To shill a mockingbird

Would you like to understand how the “new” Harper Lee novel, “Go Set a Watchman,” came to be billed as a long-lost, blockbuster sequel to “To Kill a Mockingbird” — one of the definitive books of the American 20th century — when, by all the known facts, it’s an uneven first draft of the famous novel that was never considered for publication?

Would you like to get a glimpse into how clever marketing and cryptic pronouncements have managed to produce an instant bestseller, months before anyone has read it?

Fabulous. Pull up a rocking chair, pour two fingers of bourbon — make it three — and let’s have a little chat, in the gloaming in this little town in south Alabama. Here is where Lee grew up with many of the real-life characters whose fictional counterparts would come to populate the only book she ever published.