Category: words

Tonja B. Carter: “Accidents of history sometimes place otherwise unknown people in historic spotlights. Such was my fate when last August curiosity got the best of me and I found a long-lost manuscript written by one of America’s most beloved authors.”

“How big a role did she play in reconceiving the story from a dark tale of a young woman’s disillusionment with her father’s racist views, to a redemptive one of moral courage and human decency? And, for that matter, how would Ms. Hohoff have felt about the decision, more than a half-century later, to publish a prototype of ‘Mockingbird’?”

“‘A poor translation will kill even the most beautifully written, imaginative book,’ said Fiammetta Rocco, administrator of the prize.”

“Weeks of work followed. I emailed questions and studied the answers. The key wasn’t simply to load in science. My average reader would be as confused as I by long passages about RNA and antigenic drift. But fiction demands a certain specificity. Cliches – like a virus ‘going airborne’ – had to go.”

“Atticus Finch — the crusading lawyer of ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’ whose principled fight against racism and inequality inspired generations of readers — is depicted in ‘Watchman’ as an aging racist who has attended a Ku Klux Klan meeting, holds negative views about African-Americans and denounces desegregation efforts.”

Or, “Eight Different Ways To Describe How ‘Go Set A Watchman’ Came To Be A Published Novel.”

“There are twice as many voluntary staff manning the UK’s 4,000 libraries than professional workers.
However it has been said that this community-led model is not sustainable.”

“What immediately strikes you reading this first chapter is its utterly conventional voice, its lack of spark and intimacy. There are glimpses of the sharp, knowing phrases that characterise Mockingbird, but much of the prose of Watchman, not to put too fine a point on it, is pedestrian to the point of clunking.”

“The novel, which is currently the number one best-seller on Amazon.com, is due to be published on 14 July.
Amazon did not give any figures for pre-orders, but publisher HarperCollins said it had ordered an initial US print run of two million.”