Harper Lee's Go Set a Watchman interview on PBS: Hear her receive her finished copy of the new novel.

Harper Lee Receives Her Finished Copy of Go Set a Watchman in This Moving Clip

Harper Lee Receives Her Finished Copy of Go Set a Watchman in This Moving Clip

Brow Beat has moved! You can find new stories here.
Brow Beat
Slate's Culture Blog
July 14 2015 11:26 AM

Harper Lee Receives Her Finished Copy of Go Set a Watchman in This Moving Clip

Was1126108
Harper Lee.

Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images

PBS has released an episode on Harper Lee in honor of the author’s second novel, Go Set a Watchman, which comes out Tuesday. In it, filmmaker Mary McDonagh Murphy captures still scenes, plus audio, from the celebratory lunch—Lee, her agent, her lawyer, and various publishing friends seated around a big table in Monroeville, Alabama—at which HarperCollins president Michael Morrison unveiled the first copies of Watchman. “Thank you, thank you very much,” Lee murmurs at one point, and then, “I see.”

The video also intersperses interviews with the beloved-but-mysterious writer’s acquaintances, and with her lawyer, Tonya Carter, who claims to have discovered the manuscript in a drawer. (“I was the first person to reeeead it,” Carter sings.) Those protective of To Kill a Mockingbird’s legacy—and emotionally attached to its hero, Atticus Finch—may have reason to worry about Watchman, a story of disenchantment, in which a young woman confronts her father’s racism. But it’s hard to see the stills of a beaming Lee surrounded by her friends and admirers without feeling a little bit glad for her, even if she’s about to destroy our innocence once again.