Posted by JJK on July 27, 2015 at 13:17:32:
In Reply to: Re: Harper Lee's Go Set a Watchman fiction posted by Edd on July 21, 2015 at 12:21:44:
: : : : Anybody got their hands on Harper Lee's new "Go Set a Watchman" book? I've heard the advance reviews are terrible.
: : : Yep. It's terrible. All the talk is about how Scout's heroic lawyer father, Atticus, turns out to be a racist, but real revelation is that the book is a poorly written beginner's book, boring and rambling and unfocused. How - the reviewers are asking - could a Pulitzer prize winning author have written such a terrible book? Well, the answer is obvious: it is an unedited first draft of a beginning writer that never would have been published (except that lots of people will make some money off of it).
: : What you are saying is that this book, which is the best selling book in the history of this large publisher, is a terrible book.
: It's not what I'm saying, it's what the critics are saying. But is it so surprising? It's not being promoted a "real" novel. It's a celebrity book, and celebrity books outsell novels 10 to 1.
This week, as the book hits the top of the New York Times bestseller list, a New York Times op-ed piece calls it a fraud. They said: A publisher that cared about Harper Lee’s legacy would have declined to publish “Go Set a Watchman.” That Rupert Murdock's Harper-Collins publisher decided to manufacture a phony literary event isn’t surprising, it’s just sad.