I Know What You Did...

...or anyway, Harper Lee, I have a theory.  Now that you're in your dotage, Nelle, you are adding fuel to the fire that is heightened racial tension.  "To Kill A Mockingbird"  was a brave voyage into the national disgrace of racism so prevalent at the time you were writing the book.  And you gently and deftly highlighted that disgrace through your brilliant work of fiction.  You tempered the gross mistreatment of Blacks through the depiction of Atticus Finch, a White man who sought justice for all.
   With the imminent release of "Go Set A Watchman," it appears that the character of Atticus was not as tolerant as we had been led to believe through your first release.  (Of course, I don't know this; it's only what I've read.)  If this proves to be the truth, and your work of fiction collides too closely with actual history, racial tensions are bound to be exacerbated.
    It seems odd that a fictional character could have led a double life as far as prejudice is concerned.  But it is widely believed that Atticus  was a representation of your father, and his daughter, Scout, a version of yourself.
   Since "Watchman" was written years before  "Mockingbird,"  was it more closely aligned with the truth as you saw it, even recognizing your own father's feet of clay, and fictionalizing the raw truth that racism was as ingrained as mother's milk in the Alabama you knew.  You wrote of your flawed father first, and then immortalized a more heroic version, one free of racial injustice.  That is the Atticus Finch, and the hope for equality that we have come to know, and love.
    You had wanted to be known as the author of only a single novel, "Mockingbird."   If you trashed your father in the first novel, why didn't you release it then?  It probably would have been even more powerful, even if we wouldn't have  come to identify Atticus with Gregory Peck.  Did you resent your father's bigotry and want to out his misdoings or wrong thinking, but you did not want to alienate your family?  That happens.  The book is now to be released, not long after your sister's death, the sister you were closest to.
    It is reported that since you have suffered a stroke, your permission to publish "Watchman" may not have been freely given. Others say otherwise, and indeed if you never wanted it read, why wouldn't you have destroyed it?  No one will ever really know---the passing of time has seen to that.  But as I said, I have a theory.
     I believe that a writer writes out of a deep need to communicate thoughts and ideas and conversations, even if they never happened in real time.  It is an integral part of their identity, a part of them that speaks to themselves, and to others only secondarily.  To destroy a writing that one has created would be like erasing part of one's brain, akin to undergoing  a lobotomy.   And if you need support for my theory, I have a blog I could show you, parts published and parts not.  In years to come (how many?) if I lose connections to all my peers, and have had a stroke or two, what the hell---let the chips fall where they may...