it soon.

Thank you Liz for being my Mama's dear friend and for being a friend to everyone who loves books.

A Life, Warm and Brief as a Summer's Day

Not every great writer is a great human being.  We expect the people who touch our souls with their prose to be as wonderful as their words but sadly, that isn't always the case.  There are some writers whose work I admire, that I wouldn't want within a mile of me, alive or dead.  On the other hand, I wish I could have met the Oscar Wilde in Richard Ellmann's biography of that name.  Seldom has literary genius been paired with such a decent, gentle spirit.

It's hard these days to think of Wilde's life as anything other than tragedy.  There he is in his early years, telling the customs agent he "has nothing to declare but his genius." That was an example of Oscar's hyperbole and humor but it was also a statement of fact for this Oxford educated son of Ireland.  His moral code was based on aesthetics, not just because he believed in in the innate goodness of beauty but because his own instincts usually directed him to be kind.  His observations and plays outraged Victorian society but they were outrageously funny and stylish.  No one before had let the air out of English sails with such a perfectly poised jab of humor.  And, for all of the unconventional things Wilde wrote or said, in public he led a reasonably conventional life.  He enjoyed the luxuries of an upper class existence, including the wife and two small sons he adored.  As far as Victorian society cared to see, Wilde was only wild in thought.  He made them think a little and laugh a lot and they loved him for it. How could this kind, intelligent man, fall apart at the height of his fame?

Some men are ruined by falling for the wrong woman.  Oscar fell in love with the wrong man.  The gentle soul that wrote "The Selfish Giant" had probably always known he was gay although he'd tried to live as a straight husband and father.  Until the 1890's any man who shared an intimate part of his life understood the need for silence. Then Lord Alfred Douglas appeared, with his beautiful face and mediocre talent.  Oscar was infatuated, although he never quite forgot that his own success lay in his own hands.  Lord Alfred or "Bosie"'s future was bought and paid for with family money; Oscar knew his future depended on his efforts as an artist and he tried to be as fair as he could to his wife and sons.  Besides, no matter how beautiful he was, Bosie was only happy when he had churned life into a drama.  Oscar often needed a peaceful retreat where he could think and work.

When Bosie's father (the Marquess of Queensberry, famous for his boxing rules) described Oscar as "posing as a somdomite [sic]" Bosie insisted Oscar should sue for libel.  Other friends of Oscar argued a lawsuit would be disastrous since the statement was basically true, but Bosie insisted.  So, Oscar "took to the law" and Bosie's father proved his point with the testimony of some male prostitutes.  The legal bills took all of Oscar's earnings and the scandal meant no one would produce his plays.  Society's support for him disappeared.  The transcript of Oscar's civil suit became evidence in a criminal case against him.  The conviction cost Oscar his family, his health and two years of his freedom.  While Oscar served time in prison, Bosie traveled through Europe.

Ellmann's biography captures the personal and professional dedication that abided in Oscar Wilde's life even after his release from prison.  He and Bosie were reunited for a short time but the pressures that undermined their relationship before, undermined it again.  The banished and ruined genius moved to Paris and wrote what he could, correcting copies of his earlier plays and publishing "The Ballad of Reading Gaol".  He had lost the joy necessary for writing comedy but not his witty nature.  "My wallpaper and I are in a duel to the death" he said during one of his last outings. "One of us has got to go."  On November 30, at age 46, Oscar went, leaving behind the hideous wallpaper, one or two faithful friends, some brilliant work and two boys who no longer carried his name.  People who love laughter have mourned him ever since.

Several biographies of Wilde dwell on the salacious parts of his life, and a few focus on his Irish background.  Ellmann included those as well as the disciplined artist whose work was the result of toil as well as talent and the gentle human being who could forgive almost any slight to himself.  Ellmann's Oscar Wilde scooped a Pulitzer as well as a National Book Award and is considered the definitive biography.  It's a shame the biographer did not live long enough to enjoy the praise this book received.

