What I don't understand -- and I haven't read this new book, would hate to -- is the flip in Atticus' ideology that everyone's talking about. There's something in the article about how she wrote a flashback (TKaM) that was better than the main thing she was trying to publish at the time (GSaW). Okay, not uncommon. But why, in the flashback, is Atticus a paragon of racial virtue and in the present tense shittier book, an asshole?

The reason I'm so frustrated by this is that I can tell I might need to read the fucking thing to answer my question.

Maybe part of the answer is TKaM being seen through the rose-tinted glasses of a 10 year old, and Lee really was/is trying to convey with this new book how our heroes as children don't turn out heroes. Disillusionment. But if so... badly done. (And I'm sure she realized that, before she had a damn stroke.) People who espouse the beliefs Atticus does, with the certainty and courage and so on -- they don't change. I am irrationally bothered by this. I don't even care for To Kill a Mockingbird particularly. The best thing about it is the title.

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Who was it that tried to burn a lot of his poetry on his death bed? One of the South Americans?