Go Set A Bitch Session...

The new, well let us say never seen, well let us say variation of never seen novel by Harper Lee was released today. In advance of the momentous occasion there was already some bitching by fans, I 've never quite understood the phenomenon of complaining ahead of the fact but to each his own.

Apparently this novel which is actually the first version or follow up, though not really. Is this how sausage is made? Perhaps we should avert our eyes.

I won't be reading the book because "To Kill A Mockingbird" is one of the most overrated books of the twentieth century. Yep, I just said that. It's a decent book but that is all there is to say about the thing itself.

Generations have been enthralled because of the film and Gregory Peck, this combined with later literati insisting so voraciously of the book's greatness that it became shoved down the throats of millions of students as required reading, yours truly among them.

It is not that the book is the holy grail, it is that Nell Harper Lee wrote only one book. The pressure on her was overwhelming and then to become worshipped by that strange collective that is the self annointed literati magnificus, was a breaking point. To be told you've achieved the apex of your talent, you're finished, one and done. She's made millions off of the book and that's truly the silver lining but did she really want to keep writing? If she had "Mockingbird" probably wouldn't hold the place it does. It would be a part of a full canon for consideration.

Now after all of these decades this new thing, which apparently is not really new, is discovered carefully preserved in an old flour jar, forgotten and abandoned. Some reporters have called foul and smell something funny in the biscuits but I know nothing of this and would certainly not presume to suggest anyone around Miss Lee is less than honest about the nature of this mysterious missing manuscript.

The obsession with small town America assures success for the new book and a big part of the original success all those decades ago. I lived in a small town as a child and live near one now as a much older person, I'm not nearly as enthralled now as I was then. As a child in a small town even the slightest oddity is cause for excitement and fear, the good kind of fear, the legends old people tell you about lady ghosts dressed in black that appear on the railroad tracks and of course the crazy man at the end of your street that you never see, kept locked in by his aging mother because he eats children. Every character in "Mockingbird" lives in every small town in America. They live in big cities too, but city folk are too sophisticated to recognize it.

Bye y'all!