I remember the t.i.tle was extremely beautiful. I thought the t.i.tle was everything a t.i.tle should be-an invitation, a mystery. I loved mockingbirds, and there was part of the cult of living in the South: There's always one on every corner just singing its little gullet out. remember the t.i.tle was extremely beautiful. I thought the t.i.tle was everything a t.i.tle should be-an invitation, a mystery. I loved mockingbirds, and there was part of the cult of living in the South: There's always one on every corner just singing its little gullet out.

One of the things that struck me initially as someone who lived in a town of twenty-four hundred was, I felt the permission to write about small-town life and the permission to feel that huge international drama, all the circ.u.mstances of truth, justice, and the American way, could be played out in a town of two thousand souls. And could be played out by a single just man who stands up to be counted. Atticus resembled a lot of the Harvard-educated lawyers who had gone away to school and come home. Faulkner is full of those people too, who seemed in those days to be the real aristocrats, the people who could have done anything but chose not to leave, the people who had a kind of comprehensive vision of the sociology of the town and were amused by it and forgave it and defended the wrongly accused.

I was close enough to Scout's age to be attracted both to the childlikeness of the voice and the sagacity of the adult perspective. I think...one of the things that's not quite understood about the book is that Lee manages to be a child and an adult. The a.n.a.lysis of the town is very shrewd and with the wisdom of an eighty-year-old dowager who's seen it all. And yet, the voice can be very fresh and very innocent and beguiling and Huck Finnlike. I think Huck Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird To Kill a Mockingbird have a lot in common, and I think Harper Lee learned a lot from Twain in terms of a child's critical vision of the hierarchy, of the system. have a lot in common, and I think Harper Lee learned a lot from Twain in terms of a child's critical vision of the hierarchy, of the system.

There was a kind of freshness. I remember reading it in one sitting as one of those books that pulls you through it. I thought it was an extraordinary book, but I was just young enough to know that there were many extraordinary books. I thought all books were extraordinary. What's marvelous is that you see that sometimes the first things that happen to you are as big as they seemed. And it's very moving to see what an evergreen and enduring achievement it's truly turned out to be.

The narrative is very tough, because she has to both be a kid on the street and aware of the mad dogs and the spooky houses, and have this beautiful vision of how justice works and all the creaking mechanisms of the courthouse. Part of the beauty is that she, Harper Lee, trusts the visual to lead her, and the sensory. You really know that courthouse extremely well, who sits where, where the black people sit, where the fans are. I think that one of the many reasons that Horton Foote wrote such an amazing screenplay is that he had the good sense to know a great thing when he found it, and he trusted it. So even the relation of Atticus to the lady down the street-who's what, his part-time lover of an evening, who knows?-is very beautiful, deftly honored. It's not spelled out, it's not oversimplified or made lurid.

I think one of the many anomalies of the book is that it is a very great book that was made into a very great film. Usually, great films are made from second-rank books, and usually great books make terrible movies. But there is something in the opening sequences of the film with the childhood toys and images of the precious things saved that lets you know you're in a child's vision, and it holds there.

I'm interested in the fact that "a Boo Radley" is now a phrase in the language. It's sort of like, "the block's Boo Radley." Many people who haven't read To Kill a Mockingbird To Kill a Mockingbird have that phrase in their lingo. That's what every writer wants, to identify some previously noted but not named phenomenon and provide the English-speaking world with a brand-new word, a brand-new concept. And I think she has done that. have that phrase in their lingo. That's what every writer wants, to identify some previously noted but not named phenomenon and provide the English-speaking world with a brand-new word, a brand-new concept. And I think she has done that.

Calpurnia is like the black women in Carson McCullers, but she's very particular and very proud and a kind of role model. Goodness is, I think, underestimated as a dramatic virtue in fiction. Except for the white-trash villains, everybody in the town is sort of good or trying to be. I think that's one of the enduring attractions of the book. Maybe in our times, which are so full of corruption and just disgustingly forthright greed, our nostalgia for this vision of decency and the system working makes it a more important book, not a less important one.

