Transcripts For CSPAN2 After Words 20240622

Lee and the controversy surrounding the recent discovery of her manuscript go set a watch band which was written before to kill a mockingbird but never published. Interviewed by tucker of Washington Post magazine. Your fly into montgomery on the interstates you interstate hugo about an hour and a half south, you take it right, go a little while and come across a very nondescript little town courthouse absolutely unremarkable yet it is one of the most famous literary towns in america and the center of the summers biggest book go set a watchmen. Tell us what you find there. Guest you find a town in alabama that hasnt changed too much from harper lees description. Watch out for the armadillos coming into town and the kfc is a dead ringer. They thought they didnt need the old one anymore and now of course its been restored when you walk in its like a church. People talk in hushed tones and it is a sure eye i into the american jurisprudence and no actually it is a shrine to the American Literary culture thats probably the best thing about the town. There is no museum or reconstructed home. The bricks are still there and some of the boundary walls to the house. But there is a plaque out front and a yard and its right next to the house. The wall separating the Properties Tree menus to turn cartwheels on is still there. But at the time it seems almost reluctant to embrace that its the southern concorde. And its a different tone from oxford which also has the courthouse in the square and is a shrine but its a small southern town theme park. Its almost perfectly preserved and extremely nice. Its still stuffy around the corners. They are facing each other like the dueling opponents. Harper lee hasnt been eager to cooperate promoting to kill a mockingbird or her personal history and the last two events included threatening to sue, the little Historical Society there, so she is not anxious to piggyback on the limelight which raises the question of why now. Host butts jump right ahead to watchmen because as we will talk about later in the hour, thats the buck when she left home and went to new york to write thats actually the book she wrote. Mockingbird involved in the editing process so whats my name this summer is the first book she wrote when she turned it into her editors. But its at the center of a controversy because she said im not going to publish another book. And her sister was a longtime caretaker. And theres then theres a story how the manuscript was miraculously found. There was a second novel but if it were going to be published with the after her death and here comes the buck during her lifetime this is like attending the creation story the attorney tells is. Shes going through. There comes a manuscript with go set a watchmen. What is this . It had been stolen. Now thats what happened to the manuscript or the novel that harper lee was working on in the second novel supposedly. We had a break and was stolen. Somebody made off with a ream of paper. But that deposited in the law offices and its been there all this time and now that alice lee is gone the skeleton key has been found. They always wanted it published and when alice wasnt in charge anymore what do you think happened there . Guest as it is typical in all families, it is the competition of sibling. Alice was a very conservative woman, and about 17 years older than her older sister and as a result, she saw herself as a surrogate parent and he was always extroverted and a little bit bohemian in their appearances, and alice for all of her life served as the buffer so i have to think there is a certain ounce of joy at last publishing the book alice would never let her publish. There could be a number of reasons. Playing mindreader here are the first reason could be that was the first effort by a young novelist and has the earmarks of the first effort by the young novelist. So, they assured us they havent edited this book at all, which seems sort of fantastic to me. Shes in new york a young writer working at an airline agency. Then she furiously furiously writes turning in 50 my 50 or 70 pages every week or so and this is the manuscript that was in the original title. When they thought they didnt even make an offer on it. And at one time she was telling people she was working on a novel called atticus. So any creative endeavor when youre writing fiction, things go through iterations whether it is a working title idea leave to kill a mockingbird went through three different voices. Firstperson, third person and we go through the combination of the two with jean believes in her 30s looking back. You can see we will read in just a second you can see the editing process. It was set in contemporary times that would have been the 50s or 60s. Guest it is a nice way of getting into the story. They are talking about those now bygone days. Exactly. He is the watchmen standing guard and it does actually show up. So with the editing process was which was extensive. There was a lot of work and as Everybody Knows they have a precocious trip sort of like nash was out the korean war and mockingbird is taking the 1930s but what he was talking about is the racial turmoil. This is an extensively. They come come within a old town that was come with an old account of the tie your old town that when i first knew it. They talk about the live oaks on the square. That is the adult shes walking back reminiscing. This is just a straight from the original. If you tell the story from the Vantage Point of a 9yearold girl. They are not going to overhear the conversation on things like that but if you can take an adult in the wisdom in hindsight the children get put into some dangerous circumstances with the mob running her backyard that might. But they ensure that is the summer and that is when they met there is the adult narration. Exactly. Its an adult narration to the film so its good to be interesting. She told him that to kill a mockingbird was i think what it called together from an earlier manuscript and the priest and in short stories set in that the time that made good chapters on their own. When atticus found out about it he told him to go down there and read to her. That is a short story and you know what it was just pulled out of the film. It just fits in the overall. Was great sitting