The Book I Still Haven’t Read: Go Set a Watchman

I preordered it and awaited its arrival with great anticipation. That was when we lived in the Vineland house. Patrick had been working in Charlotte, doing weekly commutes and coming home on the weekends. I was teaching at a career college and didn’t have much joy in my life in Augusta. Too many people knew where I lived and dropped in on me without calling, to the extent that I started doing what my paternal grandmother did when she didn’t want company: answering the door with my purse over my shoulder. Sorry, I was just on my way out. Nana would even get in the car and drive around the block to rid herself of unwanted company. I had yet to take it that far, and I had a better solution in mind: move to Charlotte.

I applied for a faculty position at King’s College, in the Elizabeth neighborhood of the Queen City, and Barbara Rockecharlie asked me to come to campus for an interview. She scheduled it for the morning after Go Set a Watchman was due to arrive.

I don’t know about y’all, but I’ll forsake sleep to keep reading. I read the opening chapter and loved it so much that I made myself close the book and save it for the next evening, after we returned to Augusta from my interview in Charlotte.

I wore my black and white polka dot dress and my black and white horizontally striped flats. Barbara was also wearing black and white polka dots and stripes. Kismet. The dots on her dress were larger than the ones on mine while her shoes had narrower stripes. The interview was going extremely well. She was interviewing me to teach Business Communications (b-comm), and then she showed me the literature syllabus. My face lit up like a Vegas casino: Faulkner, Hawthorne, Chopin, Hemingway, and Poe. Poetry. Drama. All texts I knew and loved.

Barbara noticed the slots hitting the jackpot on my face and asked of I’d like to teach the literature course. I don’t know if y’all know what it’s like having an MA—it’s not a terminal degree, so the brutal truth is that we tend to get stuck in adjunct pools with a career sentence of teaching freshman composition until the mountains are beaches. Yes, I would like to teach the literature course. Could I come back tomorrow and give a teaching demo to the program managers(department heads)? Absolutely.

My husband and I could have stayed in a hotel in Charlotte overnight, but there were things at home I needed: my notebook from Peggy’s class, my Faulkner Collected Stories, and my coffee table book, American Writers at Home. Incidentally, the summer after I graduated, Peggy had me guest lecture her Southern Lit class on Harper Lee and To Kill a Mockingbird. Peggy was a Faulkner scholar who earned her PhD at Ole Miss and drank bourbon at Faulkner’s grave. I planned to use “A Rose for Emily” for my demo, complete with incredible biographical notes. I knew I could knock it out of the park if I had my books and notes.

So we drove back to Augusta, and Go Set a Watchman remained closed in the bookshelf in my headboard. I wanted this job, wanted to move to Charlotte and leave Augusta in the rearview (attempt number three). I was diligent in my pursuit and got out my books and notes, marking pages, underlining, making margin notes. I also printed copies of Faulkner’s Nobel Banquet Speech.

We drove back to Charlotte the next morning, straight to King’s College. I had an audience of six, and I brought William Faulkner to life for two academic administrators, a travel agent, an accountant, a graphic designer, and a medical doctor. I opened with the story about when he was postmaster at Ole Miss (great story, btw), moved from that to his screenwriting career in Hollywood and different interpretations of working from home before discussing the hunts he hosted at his home in Mississippi, Rowan Oak, where he served jiggers of bourbon on the half hour. Then I got into the text, the third person plural narrator, the implications about the old south and the new south, and, of course, allowed the joke in the title to resonate without assistance from me.

Then I gave everyone a copy of the speech and passed around the book, open to the Rowan Oak chapter and talked about Eliot’s Tradition and the Individual Talent and The Wasteland, asserting the Faulkner is in dialogue with both of these texts in his Banquet Speech. My audience was dumbfounded, absolutely blown away. I hit the Durham Bull, and I had a steak for dinner that night.

When we returned to Augusta the second night in a row, I couldn’t begin reading my new book yet. I had chatted with a couple of administrative support staff that morning on my way in the building, and they said that there was competition for faculty positions, that if I had not come back that day, someone might have snatched the position out from under me. With that in mind, I decided to send a thank you note to everyone who attended my demo.

I composed six different notes, geared toward each individual—how embarrassed would I be if they compared and each had the same cookie cutter email? Nope, not a chance of that happening. Each person: both Joes, Mary Alice, Barbara, Alice, and Beverly all received an individual, personal email. After I finished those, I had to order transcripts to be sent. Still no time for pleasure reading.

I was at my friend Mary’s house, out in Beech Island, acquiring some farm fresh eggs and locally grown elephant garlic (still the best I’ve ever had. I call it Vidalia garlic because of the mild sweetness). We were on her screened porch when my phone rang. It was a 704 area code, so I answered. It was Barbara Rockecharlie, calling to officially offer me a faculty position at King’s College.

I still didn’t have time to read Go Set a Watchman—I had to pack up my house, find a house in Charlotte, and get my daughter enrolled in school so I could begin teaching in late August.

I managed to get it all done, and our move to Charlotte was a smooth one. I miss that house to this day. I taught at King’s College until they closed their doors. To this day, it’s the best job I’ve ever had. I hope to change that this August when I begin at Lenoir-Rhyne University in Hickory. If it goes well there, we’ll move to Hickory. That’s where I plan to finish reading Go Set a Watchman—in the house I don’t live in yet in Hickory, North Carolina.