Ellman's biography and it's subject are like a summer itself: warm, generous, and gone too soon.  Still, we can be grateful for their gifts of warmth and, in winter, dream of sun on green leaves.

Cooking with Words

God never meant me to cook good food.  When it comes to spices, herbs, flavors and proteins, I'm a major disaster.  I mean major.  My home economics teacher recognized this when I put tablespoons of oregano in her braised radishes instead of the teaspoons she specified.  (Who braises radishes anyway?) My husband figured it out the night I added sugar to the meatloaf instead of salt.  He thanked me for inventing meat cake and took me out for a burger instead.   The fact is, the kitchen never excited me as much as the printed page does.  So instead of cooking the regular way, I cook with words.

One thing I have learned is that Great Cooks aren't Born, They Are Made. Julia Child had to go to school, August Escoffier learned through an apprenticeship, and Justin Wilson was taught by his mother.  The same goes for cooking with words.  All writers start out as great readers, picking up skills by studying the best.  And like all students who've watched accomplished teachers, those would-be creators studied their texts,  picked up their tools and concocted....horrendous messes.  Good books and teachers can help you get started but nothing is a substitute for practice, practice, practice and lots of failure, failure, failure.

Maybe that's why, at the age of (ahem) fifty-six, the only dish I make well enough to serve is a hot cup of tea.  I've been a hot tea drinker since the age of twelve when my mom told me about living in England. Getting tea right means using good ingredients, proper proportions (water should be hot but not boiling) and a clean, warmed tea pot.  I made bad cups of tea until I could finally make good ones and now I make those in my sleep.  And while I am no Gordon Ramsay at the key-board, I've written so many five-paragraph essays, I can churn those out as well.  

A quick word about those ingredients, word-wise: nouns and verbs are your friends.  Action verbs with some zing to them (i.e. howled, scrape, slinging, etc.) are great spice words but use spice accordingly.  It should enhance the dish, not dominate it.  I think conjunctions must be alcohol and I'll probably need a twelve-step program for these, one day.  It's easy and fun to compare concepts by sticking them together with a conjunction but if you combine too many, the sentences get blurry. Be careful with conjunctions.  Like Humpty-Dumpty in Alice Through the Looking Glass, I find adjectives are fairly manageable words as long as they're spaced well apart.  Adverbs should be approached with great care as they can actually weaken a sentence.   If you've got a sentence drenched in words that end in "ly", take them all out and read the sentence again without them.  Is the sentiment still clear but stronger without all those adverbs?  If it is, don't say I told you so.

To become really good at anything requires a compulsive interest in the subject.  Great chefs don't create a brilliant dish once and then never make it again.  They analyze how and why that creation works and create variations or re-invent it as needed.  They know how to make a great plate of food, but they're always interested in making it better.   If you watch writers at work (which is so entertaining, your insomnia will be cured right away) they're just as obsessive about getting the rhythm right in each sentence and paragraph. This may look as productive as someone re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, but each sentence requires a lot of tinkering to make it sound just right  and they will re-read, re-write, and re-arrange their composition until they either give up, whimpering, or go back to rework it some more.  That's an obsession but sometimes OCD is required if you want to compose something worth seeing (or eating).

So, I'll never be much good in the kitchen, I think, except for a great cup of tea.  That's all right.  I respect the people who work there and improve the world with their art.  I'm grateful for what they do. In the meantime, you'll find me staring at a screen or piece of paper while phrases swirl round in my head.  Someday I'll serve and say "Bon appetit!"

The Right Book at the Right Time

There's a theory that people come into our lives to teach us what we need to know.  They may be people we like or dislike and we may not always care for their lessons but the knowledge we gain from them helps move us through our lives.  I like that theory but I think it needs to be expanded to include books.  Along with entertainment and education, the right book at the right time can change a person's future.  I'm still giving thanks for a book that came my way about twenty-five years ago.  I'll always be indebted to Pat Conroy for writing The Prince of Tides.

