Althouse: "Since Atlanta, she had looked out the dining-car window with a delight almost physical."

July 10, 2015

"Since Atlanta, she had looked out the dining-car window with a delight almost physical."

"Over her breakfast coffee, she watched the last of Georgia’s hills recede and the red earth appear, and with it tin-roofed houses set in the middle of swept yards, and in the yards the inevitable verbena grew, surrounded by whitewashed tires. She grinned when she saw her first TV antenna atop an unpainted Negro house; as they multiplied, her joy rose. Jean Louise Finch always made this journey by air, but she decided to go by train from New York to Maycomb Junction on her fifth annual trip home. For one thing, she had the life scared out of her the last time she was on a plane: the pilot elected to fly through a tornado. For another thing, flying home meant her father rising at three in the morning, driving a hundred miles to meet her in Mobile, and doing a full day’s work afterwards: he was seventy-two now and this was no longer fair...."

So begins Harper Lee's "Go Set a Watchman," the first chapter of which you can read here. You can buy the whole book here, at Amazon, where it is #1 on the best-selling list.

36 comments:

Patrick said...: If this book is any good, it ought to put to rest those rumors that her first was actually written by Truman Capote.; 7/10/15, 7:30 AM
Lewis Wetzel said...: The quaint eccentricities of our literary class. Reading To Kill a mockingbird and imagining themselves as a new Atticus Finch, but this time bankrupting Christian Bakers and innkeepers who refuse to celebrate same sex marriages. Self-righteous and the conformist that Finch was not.; 7/10/15, 7:36 AM
rhhardin said...: She who. No antecedent.; 7/10/15, 7:41 AM
Tank said...: the pilot elected to fly through a tornado

I have no idea if this book will be any good, but that line is so stupid that it is the kind of thing that jolts you out of the story and makes you stop reading.

I am suspect of "Executors" and "Lawyers" releasing material that artists chose not to release during their lifetimes. This bleeds over into other art and music forms.; 7/10/15, 7:46 AM
MadisonMan said...: Planes cannot fly through tornadoes. Sheesh.

Like Tank says, that's the kind of thing that makes me not toss aside a book lightly, but throw it with great force.

No Editor, I'm guessing.; 7/10/15, 7:48 AM
Ann Althouse said...: "She who. No antecedent."

I think there are novels where a significant character is never named, always just a pronoun.

Anyway, the literary choice to do 3 sentences with the subject "she" before the 4th sentence with the character's name is... well, what do you think?

1. Evocative and expressive of the experience of a train journey into the character's past.

2. Cornball and old-fashioned.

3. Confusing and suggestive of the boredom that lies ahead.; 7/10/15, 7:49 AM
Ann Althouse said...: By the way, I hadn't thought of whitewashed car tires as lawn ornamentation in a long time.; 7/10/15, 7:49 AM
Etienne said...: whitewashed car tires

Mosquito (not the Spanish moquito) breeding grounds.
Went out of style with the Great Society and Medicaid.; 7/10/15, 7:57 AM
Etienne said...: fly through a tornado

A real editor would have replaced that with thunderstorm as several pilots attempt that many times a year.

Alas, there was no real editor, as this is just a scam book. #1 seller or not.; 7/10/15, 8:10 AM
Ignorance is Bliss said...: MadisonMan said...

Planes cannot fly through tornadoes. Sheesh.

I too found that jarring. I'd have to read more to determine if that is ignorance on the part of the author, or the author intentionally portraying the character as ignorant.

Either way the jarring remains.; 7/10/15, 8:18 AM
Ann Althouse said...: "'the pilot elected to fly through a tornado' I have no idea if this book will be any good, but that line is so stupid that it is the kind of thing that jolts you out of the story and makes you stop reading."

You have to make your choice:

1. The writer is an idiot.

2. The character is an idiot.

3. The writer indulges vivid overstatement.

4. The character is given to vivid overstatement and the writer intends this and intends to nudge you right away to understand that and to take it into account if you go on this journey.; 7/10/15, 8:29 AM
Ann Althouse said...: "If this book is any good, it ought to put to rest those rumors that her first was actually written by Truman Capote."

