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Harper Lee's new book portrays Atticus Finch as racist
 [CNNPHILIPPINES] The book is not even out, and readers are already rebelling.Harper Lee's Go Set a Watchman hits stores Tuesday (July 14), 55 years after To Kill a Mockingbird. The book is hotly anticipated but not without controversy. It purportedly recasts Atticus Finch, the moral center of Harper's first book, as racist. Hearts broke across Twitter. Lee completed Go Set a Watchman in the 1950s. The manuscript was rediscovered last year. It picks up the story of Jean Louise "Scout" Finch, the young girl who narrates her adventures in a small Alabama town in Mockingbird. Mockingbird was published in 1960, won the Pulitzer Prize and sold more than 40 million copies. But now, some fans are saying they might not even read Lee's new book because of the racist revelation. They say ignorance can be bliss. The snowflakes won't read it? "Readers will do as they wish," filmmaker Mary Murphy, who recently spent time with the reclusive Lee, told CNN. That's a polite way of saying the snowflakes can go have sex with themselves. She offered a potentially more nuanced view of Watchman. "Let's remember that Alabama was a state that would have rather closed its public schools than integrate them. This is the climate in which this book appears," Murphy said. "And a truly liberated white Southern man wasn't something you'd find in these small towns, or across the state. So, Atticus, in the book, reflects -- sort of -- the time, and reflects the culture of the time." Some fans agree. Heroes are complicated, they say, and life is not about easy -- or necessarily agreeable -- answers. It sounds like the author maybe drew her hero as a human being instead of a statue of probity cast in cheese. Posted by: Fred 2015-07-14 |
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