If anyone missed the announcements, Mr. Conroy writes stories about the perennial outsider.  Whether the focus is on a Marine's family readjusting to a new environment or the English Major in a military college, his people don't think they fit in the orderly pattern that makes up their world.  Because they don't fit, Outsiders tend to stay on the defensive. The first lesson in The Prince of Tides  is how defending yourself can cost you everything you care for in life.

Tom Wingo, the coach in The Prince of Tides has had good reason for living life in defense mode.  As a son, he suffered under a physically abusive father and an emotionally manipulative mother.  As a child of a poor family, he experienced the cold-hearted snobbery that exists in so many small towns. As an adult Southerner visiting New York, he now gets a lot of grief about his home.  In response, he's learned to hide his feelings behind a wise-cracking persona.  The problem is, that persona has walled him away from his wife and the children he loves.  Tom is a miserable, isolated man, in danger of losing his family, when his sister's psychiatrist asks for his help in understanding the childhood traumas he and his sister repressed.

Silence was part of the pattern of their dysfunctional family, making it hard to uncover the truth.  The silence their mother required meant no child could admit feeling pain or anger after being abused.  Tom's sister, Savannah, kept her anger inside until she turned it against herself.  Tom's anger simmers even in his humor, and it conflicts with his feelings of affection but that's because he still has something to learn.

The biggest lesson in The Prince of Tides is the necessity of forgiveness as a way for letting the anger go.  If silence creates an emotional infection and honesty is the lance, then forgiveness is the medicine that allows an abscess to heal.  Forgiveness doesn't mean forgetting some people are dangerous or giving them carte-blanche to cause more damage, but it does mean the victim is no longer a hostage to injuries or pain they endured long ago.  Forgiveness means living in the present and future by letting go of the sins in the past.

I haven't spoken of the lyrical beauty in this book's prose or the riveting plot and dialogue.  I should because I was swept away by these.  I haven't spoken about the brilliance or "deep Southern magic" that's present on every page.  I haven't spoken about a great many things that make The Prince of Tides a wonderful book.  Instead, I'll say that the book came along at just the right time for me.  For a year, The Prince of Tides became the book I needed until I started to absorb its lessons.  It was the book that helped me understand a conflicted past didn't have to dictate the future.  That lesson changed my life for good.

A Lesson in the Art of Reading

I learned to read  because of envy.  Some little girl in my pre-kindergarten class walked in one day, waving a Little Golden book like it was a fan. During show-and-tell she read aloud to the class.  The teachers all went nuts.  How smart she was, how sweet she was and wasn't she wonderful to entertain the other children?  Phooey. A show-off in a pinafore is what she was and I wasn't interested in being her audience.  I buckled down to understanding the Little Bear books Mom had been reading aloud and soon there were two readers in my Pre-Kindergarten. With a little help from Dr. Seuss, I left Blondie behind in the dust. Since then, I've read most things with ease.

The thing is, even a talent for reading won't make every book easy and some worthwhile works require effort.  I found that out in high school when we were assigned Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard" and all those Russian characters were confusing me.  That is also where I learned the single greatest reading trick.  When you sit down to read a challenging work, have something close you can write on.

Let me go back to "The Cherry Orchard"

This play may be instantly comprehensible to people who grew up in Russia but it can drive American teenagers crazy.  Almost every character has at least three names and they were usually referred to by at least two of them.  We couldn't even pronounce the lines, much less make sense of the plot.  So our teacher had us create a page for each character and write everything we learned about them on their particular page. (Always short of notebook paper, I put 3 or 4 on a page).  At any rate, as I learned things about the characters, I added data to the collections of notes, drawing arrows from one entry to another as I memorized the relationships between them.  (Lyubov mother to> Anya is an example).  It was slow going at first, since I was writing down everything, but pretty soon I was writing down my impressions as well (Is Yasha fooling around with Lyubov?  He'd better not, he's dating Dunyasha!)  and the characters were coming to life.  Fairly soon I could remember all the characters and I didn't need to rely on the notepad.

