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Go Set a Watchman - Part VII (Chapters 18 and 19)

#139: Aug. - Oct. 2015 (Fiction)
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Lawrence

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Re: Go Set a Watchman - Part VII (Chapters 18 and 19)

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Dear Ms. Penny,
I apologize that my posts seem to shut down comments. It has happened several times and it grieves me terribly. I do not know how or why my thoughts turn folks off but it seems to me they do. I hope you do not take it personally. Remember, "There'll be blue birds over the White Cliffs of Dover, Tomorrow, just you wait and see. There will be love and laughter and peace ever after, just you wait and see." It is unfortunate the human nature has not allowed the promise of that song to be fulfilled in our life time, but maybe soon, I hope. xx Lawrence
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Re: Go Set a Watchman - Part VII (Chapters 18 and 19)

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Oh Lawrence, it isn't your posts. I have thought that about my posts. I thought my posts stopped threads....ha ha. I guess some trains of. Thought make your brain hurt.

I'm waiting for some one to start criticising the character of the uncle. He really got on my bloomin nerves. I can't wait to tear him to shreds, the silly complacent old wuss!!!'
Only those become weary of angling who bring nothing to it but the idea of catching fish.

He was born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world is mad....

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Lawrence

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Re: Go Set a Watchman - Part VII (Chapters 18 and 19)

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Tear away my good friend. Dr. Finch to me was a shill.(in American gambling terms a person, male or female, paid by the house to gamble with company money to get others to come to the table to gamble) I thought his love affair with Atticus's wife was a sham. It created a false affection for Scout and her brother. I never made a connection on why he developed a skill with 18th Century religion other than to tie it in to the reason for southern men fighting in the civil war. Well that is a legitimate start for your post. L
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Re: Go Set a Watchman - Part VII (Chapters 18 and 19)

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Lawrence wrote: I apologize that my posts seem to shut down comments.
Penny is right. There is no problem with your posts. Those of us who try to stimulate with provocative positions may need to be a little careful, but interesting questions almost always draw interesting responses.

I would like to hear more about conventionality. When a group of ladies sits in a circle and holds forth on whatever topics are going the rounds, is this a bad thing, to be critiqued by those of us who want a New York City level of stimulation? Or is it a good thing, creating social cohesion?

Is there some way to improve the mix, and get both goals right?

I thought Lee's passages with stream of consciousness overhearing of the ladies were hilarious, by the way. I wish I had thought of it.
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Re: Go Set a Watchman - Part VII (Chapters 18 and 19)

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Penelope wrote:
I'm waiting for some one to start criticising the character of the uncle. He really got on my bloomin nerves.
Well, I agree with Lawrence that Dr. Finch is conveniently unrealistic. He serves a couple of roles - getting Jean Louise to work through the ideas involved in resistance to the Supreme Court (but his comparison to feudalism was far too abstract), and exemplifying the educated gentry in the provinces, who failed to really engage and critique. They acted like the gradual effect of ideas would bring everything round right, in obvious contradiction to the facts of economic oppression and poor educational opportunities for black Americans.

I didn't find the dialogue realistic in which he and Atticus supposedly conveyed "you need to think for yourself", (presumably being portrayed as being "acted out" by actually striking her.) But it certainly piqued my interest in that aspect of her process.
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Re: Go Set a Watchman - Part VII (Chapters 18 and 19)

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The dynamics between Atticus/uncle and Jean seemed rather contrived to me, but I was engaged non-the-less. That is quite a clever thing...... When your audience can see manipulation but are still interested.

John Fowles said all novels are about conflict because without conflict there is no story.

I think life is like that......we create our own conflict to an extent....or life tends to be boring?? We write our own life stories....... So take care to write a good one. Xx
Only those become weary of angling who bring nothing to it but the idea of catching fish.

He was born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world is mad....

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Re: Go Set a Watchman - Part VII (Chapters 18 and 19)

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Penelope wrote:The dynamics between Atticus/uncle and Jean seemed rather contrived to me, but I was engaged non-the-less. That is quite a clever thing...... When your audience can see manipulation but are still interested.
Frankly, Tennessee Williams and Eugene O'Neill usually leave me feeling like they have done that. It is indeed an exceptional gift.
I think life is like that......we create our own conflict to an extent....or life tends to be boring?? We write our own life stories....... So take care to write a good one.
This goes a little deeper than "you have to pick your battles". More like, "it says a lot about a person what challenges they consider worth taking on", no?
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Re: Go Set a Watchman - Part VII (Chapters 18 and 19)

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I did not think the book was brilliant and deserves such universal acclaim. The childhood flashbacks are well written, funny and interesting. However, I personally cannot identify with Jean Louise's character at all. She is too melodramatic, cruel, and unpolished to people around her for a college graduate living and working in NY. I would have liked to know what she was doing in NY, where she was working, etc. I personally did not always like my parents or agreed with their views when I was 25, but I was never that raw and cruel. She is shocked by the pervasive segregationist feelings in Maycomb. Why? She lived there through her high school years and would have had to be aware of them, even though she did not feel the same way.

