I loved GSAW. Very powerful. Maybe better than TKAMB.

You're complaining that something written during the era when the United States was a intelligent, literate nation, made up of independent people, is better than something written during the era of Communist Centrism (1980-?) when everything is done for a statist purpose, to (re)educate and to condition us.

The pissing-off-the-porch scene still cracks me up.

Was it JBITDMFOTP or am I getting that mixed up w/DTMFA?

@4: both apply.

@2 Go Set a Watchman (as I'm assuming you haven't heard because you've been living under a rock for the last six months) was written in the '50s. It just sat unpublished until now.

I read To Kill A Mockingbird as an adult. I loved it to shreds and, when the current publicity storm over the second book started, I didn't understand why a lot of people remembered TKAM as feel-good idealistic pap. I think what they were really remembering was the discussions from their high school English class.

#7

"Writing" for anyone born before 1980 (meaning you started using The Web in high school) used to mean not just typing and putting it into HTML. Writing was an entire process of creation, but also acceptance and revision by gatekeepers. That she put something on paper back then and it never made it into canon said something. That it, a raw work, not sanctified by that hierarchy, was allowed to see daylight now, says something too.

#6

No. Through a good education and a library.

So, why are comments turned off in the Go Set a Watchman review? Were they on before and an epic flame war started and the section had to be scoured? If so, I'm sorry I missed that.

For @8 I'll go with the alternative acronym: JBITSMFOTP.

I agree with this piece: TKAMB is a trailer-park freak show to gratify middle-class white liberals at the expense of poor whites. The parallels to Deliverance are abundant and the chuckling at incest is not really funny.
http://thesmartset.com/article02161501/