Harper Lee`s second novel has a bombshell plot twist

Korean film director Lim Sang-soo`s movie "A Good Lawyer`s Wife" released in 2003 is a story of various affairs of members of a dysfunctional Korean family. Lead character Joo Yeong-jak is a successful, conscientious human rights lawyer who`s defending victims of a slaughter case of the Korean War in 1950, but who is also cheating his wife and having an affair with a young woman. He is described as a slave to his passion.

The U.S. society is stunned about novelist Harper Lee`s second novel "Go Set a Watchman," which was released globally Tuesday. Lee published the second novel 55 years after "To Kill a Mockingbird" and attracted controversy ahead of the publication over whether the aged author judged rightfully. The issue at point was main character Atticus Finch, who had been described as a righteous lawyer in "To Kill a Mockingbird" helping a black man who fell under false accusation, was depicted as a racist in the sequel. The American hero was degenerated into an object of disillusionment all of a sudden.

"Go Set a Watchman" was written before "To Kill a Mockingbird." When the new book was released, U.S. media turned attention on the editor who turned a book draft into a masterpiece. In the West, the editor has huge influence until a writer`s draft is published into a book. Influential editors play key role in communicating with the writer on small errors, content and style to make the book into a masterpiece. A writer and an editor are often a friend and enemy to each other.

Actor Colin Firth`s new movie "Genius" is a story of Maxwell Perkins, who was a legendary editor for books of Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe. There are many famous writer-editor couples in literary works. Ezra Pound was the editor for T.S. Eliot`s "The Waste Land." After cutting more than half of Eliot`s draft, he boasted that the book was the most important 20th-century English-language poetry. Charles Dickens listened to writer and editor Edward Bulwer Lytton who wrote "The Last Days of Pompeii" and rewrote the final part of his novel "Great Expectations." In this regard, the editor of "To Kill a Mockingbird" could have prevented Lee from publishing "Go Set a Watchman."

mskoh119@donga.com