in a safe deposit box and i never politely i dont know that i believe that creation. She had a difficult time after mockingbird came out she wanted to publish another book. She worked very hard. There was one of the most successful books in the american halfcentury at that point and it sort of dogs on nobody to go publish it. Year after year the publication to kill a mockingbird in all caps and this is they would like to have a brother or sister. Anxiously awaiting your friend. The little brother and sister was available. Particularly now struggling. We see what the sequel to that and maybe just spruce it up a little bit. There is nothing out there if you ever hear of any evidence that they worked on in that manuscript. Theres nothing free floating out there called the long goodbye but that could just be working titles. But all all he knows there is a large manuscript called the watchmen. It was kind of an inculcated in the 1980s and she schooled herself away and her sister louise and worked in the inventory is case for the reverend who was the beneficiary from the insurance policies and the people turned up dead. The attorney kept getting more and they got fed up. At the funeral as well as the victims, something from chicago stood up in the congregation and shot him dead. But what the what the wall couldnt achieve the old went out the window. So with the 300 witnesses nobody saw anything. They kept asking and passed away without a fight with her having been returned. Drugs and alcohol became an independent old friend and she was already in her 60s when she helped with two kill a mockingbird where she retired from the business and they had other fish to fry so to speak. So by the mid1970s it was off the road and its make or break time. And she was financially comfortable. She didnt have to come it just extremely simply which is the most nondescript ranch or. Nothing would suggest youre going down the street looking for harper lees house. She asks this straightforward way. Its not necessarily true that shes a recluse. Most of the time she was living in new york. So they write about the people in that region. And her birth circle is very small and. So they had written i have no idea why she moved up here. They pointed out why things were made at different and she was a baseball fan and have a close female friend at the new yorker and they would go to ballgames together and when somebody invited her in the town manhattan she said i might never come down there. Its too wild. [laughter] shes not living high on the hog. But she was never about the money. This is about a great man in a small town and is a more powerful scene when he loses the case so when hes packing up and walking out everybody in the gallery stands up and the minister says standup, your father is passing. That is a wonderful line. Hes the alltime best. Hes the number one here hero host we will come back to that in a second. In the conspiracy theories when you go down there to try to meet harper lee it looks like the town in mississippi that i grew up in it is a dead ringer. Thats where i grew up and everything is the same until you mentioned two words, harper lee. Host that was your experience but then everything changes . Guest normile the question is you are not from around here, are you . So there were several strikes around me. I was beginning to snoop. Weve seen your kind before. But there is a remarkable thing that goes on that when you go down there the word goes out everywhere. You dont youre talking to. And at and then if you ask one person by the time you get to the second person everybody in town knows youre here and there is an agreement on whether or not anybody is going to talk to you. Guest there was guest there was a lady that i talked to one time and she said that it makes top and here i was talking to one gentleman on the square and another one walked up to the end it was almost sort of prearranged to the hype is introduced to this man and he was a judge and said lets go back to my chambers and then he grilled me on why i was in town and what i expected to find. Host was he appointed by anyone to have that position or just asserting himself like im sort of the unofficial gatekeeper . Guest right. They are pleasant and everything like that and then theres the enforcers and your dogs that get after you. In fact he went down a number of years ago ran around enjoying what they were doing and seeing and a scene and then he invited him over to the restaurants and a couple ladies passed and waved to people in after they were gone this fellow said that was harper lee. [laughter] there are two interesting relationships in the town. There is the second book and then whether or not she likes him that much. [laughter] if you notice, in mockingbird everyone has this fantastic opinion but its a nice love letter to the southern town. But in a letter to her dad if you notice in the book virtually no adult other than the sheriff at the end is nice or decent. It is a town that wrongly convicts him of raping a woman and then the mob comes to take care of him and its terrifying. Guest the people are the biggest hypocrites in the town. But on the other side of the tracks are people that need help. He has to present hes a drunk industry out of a paper bag but no one will accept the fact that hes married to a black woman. Must be an alcoholic. She who didnt like the town went to new york except to come home and visit family and friends. We didnt get the sense it is a very touchy little relationship. I dont think she cared for at the town the town very much. She was glad to be gone. Guest harper lee doesnt just critique people in town. She makes it clear that it runs in human blood. I mean when the person that takes care to extend to her church she plans than in and says what are you doing here and its a showdown about bringing these children into the church. So theres that kind of suspicion running on all sides we dont have saints and sinners, we have people affected by the circumstance. Getting to new york harbor we couldnt have written to kill a mockingbird unless she went to new york because living in that town she had a limited perspective and then she gets to new york what does she see . Hears people with different kind of dress. Its a very diverse environment and the fact that one of the first stopping