Voice Of Post

To Shill a Mockingbird: How the discovery of a manuscript became Harper Lee’s “new” novel,  Would you like to understand how the “new” Harper Lee novel, “Go Set a Watchman,” came to be billed as a long-lost, blockbuster sequel to “To Kill a Mockingbird” — one of the definitive books of the American 20th century — when, by all the known facts, it’s an uneven first draft of the famous novel that was never considered for publication?

Would you like to get a glimpse into how clever marketing and cryptic pronouncements have managed to produce an instant bestseller, months before anyone has read it?

Fabulous. Pull up a rocking chair, pour two fingers of bourbon — make it three — and let’s have a little chat, in the gloaming in this little town in south Alabama. Here is where Lee grew up with many of the real-life characters whose fictional counterparts would come to populate the only book she ever published.

First, those delicate questions.

Harper Lee, 88, had a stroke in 2007. She is, by all accounts, almost completely deaf and blind. She resides in an assisted-living facility out on the Highway 21 bypass in this slow-moving town of 6,500, still not all that much different from how she immortalized it more than half-century ago.

She’s also one of the most famously private authors in modern publishing history, up there with J.D. Salinger, who also wrote one iconic work and then hid behind a veil of privacy.

The high drama around the impending publication of “Watchman,” which erupted in the literary universe since the novel was announced this month, stems from the fact that Lee had long vowed she would never publish again.

Her attorney, Tonja Carter, took over representation when Alice Lee — the novelist’s older sister, housemate, lawyer and lifelong protector — became infirm a couple of years ago. Carter says her client reversed her decades-old stance after Carter stumbled upon a copy of “Watchman” last summer. Now, according to Carter, Lee is delighted it has shot to the top of bestseller lists, five months ahead of publication.

People have questioned the story, wondering if a person in Lee’s declining health can be said to have given reflective consideration to a manuscript she wrote 58 years ago.

Carter and Andrew Nurnberg, Lee’s international rights agent, say yes.

Carter described Lee as “a very strong, independent and wise woman who should be enjoying the discovery of her long lost novel,” in remarks to the New York Times, the only media outlet to which she has spoken. “Instead, she is having to defend her own credibility and decision making.”

Nurnberg, well known and respected in the field, began representing Lee’s interests in 2013, after her longtime agent was found to have been involved in usurping her copyright. The domestic and international rights to “Mockingbird” are serious business — according to 2012 court papers, Lee earns about $3 million per year.

HarperCollins asked The Washington Post to direct its questions about “Watchman” to Nurnberg, who requested those questions be sent through e-mail: Does the newly discovered manuscript bear a date? Did Lee read the work and make comments? Back in the day, did the editors and agents involved in publishing “Mockingbird” see this and approve it for publication? What is Ms. Lee’s contract for this book? Since she never married, had no children and is the last survivor of her immediate family, were any of her more distant relatives consulted for approval?

A spokesperson for Nurnberg said he was traveling and could not answer questions. At least one of Lee’s nephews located by The Post did not return phone calls. And Carter did not respond to multiple calls, e-mails and visits to her office and rural home just outside Monroeville. When a Post reporter went to the house of her brother-in-law, who lives less than a mile away, asking for assistance in locating the home of Tonja Carter, he politely directed the reporter to the wrong house.