That practice served me well a few years ago when J. K. Rowling published The Casual Vacancy.   After her like-able and easy to read Potter series, The Casual Vacancy was an unwelcome surprise to those who secretly expected all of her books to be charming.  Instead there was a huge cast of unpleasant people trying to manipulate each other.  A lot of readers gave up.  Me, I'm stubborn so I got out the old steno pad and started making notes.  By a third of the way through I could see where the author was going  (she has a huge social conscience) and I didn't need the pad any more.  Now when I can't keep focused on the text, out comes the  pencil and paper.

A lot of people think reading should be easy, and popular literature follows that mantra, but some really good books require effort. If you want to try something a bit more sophisticated but you're having trouble keeping up with the characters, break out the pencil and paper.  Give big characters a page of their own where you can write about them, allow extras to share a page.  Write down what you know, and draw arrows or underline until you understand what's going on.  And if you see my English teacher, Mr. Schultz, tell him the old technique still works.

The Past We Leave Behind

I remember a few things about my first trip to Disneyland.  I loved riding the flying elephants with my Dad and I screamed all the way through the Sleeping Beauty castle, terrified that Maleficent would appear.  I don't recall much more of that day but memories are like overstuffed closets; if you pull out one or two items, you'll be surprised what you'll find underneath.

The hero in The Ocean at the End of the Lane  has similar holes in his memories.  He's driving down roads he doesn't remember to a childhood home destroyed long ago.  Some neighbor ladies remember him and, at his request, take him to a duckpond  behind their farmhouse.  He stands by the pond, remembers someone called it "an ocean" and the memories crash in like a wave.

Water's important in this story, as is memory, and all the things we don't know.  As a child, our hero knows he was lonely but he doesn't know what makes loneliness bad.  So, other children play with each other while he stays inside and reads books.  What's wrong with that?  His parents said they've lost their money but what he knows is they've rented out his bedroom; he's not really aware of all the stress this puts on the family.  He knows the new babysitter is evil but his parents and sister can't see that.  Only the neighbor ladies named Hempstock seem to understand everything.  How old these women really are or  or how they tend our fragile world is another unknown but our hero knows they're the people he needs when he lets an "Other" into our world.  Only the Hempstocks can save him or the world and they'll need their duck-pond ocean.

Part of the charm of this book comes from the idea that a child may have a truer vision than an adult.  Any adult worth their junior high science classes know there are very few inland oceans and none the size of a duck pond.  Yet, a seven year old has the imagination to see beyond the facts.  Who has the clearer vision, the adult whose memory has been drilled out and re-stuffed with knowledge or the youngster who sees the magic and potential all life conveys?  Does the adult forget because he's seen so much or because he blocks out what he lost as a boy? 

Gaiman is one of those amazing authors that writes for multiple age groups and in different formats.   The Ocean at the End of the Lane could be read aloud to children but it's story for adults, at least adults who like a bend in reality.  Read it and see what memories come out of your closet.

Lessons I've learned in Writing No. #1: Forget about Giving Up.

Picasso's Don Quixote

If there’s a central bit of advice I’ve heard or can give, it’s “Don’t Give Up.”  Don’t give up working, don’t give up trying, and don’t give up on anything if it gnaws at your soul.  If you want to put something new into the world, you have forget giving up.

Successful people know, first hand, how hard it is to succeed.  The process involves a lot of failure and mistakes and they developed the fortitude to keep trying until they got it right. Once, I was disheartened to read F. Scott Fitzgerald rewrote some pages twenty times; now I wonder how he made his prose that good after only nineteen revisions.  To make something of quality takes a kind of tenacity comparable to OCD.  If you want to make something good, get used to the work it involves.  Don’t Give Up.