Atticus is hardly existent, hardly noticeable in this book. In this book he is not a hero, not perfect, but he may not have had strong segregationist feelings just because he attended the town Council meetings. He did not necessarily condone them. I'm thinking that a man's decisions are not always based on any one thing. He may have taken the legal defense case in TKAM because it was a challenge, to advance his career, etc.

Uncle Jack's “sermons” to Jean Louise seem too preachy to me and I was thinking that they could have been written by someone else. They left me flat, with a reaction of “what did he just say?”

All in all, the book made me think that most people are unaware of their own bigotry until it hits them in some personal way. I had never had any interaction with black people until I came to America in 1949, so there was no prejudice instilled in me by my parents or culture in my childhood. I always thought of myself as not prejudiced, went to school with them, worked with them, and live in an integrated neighborhood. Some of those interactions were good, some were bad, just as with white people. However, when my daughter started dating a black man in college, I was not so sure I wanted black grand children. However I did nothing to discourage the relationship...
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Re: Go Set a Watchman - Part VII (Chapters 18 and 19)

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Crystaline wrote:
All in all, the book made me think that most people are unaware of their own bigotry until it hits them in some personal way. I had never had any interaction with black people until I came to America in 1949, so there was no prejudice instilled in me by my parents or culture in my childhood. I always thought of myself as not prejudiced, went to school with them, worked with them, and live in an integrated neighborhood. Some of those interactions were good, some were bad, just as with white people. However, when my daughter started dating a black man in college, I was not so sure I wanted black grand children. However I did nothing to discourage the relationship...
Well, I would certainly rather my daughter married a black person who was good and kind, than a white caucasian yobbo. The only regret I would feel would be that I would know that my grandchildren would be of mixed race and life would be more difficult for them.

I would also rather live next door to an ordinary Muslim family, Asian or Black or Christian, than some of the slobbish, ignorant white families one is inclined to encounter now and again.

I never, never was racist at all and believe there is good and bad in all races, creeds and colours. However, the current Islamic problem makes me feel very racist indeed. Videos on YouTube of beheadings notwithstanding. I absolutely abhore those extremists.....but it isn't because of the colour of their skin......or because of their stupid religion.....it is just their self-righteous barbarism. Puts me off any religion whatsoever.
Only those become weary of angling who bring nothing to it but the idea of catching fish.

He was born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world is mad....

Rafael Sabatini
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Re: Go Set a Watchman - Part VII (Chapters 18 and 19)

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Penelope wrote: Well, I would certainly rather my daughter married a black person who was good and kind, than a white caucasian yobbo. The only regret I would feel would be that I would know that my grandchildren would be of mixed race and life would be more difficult for them.
Well, I recently saw the film "Capote" about Truman Capote's conflicted relationship with the anti-hero of "In Cold Blood". So I wanted to make a try at reviving this interesting thread on that basis.

Penelope's comment serves as a decent jumping off point for such an effort.

The separation between communities, which race and religion seems to make so much more dramatic, seems to lead to the type of comparison Penelope made in the quote. While we, like Atticus, recognize the partial nature of the differences between "average" behavior of different communities, the gaps between them still lead to separate cultures.

Ideally, race would not be an issue. Yet it is, and like Atticus we often take a pragmatic approach to it that perpetuates the differences. A self-reinforcing process.

"Capote" looks at a different, but related, phenomenon. His effeminacy and homosexuality led to a dramatic alienation from his society (somewhat reminiscent of Harper Lee's - sorry, Scout's - in Go Set a Watchman.) (Harper Lee evidently grew up in the same town as Truman Capote, and they were friends).

He ruthlessly used his own alienation to get the killer in "In Cold Blood" to talk to him about what the murder scene was like and how the murder went. It is frankly acknowledged that they are two paths taken in response to alienation. It is suggested indirectly, but never directly, that the killer may have been a closet case himself. Capote's intuitive guess that something like this was going on may have led him to discover the "treasure trove" of the killer's diary.

For Truman Capote his alienation led to a more emotionally involved kind of writing (the birth of the "New Journalism" as the Wallace Shawn character states directly). His other major work, "Breakfast at Tiffany's" is a somewhat clumsy but ultimately engaging work, somewhat like "Go Set a Watchman", and also about alienation.

Alienation is the flip side of community, is it not? If there were no community spirit, then the alienated would not feel themselves to be different in some important way.
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