PBS just released a web exclusive with footage from a June 30 meeting between Harper Lee, her lawyer, agent, and a gaggle of publishing executives. The entourage traveled to Lee’s hometown, Monroeville, Alabama, to present her with a fresh hardcover copy of Go Set a Watchman. And they would all like you to know how fantastic Lee is doing. She’s just aces, thank you very much.
Emmy award winner Mary McDonagh Murphy filmed and curated this thirteen minute special, compiling interviews and documentation of the meeting. As a longtime devotee of Lee’s work, Murphy seems an obvious choice for the job. In 2010 HarperCollins published her book, Scout, Atticus & Boo: A Celebration of To Kill a Mockingbird; two years later she released the documentary Harper Lee: Hey Boo.
But this video’s prevailing tone is one of eerie overeagerness. We hear Lee’s voice just a few times; to be fair, she is frail, hard of hearing, and her vision is failing. But when her lawyer, Tonja B. Carter, describes Lee as “like a child” and “almost giddy” over the imminent publication of Go Set a Watchman, her words contrast uneasily with Lee’s delicate and demure responses. She seems satisfied enough, sure: when presented with one of the first copies of her book, she responds, matter-of-factly, “Wonderful.” And when Murphy asks if she ever expected the publication of To Kill a Mockingbird’s predecessor, she returns, “Of course I did. Don’t be silly.”