After the fantastic success of To Kill a Mockingbird, its author, Nelle Harper Lee, never wrote another book. She gave her last interview in 1965. A BBC documentary recently visited her hometown and recorded this:
They say if you meet her [Harper Lee] and don’t recognize her, she is not happy. If you meet her and recognize her, she is not happy.
Then she wouldn’t like me: I’ve never read it.
I read this book in my quest to read Penguin’s Top 100 Classics. I’m glad I picked this book early on because it set the tone for what I was looking for in a “classic”. Honestly, I can understand why she never wrote again. St. Thomas Aquinas never wrote anything after he had a mystical experience. He said that after God showed him what He had, there was nothing else worth writing.
yes, To Kill a Mockingbird is about a hundred times more readable and enjoyable than most classics.
This reminds me of Michael Caine’s line to his co-stars, before filming love scenes: “If, when we film, I have an erection, I apologize. If, when we film, I do not have an erection, I apologize.”
I liked To Kill A Mockingbird, both the book and the movie. However, over the years I have come to have a more jaundiced view of this type of entertainment, the goal of which seems to be to make white people feel good about themselves. The second half of the 20th century saw an epic struggle for civil rights in this country. Why is it that when this era is portrayed in film, the heroes are always white? Why are the black characters usually so one-dimensional? This continues to the present day in films like The Blind Side, which again portrays affluent white folks coming to the aid of poor blacks. I don’t know, it just seems patronizing. Like the only way black people can get ahead is if a noble white man comes along to help them out.