I loved the story of Harper Lee visiting the set with Gregory Peck, and he's in his white ice-cream suit, and it's all properly creased and a little three days old, and she starts crying at the sight of him. She said, "You look just like my daddy, and especially the way your little tummy pouches out." He said, "That's not a pouch, that's great acting!"

I think it's maybe a testament to the book that Gregory Peck as a star was always a little stiff, a little angular. This movie, I think, humanized him, and he relaxed into the part because all the virtue was there and he could underplay.

I read To Kill a Mockingbird To Kill a Mockingbird again two years ago, partially because a G.o.dson was reading it in high school and I wanted to seem cool in his eyes and pretend that I knew all about it in advance, so I burned the midnight oil and read it in a single sitting. I was amazed-there's dew all over it. The description early on of the ladies with their powder sort of melted like frosting on teacakes by nightfall seemed to be so knowing and so loving, and kind of rueful but very true. It's a book of a real writer. again two years ago, partially because a G.o.dson was reading it in high school and I wanted to seem cool in his eyes and pretend that I knew all about it in advance, so I burned the midnight oil and read it in a single sitting. I was amazed-there's dew all over it. The description early on of the ladies with their powder sort of melted like frosting on teacakes by nightfall seemed to be so knowing and so loving, and kind of rueful but very true. It's a book of a real writer.

I think [this time] I saw it more in the social context of the period. I look back at the civil rights struggle and think that if Dwight Eisenhower or Jack Kennedy had flown from Washington, during the battles for integration, and had taken the hand of a little black girl who was being pelted by tomatoes and jeered at by white crackers, and walked to school with that child, risked all their political capital to do the right thing, as Atticus would have done, the civil rights struggle would have been put forward by thirty years. But they were too cowardly, they were too mixed in their own feelings about race, they were too canny as politicians to take that chance.

When I read this book, somehow I had this vision of the biggest guy on the block taking the littlest hand on the block and leading this child to school. And it never happened. But it happened in the book, and I think that's one of the eternal attractions of the work.

Writers are known as sort of self-regarding and isolated and compet.i.tive and jealous of each other. But in my experience, writers are also each other's first readers; they are the ones to note first what you've done extremely well. If they're honest with each other, they can both grow at an extraordinarily advanced rate. I think the childhood friendship between Harper Lee and Truman Capote was clearly immensely important to each of them. They became each other's first readers, each other's best readers, each other's shrewdest judges.

I knew Capote late in his life in the old Studio 54 days, when I was a negotiable young thing who would be whisked past any velvet rope-those were the glory days-and if you weren't asked in the first time, you just took your shirt off, and that would get you in. At that time, he was near the end of his sociability, and he and Liza Minnelli and Halston and Elizabeth Taylor and all the gang were there. He had a big fedora on a little bitty man, and he was usually just totally stoned, and he was like a puff adder. I don't even know what a puff adder is, but that phrase made sense. He groped me and all the other boys in that place. It was like a little monkey going from vine to vine. For me, at that age I was just starting out and I was beginning to be published in the New Yorker New Yorker and various places, and I knew who he was, obviously. But for me he was kind of an object lesson in what not to become. Even though we were partying at the same place, I felt very distanced from him and very sad that he would be publicly seen that stoned and that foolish. And I'm glad to say that, except for six or eight times, I've tried to avoid that trap myself. and various places, and I knew who he was, obviously. But for me he was kind of an object lesson in what not to become. Even though we were partying at the same place, I felt very distanced from him and very sad that he would be publicly seen that stoned and that foolish. And I'm glad to say that, except for six or eight times, I've tried to avoid that trap myself.

