Go Set a Watchman

I'm sure you can all tell two things about this book immediately:
1. It was one of the most anticipated books (at least in America), like, ever.
2. It is now super super controversial.
And I'm not even going to get into the whole question of whether or not ancient Harper Lee is still capable of consenting to having her over-a-half-century-old first draft of To Kill A Mockingbird published. But I really appreciated this as a sequel to TKAM. Not because it made me happy, but it made me think, and it adds far more depth to TKAM.
There is one issue, which is peripheral to the plot of GSAW but pretty central to TKAM. This book references Tom Robinson's rape trial, but in this version the outcome was different. I understand why the case ended up being decided the way it was in TKAM. It built Atticus's lesson of what courage is: “I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what." Atticus's lesson only makes sense if he doesn't win the case and knows he probably won't. But it is a tad awkward-feeling to read that Tom was acquitted.
I think this book is best understood and appreciated when you can think of some parts in their context as a first draft and some as a sequel. Clearly, the different decision in the rape trial is a symptom of the revisions that what we now know as GSAW went through before becoming our beloved TKAM.
But, once upon a time, in the 1950s, a young woman named Harper Lee set out to write a novel about another young woman named Jean Louise Finch finding out that her father wasn't the hero she idolized. Through a number of flashbacks, she established Scout's unconditional admiration for Atticus, the perfect lawyer and perfect father who can do anything. What other dad will NOT approach you about your somewhat creepy behavior because your kind-of-boyfriend reported it in a situation to which lawyer-client confidentiality applies? We'd all love a dad like that.
And that's what we were given.
The editor loved all those lovable scenes more than the heavy adult discussions, and so young Harper Lee rewrote the book to be about this hilarious little girl Scout and her amazing dad. And we were children with Scout, and we fell in love.
How many articles on “X ways Atticus Finch was perfect” (pre-2015) can you find with a quick Google search? Okay, I haven't checked, but probably like a thousand, if you're only counting the ones in English. For half a century, multiple generations have been permitted to idolize Atticus just like Scout did. And Uncle Jack might deny that there is such a thing as a collective consciousness, but together we all forgot that we were looking through the eyes of a child.
All along, the entire point was that Atticus WASN'T perfect. He did very good things for really crappy reasons which had some correct reasoning behind them and some that was a result of growing up in a country surrounded by truly institutionalized racism. And the whole point of the book was that Scout was finally growing up. Dr. Finch even said it to her- she needed to separate her conscience from her father's and become her own person. And to do that, she had to take Atticus off the pedestal she'd put him on for the 26 previous years of her life.
Now, maybe a book review oughtn't be a critique of the book's readers, but here I go.
I think that the people who hate the publishers of this book for letting Atticus be so different from the man in TKAM, and the people who hate Scout for in some sense accepting Atticus, haven't grown up. Crazy little Scout has finally passed you in maturity. When she was a little girl, she saw her father as the culmination of all things pure and noble. When she grew up, she still saw her father as essentially a god. Ageless and unchanging in his truth and goodness. But eventually she was faced with undeniable proof that he was a human being just like her, a man with contradictions and mistakes and, hey, who's to say that Scout wasn't the wrong one in some of their areas of disagreement? But he was wrong sometimes. Maybe a lot of the time. Maybe in his whole world view. And he always had been. When the 26-year-old child Scout saw this she couldn't bear it. Believe me, my heart was wrapped up on Atticus's perfection too, and the mere concept of him being in any way “bad” hurt me too.
But then Scout and I got a long talking-to from Uncle Jack. Boy, that man rarely makes any sense. We understood so little of what he was getting at, and were won over to mostly none of it. But he still helped us. Somewhere in his long long loooonngg, my goodness, SO LONG, talks, we were able to accept Atticus's fallibility and welcome him to the human race. And we did not agree with him. I feel that in any other era this lesson would be taken for granted, but today it must be stated explicitly- acceptance and agreement are far from the same thing. We now ACCEPT that Atticus is kind of pretty white supremacist. When we were children we saw his perfectly equal treatment of all people and said “There walks a good man who is not ever racist.” And we agreed with the lack of racism. But all along, not being exercised, but being believed, was the supremacy. Atticus thought of himself and other white people as better than black people. He treated everyone the same. Both were true, but only one was seen. And the only thing he taught us was to wait in line behind the black people who were there first. We did it because he taught us too. We thought he taught us to because he, like us, was colorblind, when to him it was just manners. It made him feel good. When we discovered the true reasons behind everything he ever taught us, we felt completely lost. Our foundation was gone.
Yet we've long been able to tolerate people like the man who delivered the racist rant in the courtroom- again, not approve of his beliefs, but not have our world shaken by the fact that he exists. Scout never came to agree with Atticus that, really, giving black people equal rights would tear their world apart. She still thought (recognized?) that the Negroes of Maycomb County, the South, the United States, deserved far more than they were being given. But she could accept that Atticus disagreed with her the same way she could accept any random racist Maycomber disagreeing with her- it's his opinion, to which he's entitled, even if it's wrong. He's human like me and I'm wrong sometimes too. I'll probably argue with him if it comes up and I'm at that time in a position to do so, but in the meantime, the world still turns with wrong people in it.
This is a coming-of-age story. Finally, the little girl in a grown woman's body has matured to the point where she can disagree with her dear old dad.

OK so that's what I have to say in GSAW's relationship to TKAM and what is required of you in order to appreciate this book. Well, nothing, really. It kind of slaps you in the face and forces you to grow up. It's hard. It's really hard.

But I also loved this book, maybe as much as TKAM. It was so much the same Scout, just older. I think the first time I laughed out loud was about 3 pages in, when her train bed folded in on her and she needed to be rescued when she didn't have pajama pants on. I loved the awkwardness of puberty, of the first French kiss and its many months of repercussions. I loved the first dance and the items that were present at the beginning but not the end. (I'm so grateful now that I was never invited to prom or a dance early in high school and that I've never had access to fake boobs. NOT WORTH IT.) I loved the revival meeting. A lot of changes certainly happened between GSAW and TKAM, but Scout is Scout. Clever, ignorant, hilarious, human Scout.
I also liked the part where Henry told Jean Louise off about how she could get away with anything she did and no one disliked her any more than they did before she committed whatever newest misdeed. Without saying so, he pointed out that privilege is a lot sneakier than it seems like it should be. Anyone can tell you that in Maycomb county, “the whites” as a a group were privileged, and “the Negroes” as a group were not. But this alone couldn't define what that privilege meant. If you're privileged, blame bounces away from you as an individual and onto circumstances you can't control (in Jean Louise's case, the supposed eccentricities of her family). Responsibility for wrongdoing divides and dispels. If you're part of a not-privileged group, each individual takes on all the blame for the whole group, and the whole group takes on blame for an individual's evil actions- responsibility multiplies to land on every member of that group. This attitude, held by individuals, is what can end up leading to differences in laws.
(unfortunately i need to stop reviewing now. congrats for getting this far. i'll finish later.)