Shock of Harper Lee’s ‘Go Set a Watchman’ is that iconic liberal

Jem is gone (sorry!), Scout is grown and now known as “Jean Louise”, Atticus is ailing with rheumatoid arthritis and stoically taking “seventy grams of aspirin a day, and that’s all”.

But the publication on Friday of the first chapter by The Wall Street Journal and Guardian newspapers, and an audio version by Oscar-winning actress Reese Witherspoon, whetted appetites – and had reviewers both salivating and sharpening their knives.

Chapter 1 is available online in a few places.

Reported by a review in the New York Times, Finch appears in “Watchman” as an elderly man who once attended Ku Klux Klan meetings.

The title comes from The Bible passage Isaiah 21:6, “For thus hath the Lord said unto me, Go, set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth” and was the original intended title for “To Kill a Mockingbird“, according to AL.com.

The book, reportedly written in the 1950s and later reworked on her editor’s suggestion to become the famed “To Kill a Mockingbird“, sees Finch return, but this time as a bad tempered, elderly racist, rather than the calm and liberal rationalist exemplified by Gregory Peck’s performance in the 1962 film adaptation.

Harper astonished the literary world in February when it announced it would publish a book that only a few people knew existed.

“How could the saintly Atticus – described in early sections of the book in much the same terms as he is in “Mockingbird” – suddenly emerge as a bigot?” Miss Alexandra has to tie his shoes and button his shirts when they’re like that.

The release of Lee’s new novel isn’t without a few debate or controversy.

HarperCollins said the manuscript had been recently re-discovered by her lawyer and in a statement released by HarperCollins, Lee said she was “humbled and amazed” that it would be published.

Debate over the discovery and Lee’s willingness to publish of the manuscript involves lawyers, confidentiality on behalf of Harper Collins, the publisher, and much more.

An Alabama government department even opened an investigation into whether Lee had been coerced or abused into publishing the book.

“Watchman” is Lee’s second book, and the first one that she has authored in more than 50 years.