"One reason To Kill a Mockingbird succeeded is the wise and kind heart of the author, which comes through on every page... As a model of good writing and humane sensibility, this book will be read and studied forever." President George W. Bush
Posted on 06/27/2010 6:07:23 PM PDT by Clemenza
I am in total agreement with you. TKAM was a wonderful book to read at age 16, and the movie was even better.
Maybe it’s because you spend all your time on FR, like a lot of us. :•)
'Group think' isn't always right, nor is it always moral. Consider the attitudes of folks about abortion nowadays. Many accept it because it's 'legal', confusing legal with moral, and they don't want to appear unsophisticated by the 'group', for going against them on the issue.
Boo doesn’t understand but is scared to death.
I lived for a number of years in Faulkner’s adopted hometown of Oxford, MS. Interestingly enough, Faulkner wasn’t particularly well-liked until he won the Nobel Prize and became something of an international celebrity. Before that, he was known as something of an eccentric and often difficult to deal with (not exactly the first writer described in those terms).
A couple of anecdotes about “Bill.” Early in his adult life, as he was embarking on a writing career, family friends arranged to get him the postmaster’s job at the University of Mississippi. He quit only two weeks later, saying he “would never be a slave to anyone with a 5 cent stamp.”
Faulkner was also fond of the bottle. Even after winning the Nobel, he was known to go from door-to-door in Oxford, sometimes clad in his pajamas, asking if he could get a snort of whiskey from his neighbors. If you visit his home (Rowan Oak) you’ll see portions of a book chapter inscribed on the bedroom wall. Apparently, Bill ran out of paper during the creative process, and started scribbling on the wall.
Finally, this made me a heretic in Oxford, but for my money, the greatest southern writer of that era was Thomas Wolfe. The evocative language, rthymn and tone of such works as “Of Time and the River” and “Look Homeward Angel” is better than anything Faulkner ever produced. Even Faulkner ranked Wolfe as the best writer of their generation, while placing himself in second place.
Go, Down Moses was a really good collection of shorts, but for me the narrative of Light in August really summarized the South as succinctly as possible. You’ve got a guy, Joe Christmas, that is neither white or black and wow the whole escapade is unreal. Don’t want to spoil it.
I’ve always thought “Rose for Emily” was an excellent story because, again, it explained what it was like to live in the South without ever having to step in it.
I’ll reread Pantaloon in Black again; I haven’t touched GDM for a while.
Ping! (abd a bump for scout)!
“It was a chiffaROBE...”
I always like the story about Faulkner joining the Canadian Air Force, crashing his training plane, and then having to buy a pilot’s wings from a pawn shop. He then sat at the town circle in Oxford, traded stories with the locals, and was given the diminutive name “Count No-count.”
Then he made dreadfully Victorian, Christina Rossetti type depressing poetry for a dozen years before trying the novel.
It shows that an utter failure in the least respected state in the Union can still work to become one of the greatest writers ever.
"One reason To Kill a Mockingbird succeeded is the wise and kind heart of the author, which comes through on every page... As a model of good writing and humane sensibility, this book will be read and studied forever." President George W. Bush
I’d like to see them remake the movie with Jim Carrey as Atticus, Jason Alexander as Tom and Rowan Atkinson as Boo. Miley Cyrus could play Scout.
That's not surprising. Writers tend to be eccentric. I knew some people who lived close to Kurt Vonnegut. They commented that he was an "odd, odd man." I recently drove through Cross Plains, Texas, where Robert E. Howard (creator of Conan and the whole sword and sorcery genre lived.) His small home has been turned into a museum, but the rest of the town takes very little notice. Edgar Allen Poe was supposed to be a very difficult person, as was Mark Twain. Hemingway was a notorious drunk who eventually committed suicide. Sometimes I think the reason people write is because they are more at home in their own heads than conversing with others. There are exceptions, of course.
Mississippi had William Faulkner and Eudora Welty...
...and Shelby Foote!! (though he later moved to Memphis).
“I’ve never shown anybody a draft of anything.”
—Shelby Foote
“It was a chiffaROBE...”
I was 11 years old and my sister was 9,when we first saw the film version of the novel, and we are now both hurtling towards 60. I still have never seen a chiffarobe, but looked it up in the dictionary back then, and it is a blend of an chiffonier and a wardrobe. A Southern thing. The actress who played Mayella was Collin Wilcox Paxton who had a respectable career as a stage actress but really hit the mark with her role as the white trash teen. When I was watching,”Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil”, I blurted out when I saw the actress in a small role, It’s Mayella Ewell! Obviously her portrayal was memorable. I read that she and Brock Peters, who played Tom Robinson,(the buster up of the iconic chiffarobe) were both very involved in the Civil Rights movement in the 60’s. I read this morning in WIkipedia that 30 Rock,the tv show, once made a reference to a “chiffarobe”, now that had to be funny. Alec Baldwin and I went to the same high school where To Kill a Mockingbird was mandatory reading. Maybe he never forgot the book either, :)
I saw Faulkner's daughter on television years ago. She said that once, as Faulkner began sliding into alcohol intoxication, she said to him: "Papa, don't drink anymore, please." He stared at her for a time and then said: "You know. Nobody remembers Shakespeare's child."
I like this one: Faulkner was working on a movie script. Clark Gable was the big star. They were in a car with some other men headed for the location. Gable asked Faulkner if he was a script writer. After a pause, Faulkner said: "Yes. What do you do for a living, Mr. Gable?"
Could it be because using it in a sentence might get a goodly portion of FReepers sent to time out? :-)
An interesting combination.
Count me in as disagreeing with both of you. Respectfully, of course.
....probably including yours truly.
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