It takes another type of resilience to find the people interested in publishing your work.  There are all kinds of venues looking for creative people but few of them will be interested in you.  Your precious creation will be too long, too short, too old-fashioned, too avant-garde and mostly not what they’re looking for.   Your ego has to be strong enough to withstand all that rejection but open to honest criticism when it comes your way.  That’s a hard balance to achieve but it’s necessary for you to eventually find the people who will take a chance on your work. They're out there, keep trying to find them.

The time you use to create is important but it’s not the only part of your life.  Most people have family, a job and friends.  We have responsibilities to our world and to others.  Sometimes the work you do for yourself will feel like a self-invented taskmaster that isolates you from life and love.  Everyone in your social media circle will be doing something with someone, somewhere; and you’ll still be alone, tied to the work.  Under these circumstances, do you wonder why every creative person hasn’t already quit?

Well, they probably have at one time or another.  Quitting is an easy thing to do.  Staying quit is not.  The need to create and communicate is a drive that must be regularly tended or it makes its victim miserable.  Ignoring it or medicating it with sweets leads to self-hate and a lot of extra pounds. 

So, if you’re driven by the urge to create, you have my sympathies.  There's a treatment, if no cure. The treatment is to continue creating, despite doubt and the certainty of rejection. Commercial success is beyond your control but you can figure out why that sentence won’t work.  Fix it, a word at a time, and then go to the next.   Keep working.  Keep trying.  Keep tilting at windmills. Don’t quit. Never give up.

Love & Death in a New England Summer

There are stories that pass through your brain and leave, unnoticed and unmissed.  Others are  like summer romances that hold you until there's a change in the weather.  And there are stories you find by chance that stay with you forever.  I've been rereading Bag of Bones for fifteen years now and I believe I've fallen in love to stay.  That's good because love is a driving force in this book, along with death and in a New England summer.

Stephen King turned into a writer sometime while my back was turned.  A first, he was a commercial success and a critic's nightmare come true.  I couldn't stand his early prose, so I ignored him.  Then one August day I was combing the shelves, craving a good ghost story.  (Ghost stories and haunted houses are DOCs of mine.)  This book was on the shelf and I was desperate enough to try anything, even a book by Stephen King.  It hit like a tidal wave.

Mike and Joanna Noonan have the marriage we lesser mortals crave.  They like and understand each other and she knows when to deflate his ego.  Not that Mike needs much deflating.  He's one of King's Everymen, a decent, sensible guy who happens to write for a living.  These two likeable people should have given each other decades of joy and a couple of kids.  Bag of Bones could have been called, "Lives that Should have been."

Because Joanna Noonan is dead on page one and Mike is left alone.  His ability to write packs up and leaves shortly after her funeral.  Now, Stephen King published thirty-three novels in the quarter century before Bag of Bones but somewhere along the way he learned about writer's block.  It's real and it's hell and he captures that pain on the pages of this book. Without his wife or the ability to work, our hero is a man without focus.

Luckily, he still has a few things left to love, like his summer home "on the TR" and reading.  If anything, Bag of Bones is a book-lovers book.  It cites authors from Melville to McDonald and is tied, through multiple references to Rebecca (one of my all-time, hands-down, favorites)  After four years of grief, Mike returns to the summer home he and his wife loved so well.  That's when the bad stuff really starts.

One issue pertains to the nice girl down the road and her toddler daughter, Kyra.  Mike gets caught in the cross-fire of a custody battle between the girl and  her terrible father-in-law.  That's bad but Mike's bigger problem are the people in his house.  You could say Mike's not living alone, except he's the only one in the house that's alive.  These problems and others keep him on the place and in the bulls-eye of unending curse.  To survive and save someone he loves, Mike must unearth the secrets that holds the TR in its grip and he'll find out which forces really survive death.

