Commentary: ‘Watchman’ publication a shameful violation of Harper Lee’s wishes

Imagine you want to write a book. And you do.

You ship off the manuscript to publishers and soon the phone rings. A company wants to publish your novel.

Once the book arrives, the public and the critics love it.

Months later, the notification comes that you’ve won the Pulitzer Prize in fiction.

What’s more, a Hollywood producer buys the rights, and the film version earns Academy Awards.

To top everything, teachers adopt your book as required reading in schools across America.

Is this not a dream come true?

Yes, if you are Harper Lee, for this is exactly what happened with her “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

And 55 years later, no other book of hers has seen the light of day — until this month.

“Go Set a Watchman” is now officially the second novel by Harper Lee. And what a shame.

For part of the lore of Harper Lee has been why after the immense success of “Mockingbird,” she only wrote one book.

The most popular theories were that she only had one story to tell or she could not possibly match the magic of “Mockingbird.”

It appeared that Lee chose the high road, not tempted by easy money to publish just anything.

Along with her lack of publishing was her lack of publicity, her last interview given in 1964.

For the past 26 years, I have taught “Mockingbird” to thousands of students. It is the one work that I have always taught, the one I have most cherished and the one I feel most protective about.

Which is why it is most troubling how “Watchman” happened. The manuscript was discovered in 2011 when Lee’s attorney, Tonja B. Carter, her literary agent at the time, Sam Pinkus, and a Sotheby’s appraiser opened up her safe deposit box.

Clearly, “Watchman” was an early draft of “Mockingbird,” not a completely separate entity. Lee’s literary agent in 1957 gave her significant advice on how to revise it, and 2 1/2 years later, out came “Mockingbird.”

Worse, the decision to publish “Watchman” came shortly after Lee’s older sister, Alice, died in November at age 103. She was the watchman of her sister’s life.

In the greedy pursuit of money, HarperCollins has printed 2 million copies of “Watchman,” a remarkable coup to be publishing a second work by Lee after half of a century.

In an industry that continues suffering financial setbacks in the ever-growing nonprint world, “Watchman” is a major book-buying event. Not since the 2007 release of the final Harry Potter book have people visited actual bookstores in record numbers.

So, while the book lover part of me feels the excitement of the renewed interest in the printed book, the English teacher part of me feels the public at large doesn’t get it, doesn’t understand that all this attention is the absolute antithesis of what reclusive Ms. Lee would ever desire.

By all accounts, Harper Lee, at age 89, is physically impaired, her hearing and vision nearly gone and her memory vanishing. To publish a first version of her American classic is disgraceful. How many artists want the public to examine works in progress? There was a reason the “Watchman” stayed untouched for decades. It was never meant to be seen.

If Lee truly wanted people to read it, she had plenty of time to do so when her mind was more fully aware.

The whole charade goes counter to the powerful message near the end of “Mockingbird” about protecting the privacy of hermit Boo Radley despite his heroics in saving the Finch children.

Sheriff Heck Tate devises the lie that villain Bob Ewell died by falling on his own knife instead of the truth that Boo killed him, rationalizing to Atticus that “draggin’ him with his shy ways into the lime light — to me, that’s a sin.”

Indeed it is, a lesson lost on those feasting on Harper Lee’s legacy.

BRIAN CROSBY is a teacher and the author of “Smart Kids, Bad Schools” and “The $100,000 Teacher.”