point of anybody coming from that side of the world so she looks back over her shoulder and what does she see a town that is set in its ways in the convert zone of never changing things. So it was that new perspective that allowed her to write this book. But i think she would have been happy to stay away. It was her sister that suggested she come back regularly because it was a family obligation and why should she be left holding the bag . The mother was unwell coming up shortly after the in shortly after the publication of detail in mockingbird began to decline the argument was her name was bare and i think that is wellchosen. But she retired of all the business connected with family life and want her sister to come down and show her some of the burden. Host friends will tell you that shes very ordinary once youre inside that person that we talked about apparently very nice and very pleasant but of that alabama it seemed to me is always striking. Alabama is the state that loves the book that wasnt changed by it. Guest when you fly into the airport you go right by there so all this stuff that came after that the bombing of the Birmingham Church committee stated that three tiers but didnt learn from it. Guest . She had to buy classroom copies. She said it intended to many people. Theres a Controversial Book in the 80s. It didnt care for the overall account. They have a play thats very popular. You can see this is wait a minute i wrote a story about how unpleasant it can be and now you are turning on and acting like you love it so much and you can see why that might take her off a little bit. They want the characters and the stories to remain in the past and not appear on lunchboxes and not tshirts or keychains. She wants them to have the full integrity of the book respected. Some kids painted a mural on the site of the building depicting the theme from to kill a mockingbird and i thought that it was well done. She called it graffiti. There are other stories around town. She was at a Christmas Party one time and then out of town or came up and said i loved your book. She sold her the book the bird. She said some people regard as the bible. Host again that incident that came up a few years ago they were selling tshirts with to kill a mockingbird and they didnt have the copyright for it. And when she asserted the right they were the ones that objected they came just to walk those streets so the town benefits they were all settled in because of harper lee and to kill a mockingbird. Host if it wasnt taught in the schools until it became a sort of editorial attraction when did that happen . Guest it happened gradually by increments and at the plate helps people legitimately publicized. Its only recently that plaque went up. What is one of the most amazing friendships . What was the population when there were kids there plaques guest it was less. That sounds about right, its about 5,000 now. And i dont think that it peaked at any point like my little hometown. In the civil war it was around 1820 or 30. It has about 300 people im half white and half black and you quote that i think it was a Union Soldier that passed through at some point. And by the time she was a kid at the end of world war i in that description i was reading from earlier that would have been in the 1930s. The people in that lifestyle wouldnt have it any other way. Until you get into the contentions in the book i think thats where some of the stuff starts coming up because it sounds like the rest of the country is uncomfortable with their Racial Injustice that you will see people who love a mockingbird but also defend the Confederate Flag. Guest through what cosmic design does this come out that they are taking the Confederate Flag down . Couldnt be better timed. I dont want to go down that alley but the confluence of the supreme courts decision on marriage and then with the Confederate Flag i would be surprised if it was willing to accept both at the same summer. To come into this society shes sort of uncomfortable with it and talks about its more or less after shes had a stroke. When was that . Guest i would say five years ago having suffered a stroke for about two days. Some friends came by to pick her up i didnt come to the door and found her lying on the floor conscious that she has suffered had suffered a stroke and that was the moment when the decision was made. Its interesting her friend collated the phrase all come home even she came home and he didnt. Guest truman was always an unusual character in a town. Host that creates the controversy around the book that its diminished intellectually in some degree it sort of depends on who you talk to. Guest then you take my word for it is not long before she passed away she said she will find anyone to please someone. Guest the copyright controversy. Alice was managing the affairs [inaudible] the author of that book was about to bring it out when the sisters protested and she pointed out the signed release and she understood that she was interviewing them. She always moved in with her she was living as a journalist she was highly ethical and got the permission and didnt recall that alice david. I think alice was pretty clear they said i never cooperate on this book and then alice guest since they were both getting older host and they lived together at the house where they had lived, we mentioned the house they lived next door to. Thats just off the square 300 yards maybe and then they moved out to a nice neighborhood with a rancher and they live there with their dad and when they came home neither of them ever married and so that was sort of where they stayed and apparently have a lot of money and lived very simply sidebyside in the past five or six years it started to fracture whatever it was they were both losing intellectual capacity and it seemed to just start, the center couldnt hold any more. Guest i saw the sign of it when i was working on mockingbird. I had been at work for a year interviewing people and doing research in all kind of things and i got a letter and i understand youve been at work on a book about my sister and i dont like it. How could they not have mentioned that she knew someone was out there. She told my agent she wouldnt cooperate with me. Apparently her sister didnt know. What happened next . Guest i would expect an envelope