Lyrical in places and perfectly paced, Bag of Bones turned me into a fan.   If you pick it up now, you'll read it at the height of the summer, the perfect time for this story.  Read it in the woods, or by the lake but don't read it when you're alone.  It's too easy to believe in ghosts when you're book-deep in a summer's night.

A Tale of Two Orphans

Everyone, from my college advisor on down, will tell you I love tales with orphan heroes.  You name them: Oliver Twist, Harry Potter, Tensy Farlow, the Baudelaire children, I fell in love with each and every one of those books. (Well, I hated the ending of the Baudelaire series, but that's another story.)  The thing is, there are orphans and then there are orphans and they aren't really alike.  To explain what I mean, look at one of the most famous kid books to come out of the 19th century: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

You can't get past the first page without learning Tom's parental status. Aunt Polly's first soliloquy says, "he's my own sister's boy, poor thing, and I ain't got the heart to lash him."  So, Tom is an orphan but he doesn't really fit the mold.  Orphan heroes are usually vulnerable kids who miss the love and security of a stable home.  They tend to grow up fast because they have to and any tendency toward mischief has been knocked right out of them.  Can you think of anyone less like that than Tom Sawyer?

Tom and his siblings may be orphans but they've never lacked a home or love because of the redoubtable Aunt Polly. (Twain describes her as old but I'll bet Aunt Polly's not that much past thirty; living with Tom ages a woman).  Because of this secure grounding, Tom's a king in his own home town.  He struts around, confident of his place in the world, bossing other boys or showing off for Becky Thatcher.   The world is his and he knows it.  Of course, Tom's chutzpah is another reason to like the brat (His explanation for forcing patent medicine down the cat's throat is almost as funny as the cat's reaction) but he doesn't fit the mold of an orphan does he?

His side-kick, Huck does.  Huckleberry Finn is a pariah among the respectable citizens of Saint Petersburg.  He wears rags and calls no shelter home.  Some nights, he probably goes to sleep hungry.   But Huck Finn is not an orphan, at least not in this book.  Pap, Huck's father is the town drunk and although he's abandoned his son, the town assumes a living parent keeps a child from needing aid.

 Huck and Tom complement each other but either one would tell you, Tom's always the leader.  He's the one who decides they should search for treasure or what Pirate Names they should have.  Huck is the logistics man, finding and lifting the tools and going along with the game.  In his own novel, Huck shows he's pretty good at coming up with ideas on his own and he's even better at executing them but all of Huck's projects are a means to a practical end.  Unlike Tom, he never starts something, for the "glory" of it.  Huck is a serious boy in a serious world and in his own book, he shows true nobility.  But by then, Huck is really an orphan.

In the end, there is no choice between these two wonderful characters.  But as Mark Twain, himself wrote, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is the history of a boy and he ended it before it became the history of a man.  Tom, with the security of his home and family has the limitations and and irresponsibility of a boy and, despite his daring and adventures, a boy is what he remains.  Huck Finn, after years of isolation and freedom finds the structures of civilization hard to abide.  The true orphan is more than half way to becoming completely grown.

Both Sides Now: What We Learn from Go Set A Watchman

Because Harper Lee's "other" book, To Kill A Mockingbird has been read and loved by so many people over the last half century, the release of her Go Set A Watchman has received the hype and fever of a Harry Potter book release.  In a way, that's appropriate.  One of the themes in J. K. Rowling's series is how a person's perception of  people and events changes as they receive more information.  Go Set a Watchman challenges everyone who thinks they know everything about To Kill a Mockingbird.  If you don't like surprises, shut this page down now.  There are Spoilers Dead Ahead.

Watchman is the story of young adult reevaluating her past.  Jean Louise is Southern by birth but a New Yorker now by choice.   Like others who start adult life in a new location, she finds visiting home a bit difficult.  Still, she looks forward to spending time with Atticus, the father she's worshiped all of her life.  Then Jean Louise hears the political opinions of her adored  father and falls into shock.  Atticus sees southern black people as a group without the sophistication and education necessary to handle the privileges of citizenship responsibly.  He fears their full enfranchisement and resents the actions of the Supreme Court rather than of admit that continuing injustice made the rulings necessary.  Jean Louise's task in Watchman is to reconcile the justice loving father she recalls with the flawed, ill man she's seeing now.

