A Watchman
An independent bookstore in Michigan is offering refunds for customers who were unhappy with Go Set A Watchman, the recently released controversial novel by Harper Lee…
‘It is disappointing and frankly shameful to see our noble industry parade and celebrate this as ‘Harper Lee’s New Novel’. This is pure exploitation of both literary fans and a beloved American classic (which we hope has not been irrevocably tainted)’ [said the bookstore in a statement posted on its website].
(Daily Mail, August 8, 2015)
Trust me, most book reviewers and booksellers feel this way, but they are too needy for paychecks and too greedy for sales, respectively, to say so.
Meanwhile, reports today are that the estate of J.R.R. Tolkien is getting in on this literary gold rush by announcing plans to publish his discarded notes as a newly discovered masterpiece called The Story of Kullervo — his literary reputation be damned too. This is a shameful practice; unfortunately, publishers and beneficiaries are too shameless to care.
But I told you so – in such commentaries as “Harper Lee: To Milk a Mockingbird,” February 5, 2015, and “Harper Lee, Dr. Seuss, et al: the Mercenary Phenomenon of Newly Discovered Masterpieces,” July 30, 2015. Here is an instructive excerpt from the former.
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I enjoyed reading To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee’s classic 1960 novel about racism and criminal justice in early twentieth-century America, more than any other required reading in high school…
Therefore, you’d think I would be among those cheering this week’s breaking news about the publication of Lee’s purported follow-up novel, Go Set a Watchman, about goings on in the lives of To Kill a Mockingbird’s main characters 20 years later. Except that, having read about the dubious provenance of this sequel, I just feel like jeering.
To begin with, Go Set a Watchman is reportedly based on a completed manuscript Lee’s editor persuaded her to put aside in order to publish To Kill a Mockingbird. This alone raises far too many obvious, but now unanswerable, questions. Most notably: Why was Go Set a Watchman deemed unworthy of publication back then? And what has changed to make it worthy today … 55 years later?..,
It requires a willing suspension of disbelief to buy her story about suddenly finding what neither Lee nor Alice could for 55 years. And Lee’s publisher is probably banking on such willing suspension of disbelief among fans of To Kill a Mockingbird to peddle other ‘long-lost manuscripts’ — as the New York Times hails this one so disingenuously…
I think the greatest literary fraud in the history of publishing is afoot, constituting a brazen betrayal and exploitation of one of America’s most beloved literary figures.
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Women in Makeup
A man is suing his new wife for fraud after seeing her without make up for the first time.
‘He said she looked very beautiful and attractive before marriage, but when he woke up in the morning and found that she had washed the make-up off her face, he was frightened as he thought she was a thief,’ a source told local media.
(Metro.co.uk, August 5, 2015)
Again, I told you so – in such commentaries as “PSA: Unmask Your Woman Before You Tell Her She’s Beautiful,” October 16, 2013, and “Beware Makeup Morphing ‘Ugly Ducklings into Swans’,” June 1, 2015. Here is an instructive excerpt from the former.
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Perhaps the time has come for truly liberated women to lead a new revolution for women under the banner ‘Our Faces, Ourselves,’ calling on women not to burn their bras but to ditch their makeup.
Men can be good foot soldiers in this new revolution by encouraging every woman they know to wear a little less makeup each day – until the image they see in the mirror right after their morning shower imbues them with far more pride and self-esteem than the one they (used to) see after painting on their daily mask.
And those of you still in the dating game can do even more by asking your date to take off all of her makeup (along with her spanx and fake hair) before you make love for the first time.
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Enough said?
Related commentaries:
Harper Lee…
Makeup…