Publishing a book long after an author’s death often raises doubts about its quality, especially in the case of Harper Lee, given the earlier controversy over Go Set a Watchman. Her new collection, The Land of Sweet Forever, is simply a set of unpublished stories and essays, mainly appealing to dedicated fans. The stories are mostly underdeveloped and lack strong structure, though they occasionally show hints of Lee’s wit and deeper themes. The essays feel routine and uninspired, even when discussing figures like Truman Capote. Overall, while the book fails as literature, it is interesting for what it reveals about Lee’s restrained voice and the social limitations she faced.
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“I am more of a rewriter than a writer,” Lee once said, explaining that she generally worked through at least three drafts of any given piece of writing. As that suggests, she was devoted to her work and, at least at first, strikingly disciplined about it. “I generally get a good day’s work done every day,” she wrote in a letter to one of her sisters in October 1950: “If I paid myself overtime, I’d be rich.” She went on to describe a typical writing day during this era:
From around noon, work on the first draft. By dinnertime, I’ve usually put my idea down. I then stop for a sandwich or a full meal, depending on whether I’ve got to think more about the story or just finish it. After dinner, I work on a second draft, which involves sometimes tearing the story up and putting it together again in an entirely different way, or just keeping at it until everything is like I want it. Then I retype it on white paper, conforming to rules of manuscript preparation, and run out & mail it. That sounds simple, but sometimes I have worked through the night on one; usually I end up around two or three in the morning.”
Excerpt From The Land of Sweet Forever by Harper Lee
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