This reenactment of the Oscar Wilde's aphorism about children loving their parents, then judging them and occasionally forgiving them has created the biggest brouhaha since Rowling announced Albus Dumbledore was gay.  Outraged devotees and twitter trolls are either denouncing Watchman as an imitation of Miss Lee's work or announcing their intention to boycott the new publication.  The two novels, placed side by side prompt the question: Will the real Atticus Finch please stand up?

Jean Louise's heartache in Watchman underscores that these two men are one and the same; she and the times have changed.  The Atticus of Depression-era Mockingbird is a member of the privileged minority with the right to hold office, sit on a jury and vote.  At the time, these activities were reserved for white males. From this powerful position he tried to help a vulnerable black man, and won the esteem of his children.  By the 1950's, the Civil Rights Movement was picking up speed.  Instead of one black man needing Mr. Finch's help, a entire population of black people are demanding respect and the power to help themselves.  They don't accept Atticus as an authority and neither does his daughter.  Fear of a future he cannot control has turned a lawyer-saint to a flawed, resentful man. 

Thus, the father remembered by the six-year old Scout is the same man who argues with his grown daughter, Jean Louis.  Her understanding of him expands as she incorporates this negative information.  This process is always difficult when it shows loved ones have serious flaws but it brings a fuller, subtler knowledge of the person and a test: how do we love and honor people who do and say things that we hate. To continue the relationship, we have to accept that we love imperfect people.

The fact is Watchman is as imperfect as the Atticus Finch. It has the same wry observations, the tendency to describe matters in legal terms as Mockingbird but it lacks the incisive storytelling and pitch-perfect prose.  Mockingbird's phrases and paragraph are blocked out so anyone reading it aloud knows the exact moment to take each breath. Some of the sentences in Watchman don't know when to stop, and at times, the plot meanders.  Comparing the books, side by side, is a rare insight into the arts of revision and editing.  Yes, Harper Lee's editor changed the book completely by getting her to shift the focus.  However the result was a novel, adored for its transcendent beauties.

Still, it must have been difficult for the author, in the intervening years, to remember the story she sacrificed in crafting a classic.  The result was beautiful but it removed the author's original statement about the real Atticus Finch.  For decades she endure paroxysms of praise for a man she knew to be flawed and, because the original manuscript was missing, she had to keep her mouth shut.  No wonder Miss Lee stipulated Watchman would only be published if no one asked her to rewrite it.  The story she really wanted to tell would be heard, for good or for ill.  And, as good as Mockingbird is, it reduced the story she wanted to write to a near allegory.

Perhaps Mockingbird's initial impact occurred because of the simplicity in its story.  In the middle of the 20th century, notions of segregation was so ingrained that people only revised their opinions when faced with an scenario that made the answer inescapable.  This kind of presentation is fine but it robs the key characters of the fallibility of real people. Tom Robinson and Atticus aren't characters as much as martyr and saint.  The same complaint could be leveled Sidney Portier's character in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner.  His John Prentice had to be the perfect prospective son-in-law in order to underscore the point: no one should be included or excluded based solely on the color of their skin.

So, as beautiful as it is, To Kill a Mockingbird is a story of childlike simplicity, compared to the messier and uneven Go Set a Watchman.   That doesn't mean we shouldn't continue to love the first book.  It just means, to grow up, we need to accept real people aren't as simple as the characters in fairy tales.  We owe a debt of gratitude to the woman who has shown us both sides of her story and who was brave enough to let us glimpse the incredible work involved in creating a classic tale.  Maybe we're finally grown up enough to appreciate her gift.