from somebody. I tried to conduct myself as a gentle man and i tried to be discreet and i would explain to people with my reasons were and i thought that this was a story that needed to be told because now the papers were on file and she was enjoying the foundation so there wasnt much of a trail and i was trying to get it down. But it was the hug thing of exit of the 20th century and the story needed to be told. A lot of people agreed for that episode im a very close friend and i knew you were going to call points re i just cant talk to you so i respected that. When i started sending them things for their Family History the grandfathers application for the civil war pension and anything i thought they might like to have a got a lovely letter back and then i asked about how that happened to being an activist to redistrict when i asked her about the she said her father was a fairminded man and had his ups and change in his attitude was always the right solution to go for. Host as the way of approaching now your attempt was through her agent. Guest visconti turned me away. The agent didnt turn me away. My agent tried to contact her when i was down there one time a friend of hers said we could drive by, she might be out. And i said you know what, i dont want this woman to think that i am hounding her and this is a small town and people will see a stranger is going by watching so just leave it because i was doing fine on my own. I should be able to get this story. Its hard to live in america and not leave evidence of where you went to school and who you associated with them things like that. It wasnt hard to find the people that live on the street in new york. It just took a lot of shoe leather. She didnt want to get a cease and desist letter because if the word goes out they tell everybody, then in that little town you are iced. I was reporting on a story earlier this year and there were a number of doors i went and knocked on the lights were on the cars were, cars were in the driveway and nobody came to the door. You leave cards for people, it was an unusual southern town in that regard, usually they will come till you get off my porch. But it was this wall of silence. It was a very delicate notes on the panel to the piano to play. Guest they have to play and people the play and people do come down there on the other hand, there could be a lot of dissension between people. She does have an extended family in the area through her sister and brother and her elder brother had children as well, so the family is by no means gone from that part of alabama and maintaining that stability in a small town is critical and they are not going to betray each other and its not the best social currency to have. There is no hire Social Circle to sit in and i thought thats why you get a lot of people that are unhappy and as we discussed there is a theory i interested in your point of view on this they require office change in the past few years, the lawsuit against the museum and the unpleasantness, the book comes out, theres other contentious things around town that actually what shes doing is is client is asking her to do and what has been removed is the buffer is a stalwart in the town and she was the pleasant face and that when she went out of the way that now its a little flimsy like you said and what shes doing is exactly what her client wants to do and is tired of a lot of the folks and people get excited about it. Guest i think that youve entirely hit it on the head. Shes becoming the fall person. I think shes taking direction from a woman that is quite a thin ears doesnt have to be second guessed and that there is a little extra perk of being on the merit again. Host and she is intellectually diminished. I felt for any number of people that have and these are people that have known her for 30 or 40 years in a circle and basic unit of she came to the Junior College that has the festival this person came back by and they said thanks for coming back just great. So then when she comes up with this opinion about im not going to publish anymore and then there is a somewhat miraculous story about a manuscript being found soon after then this thing gets found and people have very legitimate concerns about whether anyone understands the independent evaluation of her capacity and she was found to be fine. But it does raise issues of the eldercare, elder law and that kind of thing. And my memory ive never been in a situation where i a second book has come out while he or she is still alive. That has as much importance usually it is after the estate decides these kind of things. Host i think there are some very honest questions that are asked and some of it from my point of view the publishing house, her agent and attorney all have been closed mouthed about it but ive never heard of this so when it pops out this seems almost incredible to me how the book was right here and i showed it and basic guessed what publish the thing. I think we are very fortunate to have the book come out and particularly at this time, what wonderful timing. I hope that it is a very fine book that is going to address things that are still unresolved in american life. You know there is a private high school that is barely white and in all Public High School . The streets are paved in gold at the time or anywhere else in america and we have a lot of work to do and what a timely reminder to have the book come out this summer and if its anything like to kill a mockingbird with its voice and its sincerity and the issues we are all going to be so fortunate. I for 1 a. M. Going to be grateful and i hope that the reviewers give it a guy if it is not to kill a mockingbird because she would say to people the reason i dont bring it out in the book is because once youve been to the top of the mountain there is only one way to get down and that is straight down and just think she won the Pulitzer Prize with the first novel. So what kind of pressure was on her to bring out another book . She had done very well so here she is taking a risk and i hope the reviewers realize that it was written 60 years ago and she was a woman in her 20s. Guest host for the skepticism might hear he is the would have to believe that it was miraculously found. It had been sitting there, someone would be looking for this to have it published and its