But I think Capote's treatment of her is an indication of where his work stands in relation to hers, except for In Cold Blood In Cold Blood, which had the benefit of her extraordinary legwork, her extraordinary political sense, her finesse in covering for him. I don't think any of Capote's fiction will last, in the larger sense. It lacks that ethical center that To Kill a Mockingbird To Kill a Mockingbird has, and it's obviously not going to be taught to high school students. has, and it's obviously not going to be taught to high school students.

I mean, that's not to diminish the fact that he was an extremely talented writer. But what he did with his life, he did with his work. That is to say, he went to too many parties, and he was too intent on being flown places in private jets. Unlike her, he didn't stay home; he went away.

The beauty of In Cold Blood In Cold Blood is that it is about justice, but the more we know about the backstage machinations, which means that you have to execute the protagonist in order to sell the book, the more you realize that he was criminal in his treatment of his subjects. is that it is about justice, but the more we know about the backstage machinations, which means that you have to execute the protagonist in order to sell the book, the more you realize that he was criminal in his treatment of his subjects.

I think she was extremely prudent in a way of disappearing the way she did. You pay a kind of price for being on call, and you get to look into the face of your readers, all of them sometimes, it seems, but there's a kind of privacy, a kind of integrity that you risk losing if you're not careful. And she had the object lesson of what Capote had done for and to himself.

When I read To Kill a Mockingbird To Kill a Mockingbird, it does not seem to me like a first book, and it does not seem to me like an only book, because it seems to be the work of a born writer, not the work of a person who has an autobiographical story to tell and can only tell that one. It seems to me that she must have written books before this, even though she was thirty-five when it was published. It's a very evolved and sophisticated literary creation. And I have to believe that she must have written books after, because I know, as a writer, if I don't have a morning's work, I want to kick a cat around the block. I have to write, or I become intolerable to myself. And I don't know how you wean yourself from the habit of writing. Maybe you write only letters to fans. That's what Margaret Mitch.e.l.l did after Gone with the Wind Gone with the Wind. She never, ever intended to write another book, though she strung her publisher along to shake him down for money. That was the one book she wrote, and it was about her grandmother. That's an example. Or Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward Angel Look Homeward Angel, which was by far the best thing he ever wrote. It made a huge sensation, and he continued to write. But I honestly think that if Thomas Wolfe pulled a Harper Lee and disappeared, his stock would be much higher than it is now. He wrote much too much, too [uncritically]. He has many volumes but only one book. I look at the example of Salinger, who got terrible reviews for one book-unjust reviews, we now know-and just withdrew from ever letting his work be published. But we know from local rumor that he has installed a safe-deposit vault in his study, fireproof. Now, you don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out that this is a guy with sixteen books that will be published someday. I hope I'm alive to see it, because I think it would be a beautiful thing. It must be a very satisfying thing to say, "Nyeh, nyeh, I'm going to take my marbles and go home," and to continue the saga of the Gla.s.s family.

I think the circ.u.mstances of the huge success of To Kill a Mockingbird To Kill a Mockingbird, winning the Pulitzer, the way Margaret Mitch.e.l.l did, must have been daunting, and I can imagine drawing back and saying, "What's my next story?" I know from conversation that she was looking at a kind of murder circ.u.mstance, not unlike In Cold Blood In Cold Blood, for her next material. And maybe Capote scooped her in the sense that he benefited from her reportage and clearly used some verbatim pa.s.sages from her, unacknowledged, and maybe she felt that he had somehow preempted her next book. Maybe the death of her agent and her editor, maybe the burning of her writing hand-all these might have contributed to her falling quiet.

The odd thing about publishing is that you can remain a writer and cease to publish. Publishing is so jangling and so frequently hideous. You subject yourself to scrutiny from people who haven't really read your book; you're being trotted around like a dog and pony show, whether you mean it or not. I can understand how people sit home and say, "I'm going to write book after beautiful book, and they'll be found later"-as long as they have the financial security, which she was allowed by virtue of the first publication.

