Today, in case you can't tell from the flurry of posts on the internet and on this site, is the official release day of the To Kill a Mockingbird sequel/prequel. If you're frustrated by the overkill, I promise it will all be over tomorrow. But until then, Quartz has discovered that significant portions of Watchman very closely resemble significant portions of Mockingbird. Of course, self-plagiarism is no crime — and by all accounts, Watchman was an early draft of Mockingbird, which explains the overlap — but it again raises the question of why Watchman even exists.

If a large chunk of the book has already been cannibalized to create another (most likely better) novel, why should anyone bother to read the cannibalized version? It's like putting all the stone chips left over from the sculpting of Michaelangelo's David on a pedestal and calling it Not David. The art isn't in the scraps used to make the art. The art is what's left after you do all the cutting and shaping and merging. Art is the product of intent, not the happenstance of creation.