Posted on 04/06/2007 5:32:09 AM PDT by urtax$@work
If there's one book you should read before you die, it's To Kill a Mockingbird. That's not my opinion. Apparently I was sick back in ninth grade when every other American kid read Harper Lee's novel of racism, moral courage and coming of age in 1930s Alabama. I read it for the first time only this week and have my misgivings.
But according to the Guardian newspaper's Web site, a 2006 poll of librarians — British librarians — put To Kill a Mockingbird atop the list of books every adult should read before they shuffle off. Ahead of the Bible. Ahead of Huckleberry Finn and Pride and Prejudice and even Harry "the Franchise" Potter.
Go to link to see rest of article: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/life/4691912.html
(Excerpt) Read more at chron.com ...
I think they should ban Beowulf. I absolutely hated reading that book and never was able to get the characters straight. UGH!!!!!!!!!!!!! I think that was my lowest grade in any test in high school and it was far from passing.
Okay. Sorry I got touchy.
Now, you seem to think that she showed him the manuscript and bounced ideas off of him and got help. Well, okay then.
From the little I read...I just don't. I don't think he wanted to help her.
I'm not talking about some kind of formal partnership or writers' colloquy -- just two old friends having lunch. Chatting about their lives, which would include their current projects. Truman might offer up a snippet of memory, because storytellers love to tell stories. She might ask him to look at a chapter, to see if his memory of that place and time jibes with hers, since they were both there together. That kind of thing.
Was Truman jealous when Harper shot to fame so fast? I'm sure. I'll admit, I would be. But In Cold Blood was published five years after To Kill a Mockingbird, and it's dedicated to her "with my love and gratitude," so I don't think there was any real animosity.
I agree that it's not worth belaboring.
You weren’t touchy. It’s just hard to tell when you are reading words.
(((It’s a good story, and Peck was excellent in the role. I saw the movie as a child, read the book in high school, and bought the DVD recently. I was surprised to see one of my favorite actors of all time, a young Robert Duvall, playing the role of Boo Radley.)))
That was Duvall’s first screen role.
Although Tom Robinson was the main “Mockingbird” in the story, the story had many of them. Boo was one. The rape victim was one. Even Atticus was one.
It was a breathtakingly wonderful story.
I’m with you. I love the movie and don’t care as much for the book.
And it sets the stage for the preacher to usher the children up to the balcony during Tom Robinson's trial. That's why I don't find the book's treatment of race simplistic or patronizing -- the color line cuts both ways, and its absurdity is best seen through the eyes of an innocent child who hasn't lived long enough to get used to it and take it for granted.
My great-grandmother had a hired man named Chan. He did odd jobs, a little gardening. He was about her age; they might have known each other as children. He had a tin cup he would set on the porch stoop, and when he came back it was filled with water or coffee, depending on the time of day and the weather. He never stepped foot in the house except to fix something, and she never visited his; everyone knew their place.
When Chan died, Ladybird (my great-grandmother) knew she could not attend the funeral. It just wasn't done. But she had a quiet word with the pastor of the local AME church, and arranged it so after the casket was placed in the church, but before the formal viewing, she could go in and pay her respects alone. Which she did.
That's the thing about To Kill a Mockingbird. It resonates. I know people who love movies like "Moonstruck" or "A Bronx Tale," and I'll admit, they're well done. But they don't speak to me. "Fried Green Tomatoes" and "Steel Magnolias," on the other hand, get to me -- I know these people. They raised me.
Mockingbird is a compelling story expertly told, so much so that it speaks to everyone -- including, apparently, British librarians. It has a universal appeal. But to Southerners, there's something deeper. It's kind of like those Tibetan monks who can chant so that four voices can create two dozen distinct pitches. It's the resonance -- something in it vibrates an internal tuning fork you weren't even conscious of having.
Impact yes. But it’s not terribly literary.
Leaving off Lolita and Ada?
Holden is not supposed to be a likeable character. It works that way if you’re an adult.
Dante’s Inferno is like a horror movie! And Melville is hilarious.
If I were an editor, I'd buy a book from you on te basis of that opening sentence alone. I bet it'd be quite a story!
I’ve read to Kill a Mockingbird several times, but never in school. It’s an excellent book, but I don’t know if it’s a “must read”. As for it being a Southern apologia, I guess it is, but I doubt that the South was much different than any other small town in the thirties. Heck, it’s not much different than some towns were much more recently than the thirties.
When we first moved to NW Washington, I met a woman that had come here from Trinidad to be married to a man(from Trinidad, also) who already had his citizenship. She couldn’t get a regular job, so she answered and for work as an aide to a senior citizen. She knocked on the door for her interview and the man who answered closed it in her face. She knocked again and told him she was here to be interviewed. The man said, but you’re Black. She said, yes I am, I have been all my life. He said that he couldn’t have a Black woman working in his house.
Anyway, Grisham wrote a good book about the South, called, The Painted House, and it’s not about race relations.
Your story about your great-grandmother struck a cord with me. I grew up in Miami, Fla. which in the late 40’s and early 50’s was not exactly the deep south but was populated by a lot of people who had moved from places in the deep south, if you know what I mean. So, there was racism, even in the “sun and fun capital” just the same. I still remember the “colored only” signs on the water coolers and the “colored only” over the back seat of the bus. Anyway, my grandmother had a yard man, Sam(never knew his last name), and after a few weeks of not seeing him I asked my grandma where Sam was. She said he must have moved or died because he was that steady. In those days we did not even get close enought with the “colored” help to know ANYTHING about them. Sad. Really sad.
It was a mandatory read for us in high school. Never impressed me much. I suspect a great many of these “best loved” or “critically acclaimed” or “must-read” books that are so dubbed by educrats make the list because they take the right positions on certain social issues that the educrats would like to see influenced in certain ways.
I was forced to read Flannery O’Connor in college. No, thank you. Horrible!
Apparently the edtior and some others of that support network died soon after TKAM came out, and that's one of the reasons often given for her never writing another book. That and the utter distaste she felt for the attention that came her way.
Ditto that!
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