I don't know what writers do when they stop writing. I don't know what anybody does who is not writing. I mean, I'm sitting in traffic and I look at the person in the next car, and I honestly think, I wonder if she's writing short stories or a novel I wonder if she's writing short stories or a novel. Because, having done it for so many years myself, heedless of publication-I haven't had a book out in four or five years-I have beautiful things that I will someday publish, but I don't feel in any real hurry. But if I couldn't do it, I would feel like a rattlesnake with the venom backed up in me. It's a form of dreaming, it's an extra form of dreaming; it's a kind of algebraic balancing act, a kind of working out of equivalencies. And it's a place where justice can actually happen. That's one of the unacknowledged powers of the novel, is that here in this little town, in these two hundred pages, a life is saved, something is salvaged, perfect justice is achieved, however improbably. And I think that that's one of the reasons we read, is to have our faith in the process renewed.

David Kipen David Kipen was born in Los Angeles in 1963. He was the Director of Literature for the National Endowment for the Arts (20042010) and supervised its Big Read program, which includes To Kill a Mockingbird. To Kill a Mockingbird. He is a former book reviewer for the He is a former book reviewer for the San Francisco Chronicle. San Francisco Chronicle.

I wish I could say that I was ten years old and it was the book that turned me on to reading. I'm sure if I had been ten, it would have. But I didn't read wish I could say that I was ten years old and it was the book that turned me on to reading. I'm sure if I had been ten, it would have. But I didn't read To Kill a Mockingbird To Kill a Mockingbird until [2004], when I found out that I was going to help to run this national reading program [the Big Read] and it was going to be one of the first four books we were doing. I was grateful, because I had always meant to read it. I was half afraid that I'd waited too long, because it's a book that means a lot to people when they read it at a young age. until [2004], when I found out that I was going to help to run this national reading program [the Big Read] and it was going to be one of the first four books we were doing. I was grateful, because I had always meant to read it. I was half afraid that I'd waited too long, because it's a book that means a lot to people when they read it at a young age.

But I was blown away by it. I think it's a lovely, lovely book. I think it's a moral book, without being starchy or medicinal in any way. I think it's a really enn.o.bling book and a great story and an artfully, if not infallibly, interwoven counterpointing of two stories in one.

One thing that took me a little bit by surprise and I was deeply grateful for was the humor of the book. A lot of people, when they talk about it, and including me a minute ago, tend to emphasize what an uplifting and improving book it is, and it is that. But I think maybe even more of it because it isn't written like a religious tract. It is a very funny book. Scout's voice is a very comic voice in the things she says at the expense of her schoolmates. She's a scamp and hysterically funny, and no less funny as an adult looking back, although in a slightly more fermented and seasoned way. She's just great company.

In preparing the reading materials for these cities that are reading To Kill a Mockingbird To Kill a Mockingbird around the country, I edited and wrote and ghost-wrote some essays in the material, and the one phrase of my own that I hope will at least almost come back to me was that it's a book about a young girl surprised to discover her own goodness. Scout didn't quite know she was as honorable a little girl as she was until she had it shown to her and discovered her own capacity to be compa.s.sionate. So it's not reverential in the way that more didactic moral books can so often be. around the country, I edited and wrote and ghost-wrote some essays in the material, and the one phrase of my own that I hope will at least almost come back to me was that it's a book about a young girl surprised to discover her own goodness. Scout didn't quite know she was as honorable a little girl as she was until she had it shown to her and discovered her own capacity to be compa.s.sionate. So it's not reverential in the way that more didactic moral books can so often be.

At the NEA, before I even got there, they had decided that the first four books ought to be Fahrenheit 451 Fahrenheit 451 and and The Great Gatsby The Great Gatsby and and Their Eyes Were Watching G.o.d Their Eyes Were Watching G.o.d and, of course, and, of course, To Kill a Mockingbird To Kill a Mockingbird. I think one of the reasons they chose that was that it's the most popular City Read book around the country. More cities for their "one city, one book" program chose To Kill a Mockingbird To Kill a Mockingbird than anything else, and we figured, well, that was a sure thing. than anything else, and we figured, well, that was a sure thing.

