People have been raising questions about the conditions under which Harper Lee agreed to have her second book published. Did she really agree? (She’s historically said she opposed publishing a second book.) Is she being exploited by her lawyer and others who want to profit from what will undoubtedly be the novel’s wildly successful sales figures? Mallory Ortberg thinks this might be the case. At New York, Boris Kachka reviews Lee’s history, particularly her decline in recent years, and quotes a letter that her sister Alice Lee wrote to a biographer about the Lees’ lawyer, Tonja: “I learned that without my knowledge she had typed out the statement, carried it to [Nelle’s apartment], and had Nelle Harper sign it . . . Poor Nelle Harper can’t see and can’t hear and will sign anything put before her by anyone in whom she has confidence. Now she has no memory of the incident . . . I am humiliated, embarrassed, and upset about the suggestion of lack of integrity at my office.”
At Medium, a profile of a Wikipedia editor on a mission to eradicate all instances of incorrect usage of “comprised of.” He made his first “comprised of” edit in 2006. Since 2007, he’s made 42,000 edits.
Tim Parks sets out to answer how to define authenticity in literature: “However many ways the author reworks his material,” he concludes, “it is recognizably his. We might say he or she is obedient to a need, or an inspiration, even when setting out to work in a different genre.”
Recently, numerous newspapers have been doing away with the comment function for their stories. The Guardian’s executive editor for digital says this is a mistake. Also: “We need to understand a whole lot more about how Buzzfeed does what it does.”
Speaking of Buzzfeed, Kat Stoeffel is moving there to be their deputy ideas editor. Stoeffel has done a lot of great work at New York’s The Cut.
Andrew Sullivan, who recently announced that he’s leaving his influential blog, The Dish, explains why it won’t be continuing without him, as readers have requested it do: “All three co-owners of the site, me, Patrick Appel and Chris Bodenner, have come to the conclusion that the practical, financial and editorial challenges of continuing on are simply too great for us to bear as we are, let alone without me.”