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| Harper Lee in 2006 (Birmingham News photo by Linda Stelter) |
It
has been 54 years since Harper Lee published To Kill a Mockingbird. In 2010,
with the 50th anniversary of the book's publication, Harper Lee and her novel
were the topic for many a publication. BBC News Magazine published an article exploring why To Kill a Mockingbird
continues to be so hugely popular in Great Britain. In publications almost as
foreign to some of us in the South, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal,
and Smithsonian Magazine all featured articles trying to explain the Harper Lee
phenomenon. Those articles were, respectively, “The Courthouse Ring,” “What 'To Kill a Mockingbird' Isn't,” and “Harper Lee's Novel Achievement.
Every
summer, Harper Lee's hometown of Monroeville, Alabama, hosts tourists from all over the world who come to see the town that inspired her novel, to visit the
old courthouse, and to see the theatrical production of To Kill a Mockingbird,
performed by local actors. I have never been go Monroeville, but two of my
friends made the trek this summer to see the play. One day I'll make it over there. It is one of those things on
my "bucket list" of things to do before I die.
Lee's
novel is a perennial best-seller, and the movie version of To Kill a
Mockingbird is a cinematic work of art in itself. My main point in featuring
Harper Lee is to share what two Southerners have said recently about Harper
Lee. I am no expert on the renowned author, and certainly make no claims of
any personal knowledge of her. I much prefer for you to hear what Wayne Flynt
has said about why Harper Lee wrote only one novel, and to read what journalist
John Archibald has written about what we may learn about Harper Lee from reading her novel.
A
Most Graceful Dance
Wayne
Flynt, Professor Emeritus in the Department of History at Auburn University, is
a widely sought after speaker and author of many books including Poor but
Proud, and Keeping Faith: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Lives. He has visited
with Harper Lee on numerous occasions and in a recorded interview offered his
theory on why she only wrote one book.
An historian who is superbly nimble with statistics, Flynt readily calls
to mind statistics which he sets to a graceful dance in celebration of To Kill
a Mockingbird:
"Harper Lee, Bless
her soul, has become Boo Radley"
John
Archibald is a columnist for the Alabama Media Group whose work appears in The
Birmingham News. He recently did an opinion piece which implores the public to
stop trying to draw the reclusive author out, but rather to take a look into
her writing to see who she is and to see the gifts she has given us:
There's so much talk
about Harper Lee. Has the first lady of Alabama literature finally gone 'round
the bend? Has she lost herself, holed up in that Monroeville world of hers? Has
she simply put her trust in the wrong people?
Everybody wants to know,
to draw her out into the sunlight. Was she suckered by a sweet-talking
carpet-bagging biographer? Or was it Lee herself who did the suckering?
Stop it. Just stop it.
Because if there's a story to be told about Harper Lee, Lee herself already
told it better than anyone. In To Kill A
Mockingbird. (Please continue reading Archibald’s essay
here.)
A
Realistic Hope
My guess is that the world will continue to be
enthralled by Harper Lee’s one book, and that people will continue to make
pilgrimages to Monroeville, Alabama to see the place and to touch the courthouse
rails where a story for all the ages was born. For as long as we are
enthralled, and as long as we look at that story of justice denied with a
measure of hope in our hearts, we will be all the better for it. We will
forever have Harper Lee to thank for a vision of a time in the past that is
not the “one brief shining moment” of an idealistic Camelot. Neither is it sentimental nostalgia. Instead, it is a look
into ourselves to see why we live in the communities we have created, and how
we can have hope that we can do better.
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Photo: The photo of Harper Lee is by Linda
Stetler and is from The Birmingham News file. It is a 2006 reception for her at the Alys Stephens Center
in Birmingham, where she received a lifetime achievement award from The Birmingham Pledge.
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