No. Only if it's good in exactly the same way "To Kill a Mockingbird" is good. And even not then.

With such a valuable manuscript, Harper (the publisher) had every reason to close whatever gap there was in writing style by using an editor who could perform the Capote role.

Is Capote so impossibly good that his editing work could not be matched?

By the way, I don't think "To Kill a Mockingbird" is that good. I wrote an article about it once, responding to a lawprof who took the position that Atticus Finch wasn't as good as he's cracked up to be.; 7/10/15, 8:35 AM
Mid-Life Lawyer said...: "4. The character is given to vivid overstatement and the writer intends this and intends to nudge you right away to understand that and to take it into account if you go on this journey."

Good catch on the tires. They were everywhere when I was a child (55 now)in West Tennessee but I haven't noticed any in a long time. They faded away. I do remember the talk about them being mosquito breeding ground.; 7/10/15, 8:41 AM
Alan said...: No non-suicidal pilot has ever elected to fly through a tornado. Not a good start.; 7/10/15, 8:46 AM
Alan said...: Oops; didn't see the earlier comments for some reason. Sorry.; 7/10/15, 8:47 AM
Patrick said...: Of course Atticus isn't as good as he's cracked up to be. He's pro-rape!; 7/10/15, 8:53 AM
dustbunny said...: Flannery O'Conner, a much better writer than Lee, always maintained that Mockingbird is a children's book. Also, I think Harper Lee had a story, but her friend Truman did the editing and gave it its poetry. The voice is so like that of his early stories.; 7/10/15, 8:54 AM
Patrick said...: The writing doesn't have to be good in exactly the same way, due to the gap between the two books. Lee's style can evolve somewhat, but you're right, it shouldn't be dramatically different. I enjoyed the book when I read it in high school.I still think it's a good story. It's been too long since I read it for me to comment on the quality of the writing.; 7/10/15, 8:58 AM
JackWayne said...: I wouldn't read this book on abet based on this little snippet of crap.; 7/10/15, 9:01 AM
Jim in St Louis said...: C’mon boys, you’re going to give up on a eagerly anticipated southern novel because ‘pilots would never elect to fly into a tornado’. Literalist minded Yankees may not understand, but southern people speak in metaphors like that, in a mixture of exaggeration and elaborate courtesy, but with a sense of humor too.

I read the first chapter and it sounds very interesting.; 7/10/15, 9:03 AM
Mid-Life Lawyer said...: The sniping about flying through the tornado is like criticizing someone for the tall man joke "How's the weather up there?" because everyone knows the weather is not different only 7 feet up. Surely we can give the writer a little more credit than that.

I read the first Chapter. It's difficult to block out the expectations at this point. It's hard to give it an honest read given the context and my excitement and wish for it to be great. But, I'm wanting to read the rest of it ASAP and I'm hopeful that it's, at least, good. There are good signs, little quirks, that make me believe it will be.; 7/10/15, 9:10 AM
MadisonMan said...: because everyone knows the weather is not different only 7 feet up

'Common Knowledge' is often wrong. The temperature change from 0 to 7 feet is huge on a sunny summer day.; 7/10/15, 9:18 AM
Etienne said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 7/10/15, 9:25 AM
traditionalguy said...: The white washed car tires are used as planters.

All prose from Harper Lee is as good to a trained southern ear. She talks around some things in a code that Yankees cannot crack.; 7/10/15, 9:25 AM
Ann Althouse said...: "Flannery O'Conner, a much better writer than Lee, always maintained that Mockingbird is a children's book."

It's young adult.; 7/10/15, 9:30 AM
Ann Althouse said...: I mean, "young adult" is the term that's used today.; 7/10/15, 9:31 AM
Jim in St Louis said...: "....a code that Yankees cannot crack."

Lol, I think you are right. Many people read TKAM and start looking for heroes and villains, but it’s more complex than that. Everyone in the book has good sides and not so good sides. I would disagree that it is a children’s or young adult. I think to a serious mind, it is a serious novel.; 7/10/15, 9:57 AM
Etienne said...: Flannery wasn't afraid to use the n-word. You won't find her in grade school libraries.

