Shocker: In Harper Lee's Go Set a Watchman, Atticus Finch is a racist
In the first major review of Harper Lee's hotly anticipated Go Set a Watchman, her follow-up to the classic To Kill a Mockingbird, Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times reveals that Atticus Finch, one of the most beloved characters in American fiction, is depicted as a curmudgeonly racist:
The book has been surrounded by controversy ever since HarperCollins first announced its publication. It comes from a recently "discovered" manuscript that was originally rejected by Lee's publisher, which led to her revising the story in what ultimately became To Kill a Mockingbird, a book that famously hinges on a message of racial equality. There has been persistent suspicion that Lee, 88, was not in full control of her faculties when she signed off on the Watchman project.
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Ryu Spaeth is deputy editor at TheWeek.com. Follow him on Twitter.
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