A friend on Facebook posted a link to this article from The New York Times Book Review section, Harper Lee and Her Father, the Real Atticus Finch. Take a minute to read, if you’re a fan of the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, and then come back and discuss.

“This book’s closely documented conclusion is that A.C. Lee, and his devoted albeit sporadically rebellious daughter, Nelle Harper Lee, both wanted the world to have a better opinion of upper-class Southern WASPs than they deserve.”

I’m not sure what the take-away is from this article or from Crespino’s book (which I haven’t read). Is he saying that TKAM Atticus #1 is a complete fairy tale, while Watchman’s Atticus #2 is the more realistic version of most upper middle-class Alabamians, or of Harper Lee’s father? That could very well be, but I don’t know how one would know for sure. And I would prefer to read about the idealized Atticus, who is actually NOT Harper Lee’s father but rather a fictional character, and hope that Alabamians and all of the rest of us would aspire to live up to that model.

And I think the author of the article (or maybe Mr. Crespino?) is wrong when he says that “the state’s ills are always laid at the feet of lower-class whites like Bob Ewell and his troubled daughter Mayella.” TKAM actually blames the people on the jury that convicted Tom Robinson, and the (middle and upper class) people in the town who stayed silent and let it all happen. We’re not led to blame the Ewells, but rather to feel sorry for them in their ignorance and poverty. Rather than “villainizing rednecks”, TKAM shows that most, if not all, of the white people in Maycomb are complicit in the injustice done to Tom and also, to Boo Radley, and even Atticus can’t change a town’s history of racial prejudice single-handedly.

I’m not from Alabama, but why should Alabamians be round of the novel, To Kill a Mockingbird? Why shouldn’t we choose the more hopeful picture of a hero like Atticus #1, someone to aspire to become more like and reject the nasty version of Atticus who appears out of nowhere in Go Set a Watchman. Full disclosure: I haven’t read Go Set a Watchman because I didn’t think I would like it or find it thought-provoking (maybe provoking, but not of thought) or inspiring.