Publishers Lunch
The rediscovery and forthcoming
publication of Harper Lee's GO SET A WATCHMAN dominated Tuesday's cultural news
cycle, as excitement over the novel, said to have been written in the 1950s and
set 20 years after the events depicted in TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, was played
against some skepticism over Lee's current condition and how the manuscript was
found.
Two representatives from Lee's publisher Harper Collins shared thoughts and background with the media. Harper vp, publisher Jonathan Burnham told NBC the company "instantly read it, devoured it" while asserting his confidence the manuscript was, in fact, Lee's: "Everyone had believed it to been lost, including Harper Lee herself. You can see that it is written on a manual typewriter from the period. It has on the front of it the address where Harper Lee was living at the time in New York. But if you read the book, more importantly, only Harper Lee could have written this novel."
In an interview with Vulture, Lee's editor Hugh van Dusen said he had only learned of the manuscript's existence on Monday. "Other people have read it at Harper, but I haven't yet. The book had been a deep secret here, even to me." While the official release was vague about where the manuscript had been locked up, Van Dusen says, "The version I was told was that the book was in either a safe deposit box or a bank vault" -- which goes along with the theory of documentarian Mary Murphy that the new work was discovered in November after the death of Lee's sister Alice. "Miss Alice...had the original manuscript in a safety deposit box in a vault in the bank in Monroeville. I know this because Miss Alice told me this when I interviewed her."
Van Dusen noted, "If it has been edited, nobody's told me. It's the novel she wrote and showed to her editor at Lippincott, who didn't think it was the book Nelle should be writing. So Nelle wrote another book. I don't know this for a fact, but I doubt very much that anyone at Harper has edited it. My understanding is that it will be exactly what she wrote in the mid-1950s."
Van Dusen also clarifies, "There’s this rumor about her that’s been prevalent for decades that she’s a recluse, which is absolute nonsense.... She's not a recluse at all. She just doesn’t like publicity."
With Lee "getting progressively deafer and more blind, and that’s where things stand," van Dusen and Burnham both said that all of the publisher's contact with Lee was indirect, through her lawyer, Tonja Carter, and her foreign rights agent Andrew Nurnberg.
Nurnberg tolf the WSJ he did meet with Lee in mid-January for two days. He called her "feisty and extremely funny." Nurnberg indicated to the NYT that Lee "had discussed her reservations about the new book with him." He says: "She was a bit diffident at first and said, 'Is this really worth publishing right now?'" Nurnberg also indicated Lee rejected the idea of calling the discovered manuscript a sequel: As he recalled, "She said: 'This isn't the sequel. This is the parent to MOCKINGBIRD."
Two representatives from Lee's publisher Harper Collins shared thoughts and background with the media. Harper vp, publisher Jonathan Burnham told NBC the company "instantly read it, devoured it" while asserting his confidence the manuscript was, in fact, Lee's: "Everyone had believed it to been lost, including Harper Lee herself. You can see that it is written on a manual typewriter from the period. It has on the front of it the address where Harper Lee was living at the time in New York. But if you read the book, more importantly, only Harper Lee could have written this novel."
In an interview with Vulture, Lee's editor Hugh van Dusen said he had only learned of the manuscript's existence on Monday. "Other people have read it at Harper, but I haven't yet. The book had been a deep secret here, even to me." While the official release was vague about where the manuscript had been locked up, Van Dusen says, "The version I was told was that the book was in either a safe deposit box or a bank vault" -- which goes along with the theory of documentarian Mary Murphy that the new work was discovered in November after the death of Lee's sister Alice. "Miss Alice...had the original manuscript in a safety deposit box in a vault in the bank in Monroeville. I know this because Miss Alice told me this when I interviewed her."
Van Dusen noted, "If it has been edited, nobody's told me. It's the novel she wrote and showed to her editor at Lippincott, who didn't think it was the book Nelle should be writing. So Nelle wrote another book. I don't know this for a fact, but I doubt very much that anyone at Harper has edited it. My understanding is that it will be exactly what she wrote in the mid-1950s."
Van Dusen also clarifies, "There’s this rumor about her that’s been prevalent for decades that she’s a recluse, which is absolute nonsense.... She's not a recluse at all. She just doesn’t like publicity."
With Lee "getting progressively deafer and more blind, and that’s where things stand," van Dusen and Burnham both said that all of the publisher's contact with Lee was indirect, through her lawyer, Tonja Carter, and her foreign rights agent Andrew Nurnberg.
Nurnberg tolf the WSJ he did meet with Lee in mid-January for two days. He called her "feisty and extremely funny." Nurnberg indicated to the NYT that Lee "had discussed her reservations about the new book with him." He says: "She was a bit diffident at first and said, 'Is this really worth publishing right now?'" Nurnberg also indicated Lee rejected the idea of calling the discovered manuscript a sequel: As he recalled, "She said: 'This isn't the sequel. This is the parent to MOCKINGBIRD."
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