clearly worth millions of dollars he might look for that around the house. Guest i have seen the cover page come into that kind of thing now is becoming you would have to go through some effort. Host if you are representing a writer and you can make the millions of dollars publishing the earlier work. Its my theory because it is from later in life but that is the tone of the writing which is lovely. Guest i spoke to someone am on the College Newspaper in the university of the madama and she said i opened up to kill a mockingbird i could hear them telling a story. Its very likely if you can learn for your client later in life to return to literary stardom in the bestseller list and earn as much which is going to be quite a bit, that is good representation. Think of a shot in the arm it is for the history and the publishing and readers. Its a big book of the summer. Its going to be on every beach in america. Host did you have any sense how long when you were writing about how long did you spend reporting doing the work lacks guest they took the four years to do the research because there was very little to go on. So i have to say that a good part of my biography was oral history in the sense that i got it firsthand from the people that sit next to her in class or that grew up in that town. I had to go back and reconstruct the past from some people that lived it. Host she gets some fun quotes every now and then. She would say i am more to bradley. But i have a theory that there is a little bit. The girl that wants love and that doesnt i think a male is an outsider as much. Boo is a recluse and hes a different kind of cat for most people. She and truman were two different kinds in fact someone told me that truman was too soft for the boys and she was too hard for the girls said they were each others friend. Host and to bradley is also a real character and really did live just down the street. It was the back yard as she describes it same way in the book. Guest that speaks to the University Audi of the book. There is the person in every neighborhood who wont come out and told you to get off their lawn or Something Like that its only by extending ourselves we have to live with them and if not opposed to them because they have a very good to be there. Host they were discussing it was a very real person and first grade teachers brother and was incapacitated to some degree and they had a big fence big fence in the yard to more or less keep him in the yard and thats where faulkner was pulling this from. She pulls boo bradley from down the street so it is a small southern town guest no fiction writer just takes things as is. They cut and create. But yes when you read to kill a mockingbird, you are going through a photo album of your childhood and host she did the same. Guest you mentioned there is one incident. Went out took a shot at a syndicate to work. Now he wasnt one shot but in terms of integrity and understanding he is Atticus Finch and he was out there in terms of his opposition to the editor of the local newspaper and they were having a march down his street one day they came tearing off the porch for him to get off the street and no one had given him a permit and he said i will write an editorial about it, so he was not typical of his age. He was a thoughtful and compassionate man and a leader in his local church. So believe me the elements are there. Host just across from the Church Everything is very close together as you would expect if there is a walk into or that you can take and you can do without blocking and 50 minutes. Guest he was the model that was buried next to his father. Host he died very young he would come out of my status on the porch or sit in the back but it started out as grounding for an adolescent kind of hygiene. But it turned into sort of an induced agoraphobia in the sense that if you dont go out for a long time you become convinced everybody is too shocked to see you anyway and thats where you get boo radley. Host and then the family plot is off the main road and there is a spot of them together which is very comforting at the end. There is a spot as i would presume for now is 2 miles away. Guest she is a southern lady that covers her magnolias with the first frost comes and she knows everybodys history and knows everybodys and eccentric enough town. Host on the book that we are about to read this summer thats what you turned in . Guest yes, to kill a mockingbird is while the watchmen is the first draft. Host that is the book that she left the safe little home when she was 23 24 and she wanted to go up north. She was following truman. It was a heady time for the writers he had written in cold blood yet that he had a house of ours and other voices so she was going off and wanted to be a writer and all that time in the flat that she was working on for so long. Guest after the war it was a fantastic place. What a great time to be there come and i didnt know the book would have been published for the war were 15 years later and there is an incident she got so frustrated with writing it she threw it out the window or threatened to. Guest she had a High School Class when she went down because they she would do a favor and talk about what it was like being a writer. She was on the third draft of the book and have been working for two and a half years and didnt realize by this time truman in terms of the literary thing for eight or nine years hed been trying to tell a story from a childhood, third draft, tired of it and one night sitting at the typewriter the manuscript next to her and she realizes that she is sick of this book. I go through this puke a where they seem to resemble this but they dont make any sense anymore. She yanks the page out of the typewriter, walks over to the window raises the window and takes what will become one of the most popular books and throws them in the alley. Then she calls her editor and says i quite. I dont want to be a writer. One time she said writing a novel is like building a house out of matchsticks. Very laborious. She lost the ability to complete it, and they had have been through this before with other young writers decided that isnt just your buck. For two years now ive been hoping you and my fingerprints are all over it. This is a elaborate of project that doesnt really belong to you, it belongs to us