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Harper Lee Dead
Harper Lee died at the age of 89, it was confirmed today, in the same small Alabama town where she lived most of her life, and the setting for her one and only masterwork of published writing, To Kill a Mockingbird.
I don’t know much about Harper Lee. She was such a private person, I’m not sure anyone does. But, I imagine she told us all she wanted to about herself in her semi-autobiographical character, Scout. That’s how I’m going to remember her, anyway. As Scout, all grown up and grown old, still at the heart of her beloved Monroeville.
And as a parting prayer, Miss Lee, thank you for the poignant glimpse into your hidden life in the American South. I’ll always treasure it. RIP.
Published in Literature
LOL!! I may not be Atticus, but I hope I haven’t degenerated into Homer Simpson. At least not yet. ;)
Seeing as how it appears to have had a major impact on so many people, I’ve considered rereading it too. Don’t know if I ever will, but I’ve thought about it.
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I might do that. I usually prefer to read a book instead of listen to it, but I might listen to it instead.
I’ve always thought that they shifted the emphasis of the novel from Scout to the trial in the movie. The book is about Scout.
Paula: “…maybe the characters are simplistically good and bad because that’s how kids tend to see things.”
Good point, Paula. And it brings something to mind that occured to me when I first read reviews and reactions to Watchman.
I think “simplistically good and bad” is not just for children. Many were shocked, Shocked!, upon reading Watchman because it becomes clear that Atticus is a racist.
Haven’t read Watchman (nor Mockingbird in many decades) but for me, this revelation only raised the stature of the story. (By “the story” I mean the totality, the two books taken together.) Atticus as the saintly perfect human, completely divorced from the time and place he grew up in, is simplistically good and bad. Atticus as a racist, and at the same time a very good man who would put his his career into jeopardy defending a black man because of the black man’s humanity, and because he believed in justice, makes the story that much more compelling. It captures better the complexity of the problem of being human and at the same time being good.
“Racism” as an automatic moral marker by which all goodness and badness can be judged is, I think, a simplistic remnant of both the abolitionist movement and the civil rights movement. And it’s a simplicity that still infects the intelligentsia. Taking Mockingbird and Watchman together might nuance that misunderstanding.
“A simplicity that still infects the intelligentsia”: So very true. How is that people so smart can be so very foolish?
I think that’s exactly why I liked it so much. I didn’t read the book in school (not sure I ever got it assigned in school, actually), just happened to pull it off my mom’s shelf of books one day because the title intrigued me. The trial isn’t even the first thing that comes to mind when I look back on reading it – – just my delight in turning those first few pages and meeting a couple kids I liked, and the mystery of the gifts some stranger left for them, which kept me intrigued.
Then the rabid dog, the trial, the terrifying attack on Scout, they were all just really good stories, well told, that kept me turning the pages and wondering how it would all play out. I’m rather happy I didn’t have a teacher helping me find any sort of theme or lesson I could (or should) get out of the reading of that book. I just enjoyed the read.
By the end of grade school, I was conditioned to believe racism (called: prejudice) was the root cause of caste systems, slavery and other related oppression. No one came out and said this to kids in grade school (probably) but it’s all a matter of what’s highlighted and what isn’t. We learned a little about Greece and Rome without hearing much about slavery in those civilizations. I certainly didn’t understand that Africans had enslaved other Africans. (Only white people did that sort of thing.) And I remember, at the end of the 8th grade, being shocked to hear my father say, in so many words, that for many people in the Aztec or Inca Empires, the Conquistadores may have been, if not better, at least no worse.
On the other hand, by the end of the 8th grade, I had heard a lot about the racism and cruelty of Hitler, and of white people in Georgia and Mississippi.
Does anyone know if TKAM is well read on audible. I didn’t read it in school. (Maybe that’s why I loved it when I finally did read it.) My kids did, and I couldn’t stand what I understood from them about the way it was taught.
The only version I could find on Audible is this one. It’s read by Sissy Spacek. You can listen to an audio sample there on the page.
For anyone who might be interested, I also found one for Go Set A Watchman as well. It’s read by Reese Witherspoon.
If it’s read by Sissy Spacek, it’s good. Thank you for the info., Weeping.
You’re welcome, Ansonia. Hope you enjoy it. :)