Another statement released by Carter in February has Ms. The only thing amazing here is the expectation that literate people would be hoodwinked by attributed language that bears hallmarks of subterfuge.

Those crafty touches-“much thought and hesitation,” “my dear friend,” “people I trust”-are trying a tad too hard, wouldn’t you say? The spotlight-shunning Lee is “amazed” that she will once again be subjected to a freshet of attention, the very soaking she’d organized her life to avoid. During the initial sortie of coverage in February, a Newsweek headline bellowed “Friends Say Harper Lee Was Manipulated,” but you didn’t need that deflating headline or any other because you already had those unignorable inner murmurs-they were your conscience saying that something is rotten in Monroeville. Pulling up alongside the jubilant ones were the judicious ones, those who questioned how the publication of Lee’s new-old novel, Go Set a Watchman, came to pass: how the publicity-shyest author on earth, she who vowed never to publish another novel after her spirit was jolted by the galactic success of her debut, she who fled Manhattan for the asylum of her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama, how this monastically private writer agreed-in her 89th year, post-stroke, confined to an assisted-living establishment-to bless the reading world with what was the first, failed draft of To Kill a Mockingbird. When it was announced in February that a “new” Harper Lee novel had been “discovered,” there followed the expected gale of media giddiness, the widespread convulsions of joy, a gyrating and ejaculating all across the Web.

This piece is the first in a three-part series we’ll be publishing this week on Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird , and Lee’s new novel, Go Set a Watchman.

To set a watchman