Course she died before Civil Rights under LBJ took off.; 7/10/15, 10:57 AM
Mid-Life Lawyer said...: It's young adult like Huckleberry Finn is young adult. Reread it twenty years from your young adulthood and it may surprise you.; 7/10/15, 10:58 AM
traditionalguy said...: OK, lets talk about Flannery OConner instead. She is the best southern writer...better than Faulkner.; 7/10/15, 11:17 AM
Deb said...: it ought to put to rest those rumors that her first was actually written by Truman Capote.

This was her first book. She wrote it before TKAM.

"Originally written in the mid-1950s, Go Set a Watchman was the novel Harper Lee first submitted to her publishers before To Kill a Mockingbird. Assumed to have been lost, the manuscript was discovered in late 2014"

http://www.harpercollins.com/9780062409850/go-set-a-watchman; 7/10/15, 11:54 AM
I Have Misplaced My Pants said...: Tone is all off. Doesn't have the wry, detached, arch feeling of TKAM.

Sounds--ugh--too female. In this paragraph, "Jean Louise Finch" sounds very like a teenage girl writing out the whole name of her character she's named something like "Gabriella Silver Moon" because she's pleased with the flowery sound of it. And the tornado thing sounds just silly and kitschy and whimsical, which is the farthest thing from TKAM that I can think of. It sounds like something that belongs in that book that all my women friends love but whose absurd title sets my teeth on edge every time I hear it: The Guernsey Literary And Potato Peel Pie Society or what the fuck ever. Or The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants. Barf.

Don't think I can read it.; 7/10/15, 12:31 PM
dustbunny said...: Young adult is probably more accurate but I don't think there was such a category when O'Conner said, "it's interesting that all the folks that are buying it don't know they are buying a children's book". O'Conner had a much harsher, totally unsentimental morality than the more conventional Lee; 7/10/15, 1:11 PM
Craig Howard said...: I have no idea if this book will be any good, but that line is so stupid that it is the kind of thing that jolts you out of the story and makes you stop reading.

I could easily imagine complaining that the pilot flew us through a tornado after some lightning-filled, storm-tossed flight. That you are complaining about that line indicates you suffer from what Ayn Rand would have called having a "concrete" mind.

That is, you lack the ability to think in abstracts. Thus, metaphors are meaningless and stupid. And, I suppose, poetry is beyond the cement pale.; 7/10/15, 6:52 PM
M Jordan said...: I taught TKAM for twenty-plus years.re-read it in part every year. I probably read it cover to cover fifteen times. I really liked it in my early teaching years, lost some but not all admiration in my mid-teaching years, regained almost full reverence in my twilight. Eight years out of teaching, I find aspects of it in my mind quite often. This to me is the mark of a truly meaningful work.

One thing that has struck me in recent years is just how conservative this book is. Harper Lee may have been a progressive southerner by most measures, but she was constitutionally a conservative. She favors the King James Version. She shows us the courageous side of Mrs. Dubose, an avowed racist. She registers compassion for rural rednecks -- but definitely not Bob Ewell. Atticus says its fine to shoot sparrows and other pesty birds, just not mockingbirds. Hence we shed no tears when Bob Ewell is killed.

The mad dog scene is allegorical depicting the town of Maycomb. It is sick with prejudice, not simply racism, but prejudice in general as the Boo Radley story shows us. The dog is first aimed towards the Radley place just as the first part of the story is. It turns toward Maycomb center where Atticus shoots him down. I think it's one of the finest pieces of self-referential symbolism ever, almost a parable.

To denigrate this book as young adult fiction is ridiculous. I love Flannery O'Connor but I do believe she was afflicted with some writer's envy.; 7/10/15, 10:51 PM
Unknown said...: traditionalguy said...
The white washed car tires are used as planters.

All prose from Harper Lee is as good to a trained southern ear. She talks around some things in a code that Yankees cannot crack.

-------

True enough. Michigan-born here, and when I skimmed "white washed car tires" I did not picture outdoor planters, but half-buried tires lining a driveway or other boundary.; 7/11/15, 6:27 AM