--- title: Why I Refuse to Read Go Set a Watchman description: (It may not be why you think...) canonical: https://time.com/3957417/refuse-to-read-go-set-a-watchman/ author: Robin Black article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-07-14T20:52:49.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-11T05:02:30.297Z article:section: Ideas og:title: Why I Refuse to Read Go Set a Watchman og:description: (It may not be why you think...) og:url: https://time.com/3957417/refuse-to-read-go-set-a-watchman/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt03a35882894dc220/69885ab83c163936df458d0e/mockingbird3.jpeg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: To Kill A Mockingbird og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Why I Refuse to Read Go Set a Watchman twitter:description: (It may not be why you think...) twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt03a35882894dc220/69885ab83c163936df458d0e/mockingbird3.jpeg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Why I Refuse to Read _Go Set a Watchman_ by [Robin Black](https://time.com/author/robin-black/) ## Robin Black Jul 14, 2015 8:52 PM UTC  Actors Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch and Brock Peters as Tom Robinson in the film 'To Kill a Mockingbird', 1962. Actors Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch and Brock Peters as Tom Robinson in the film 'To Kill a Mockingbird', 1962.Silver Screen Collection / Getty Images by [Robin Black](https://time.com/author/robin-black/) ## Robin Black Jul 14, 2015 8:52 PM UTC I reacted first to the controversy around Harper Lee’s _Go Set A Watchman,_ from a writer’s perspective: we, of all people, shouldn’t care that a fictional character appears as a heroic crusader against injustice in one book, and as a racist in another. We should know better than anyone about drafts, and about how characters change. Even characters like Atticus Finch, who had been forever etched into our hearts (or so we thought) as the decent, brave white southern lawyer who acts on principle to help an unjustly accused black man. I scolded my friends to this effect on Facebook, but it was in the most diplomatic version I could craft of my nearly allergic reaction to everyone’s tears over this tarnishing of Finch’s name. The actual phrase in my head as I watched the crepe being hung, was: _Oh, for God’s sake everyone, grow up!_ It’s quite amazing what we can hide from ourselves. It took me a few days to make the connection between my anger at the great Finch fuss, and my own father. That man was Charles L. Black, Jr. who died in 2001, at 85\. He was a white southern lawyer, admired for his work in civil rights, particularly as one of the authors of the NAACP brief in _Brown V. Board of Ed_. As a bonus, he looked a good deal like Gregory Peck. He was and still is revered by many, even idolized, and definitely idealized. While other girls were wishing their fathers were Atticus Finch, I was being told that mine was. But he wasn’t, of course. He surely did great good in this world, and he could be very loving at times, very thoughtful, and notably generous. But he was also an emotionally unstable alcoholic, habitually bad-tempered and an inhibiting force in my life; I began writing at 39, three weeks after his death. The disconnect between those who didn’t know him but adored him and those of us who loved him in spite of knowing him was a destabilizing feature of my youth. It still can throw me, though he is long gone and I am well into middle age. I have written many essays about my father, most of which are attempts to parse his complicated legacy, including a love I will always carry for him that must be able to contain complexities and contradictions, compassion and also anger. This is my life, as his daughter, and I am – this word again – allergic to discussions about my father that paint him as a saint. Not only because he isn’t one, but because no one is. Truth be told, I am allergic to all desire to believe that anyone is wholly good: it seems like an infantile kind of longing to me, one that I had to leave by the wayside decades ago. My father was no racist, as I gather this unearthed Atticus turns out to have been. He didn’t carry evil in him. Not at all. So the analogy fails, as most eventually do. But that doesn’t keep this debate from resonating deep inside me. It doesn’t keep me from feeling dismay at the fact that people are attached to the fantasy of a perfect father, or a perfect person. And maybe that’s jealousy on my part. I don’t know. I won’t be reading _Go Set A Watchman_ for many reasons, but prominent among them is that I don’t need to learn that men who do much good in this wicked, wicked world of ours may not be all that they appear. That lesson is already well etched into my heart. [_Robin Black_ ](http://robinblack.net/)_is the author of_ [Life Drawing](http://www.amazon.com/Life-Drawing-Novel-Robin-Black/dp/0812980670)_, a novel, and_ If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This_, a short-story collection. Her next book, Crash Course: 52 Essays From Where Writing and Life Collide, is forthcoming in 2016._ _Read next:_ [_10 Beautiful Lines From Harper Lee’s_ ](http://time.com/3956750/mockingbird-go-set-a-watchman-harper-lee/?iid=time%5Freadnext)[Go Set a Watchman](http://time.com/3956750/mockingbird-go-set-a-watchman-harper-lee/?iid=time%5Freadnext) [_Download TIME’s mobile app for iOS to have your world explained wherever you go_](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/time-mobile/id328218429) ### See Harper Lee's Secluded Alabama Life  Caption from LIFE. Miss Lee pauses on balcony of local courthouse where she set climactic trial of a Negro who gets railroaded by small-town bigots. "The trial was a composite of all trials in the world - some in the South. But the courthouse was this one. My father's a lawyer, so I grew up in this room, and mostly I watched him from here." Donald Uhrbrock—The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images  Harper Lee visiting her hometown, Monroeville, Alabama, in 1961. Donald Uhrbrock—The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images  Caption from LIFE. Miss Lee inspects old house much like neighborhood mystery house in book. "I remember this as the old Hodge place. Now no one lives here, so a lot of the children call it haunted, and they use it as a clubhouse." Donald Uhrbrock—The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images  Caption from LIFE. Reclining in chaise, she chats with father, Amasa Lee, 80, on screen porch. He was real-life model for her sage hero, Atticus Finch. "My father is one of the few men I've known, who has genuine humility, and it lends him a natural dignity. He has absolutely no ego drive, and so he is one of the most beloved men in this part of the state." Donald Uhrbrock—The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images  Caption from LIFE. In hometown getup, she ambles in playground of school she once attended. "This was our favorite meeting place during recess and lunch. Here we had our fights, our marble games and hid our love notes." Donald Uhrbrock—The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images  Caption from LIFE. At her father's law office where she wrote "Mockingbird," Miss Lee works on her next novel. 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