It's a sin to kill a mockingbird

Inevitably, announcement of the forthcoming release of a "new" book by Harper Lee triggered a new interest in the author's life and work, along with the gossip that swirls about her to this day. By coincidence, our church's women's book club discussed the book this month. Friend Jean and I planned to go to the brown bag luncheon today, but I am stuck waiting for a furniture delivery. I packed Jean a lunch, but she decided we should just eat here and have our own discussion. So we did.
To Kill a Mockingbird, its themes and social significance have been so much discussed that it seems redundant to rehash it here. Jean said the one thing that stands out for her is the character of Atticus--a man well grounded, sure in his beliefs of right and wrong, willing to buck society for what he believes the truth to be. I think many people would choose him as their favorite character.
Author Harper Lee has become almost a legendary recluse--but a lot of that is just legend. I recently read The Mockingbird Next Door, by Marja Mills. Mills, a feature writer for the Chicago Daily Tribune, traveled to Monroeville, Alabama, in the futile hope of getting an interview with the famous author. Instead, she was thrilled to talk to Lee's older sister, Alice, then in her nineties. Before she left town, Harper (known as Nelle) sent word she'd like to meet. One thing led to another and to friendship with the end result that Mills lived next door to the sisters for a period of about eighteen months and came to know them, their friends, and their way of life. She ate with them in restaurants, visited in their homes, went on exploratory jaunts with them.
Nelle was not the recluse many envisioned--she was an active part of her community. And she lived part time in New York where she maintained an apartment. Mills' account of her time in Monroeville is memorable in the picture it paints of life in a small southern town and of the lives of the two sisters. Nelle was a bit eccentric, outspoken, but shy in public, reluctant to give interviews or talks. She was happy with her life, and when pressed about another book, I believe she let Miss Alice answer: "Why write another when you've hit your peak?" Mills wrote with the sisters' blessing, but there are hints that Harper Lee as dissatisfied with the final product.
Today Miss Alice is gone, living and practicing law until she was 103, and Nelle Harper Lee is in an assisted living facility, barely able to see and hear and some say her mind is failing. She is in her late eighties.
The puzzle is why, after all this time of adamant refusal about another book, did Harper Lee consent to publish what is essentially a first draft. The editor who rejected it requested the extensive rewrite which resulted in the published version of the book--after heavy editing. Harper Lee possessed uncanny insight into the ways of her town and the South and the ways of people in the era of her book, but she was essentially an amateur writer. The publisher of the new book, Go Set A Watchman, plans to publish it unedited. I think we should all be prepared for much repetitive material, but who among us doesn't intend to read the new book? There are the nasty rumors, of course, of money to be made by the publisher and the lawyer now handling Lee's affairs, and a suggestion that if Miss
Alice was still handling things there would be no new book.
I don't remember when I first read Mockingbird. It was published in the early sixties, when I was in graduate school, and whether I read it then or not, I can't be sure. I know I saw the movie...and it's one of the few that lives up to the book. Gregory Peck dominates in perhaps his best role ever. I watched it and reread the book a couple of  years ago in preparation for a panel discussion, and I remember being surprised at how different the cinematography was from what we're used to today. I hope no enterprising producer gets a notion to do an "updated" film. Gregory Peck is long gone, and I cannot imagine another Atticus.
If you haven't explored the original book, or Marja Mills book, or seen the movie, all are worth your time before Go Set a Watchman comes out.

Atticus to Jem: "Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird." All mockingbirds do is sing their hearts out for us.

A new book from Harper Lee

Few things could have jolted me out of the funk I've been in like the news that Harper Lee will publish a new book, written before the classic To Kill a Mockingbird. The new novel, Go Set a Watchman, was actually written before. Lee submitted it to an agent, who requested that she re-write, making it from a young Scout's point of view. She did, and the rest is history. Her talent for painting the picture of a small Alabama town during the days of segregation is beyond remarkable. We walk those dusty streets with Scout, and with her we watch Atticus during trials. The books has an immediacy that few have. At the same time, it delves into social problems, racism being the most obvious. But the treatment of women, the insular life of a small town, the small prejudices all come to the fore. Like many readers world-wide, I thought it was one of the most impressive books I've ever read. And it had a greater impact on me than most.
A few years ago I was asked to sit on a panel discussing the book with several local people. I re-read the book and watched the movie. The book was even more powerful to me, and so was the movie. Some scenes were already clear in my mind--Atticus shooting the rabid dog, Atticus in the courtroom. But I was amazed at how far cinematography has come since the '60s. Still I loved every minute of it. The moderator of the panel was Bob Ray Sanders, a black local journalist and good friend. He asked me how, growing up in Chicago, I felt about black people, and I confessed that I was afraid of them. Bob Ray thanked me for the courage to answer truthfully. Not long after that session, I found Mockingbird on my oldest granddaughter's bedside table (I was temporarily occupying her room). I was crushed when I asked how she liked it, and she replied she thought it was boring. The book is required reading for something like 70% of high school students--perhaps that's a mistake; perhaps it's too soon. They can't appreciate the social problems because in this day they see them as solved, although racism is still a vital issue (proven by negative reaction to our president).
News of the forthcoming book--which I will read ASAP--sent me to the book I've been meaning to read: The Mockingbird Next Door, by Marja Mills, a journalist who, with the blessing of Harper Lee and her older sister Alice, moved next door to the ladies and wrote their story. Mills says Harper wanted to call it "Having Their Say" in spite of the fact that the title had already been used for the popular memoir/biography of the Delaney sisters, two ninety-ish black sisters who lived together in New York all their lives. I haven't gotten much beyond the opening, but I'm looking forward to reading it.
And I plan to be in attendance when my church reading group discusses Mockingbird week after next. It's been a good day for bibliophiles, especially students and devotees of American literature.