Now that I've been to cities where they've read it, I start to see why. I went to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and rode in the St. Patrick's Day parade with the daughter of the local City Read coordinator in a life-size papier-mache ham costume like the one Scout wears in the Halloween scene at the end of the book. She's riding in the convertible behind me, not driving, thank heaven. People just adored the book and shared from their lives as they began to talk about it. I sat in the back of the book department of Zandbroz Variety on the main drag in Sioux Falls, b.u.mping from one readers' circle to another and sitting in on these discussions of it, and people just seem to connect with it. It dredges up things in their own lives, their interactions across racial lines, legal encounters, and childhood. It's just this skeleton key to so many different parts of people's lives, and they cherish it, and now I know why.

I wish I could be one of these people who say, "It's churlish to want more from a woman who's already given us so much," but I'm a greedy reader, and I think a true reader has to be a greedy reader. I wanted the next book, and I will always feel cheated for not having gotten it. It would be nice, it would be lovely, and if only I could get that next book, I promise I would read it gently.

I think Harper Lee is Boo Radley. People think she's Scout; I think she's Boo Radley. In the book, they talk about why it's the humane thing to let Boo Radley alone and not shine the glare of publicity on him, because he's just not built for that. It's Sheriff Tate: Maybe you'll say it's my duty to tell the town all about it and not hush it up. Know what'd happen then? All the ladies in Maycomb includin' my wife'd be knocking on his door bringing angel food cakes. To my way of thinkin', Mr. Finch, taking the one man who's done you and this town a great service an' draggin' him with his shy ways into the limelight-to me, that's a sin. It's a sin and I'm not about to have it on my head. If it was any other man it'd be different, but not this man, Mr. Finch.

And that's Harper Lee, and it would be a sin to drag her into the limelight. I have no problem whatsoever with my own curiosity about her life. I think that's human and understandable and not to be apologized for. I feel very strongly about this, because I did my senior essay in college on the literature of-not Harper Lee-but J. D. Salinger and B. Traven, the guy who wrote The Treasure of the Sierra Madre The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, who was a lot wilier about his reclusiveness, and my favorite of all, Thomas Pynchon. These are very private writers. But I refuse to disavow my own curiosity about their lives. I won't allow it to displace my love of their writing, but one of the very most important things biographical criticism can teach is how who you are factors in to what you do, how the way you were brought up and what sort of person you are enables you to do the work that you do. Whether you are the man who wrote Gravity's Rainbow Gravity's Rainbow or the woman who wrote or the woman who wrote To Kill a Mockingbird To Kill a Mockingbird, your childhood is interesting because you are this wonderful artist and that's what it grew out of.

The movie is terrific, and I think we should put a word in here for Horton Foote, because a lot of people will tell you, as good as the book is, the movie is better. He found such a lovely way to shape the story. I bow down at his altar; he is really the gold standard for the adapter's art.

Knowing a little something about Truman Capote certainly enriched the character [Dill] for me. I think she saw what fame did to a very good friend of hers. She saw how Truman Capote was overtaken by his own mythomania, and didn't want any part of that. It's hard to argue with. Capote is a guy who squandered his talent and his life. Maybe Harper Lee had it in her to write more books; that is an opportunity that she pa.s.sed up. But she's managed to preserve for herself a zone of happiness and security and friends who love her and respect her privacy. So in the Monroeville happy ending sweepstakes, I think she gets the laurel over her next-door neighbor, because she made up her mind about the life she wanted to have. And when she goes, she'll go a lot less lonely than Truman Capote was.

It's a book, I think, that families enjoy reading together, which may sound like a backhanded compliment, but that's part of what we're doing with the Big Read, is trying to come up with books that people of all ages can read together, at least in the initial phases. That's too much to ask of every book, but when you find a book that does cross, not just gender and racial lines, but ages lines too, it's a very special thing, because it's an opportunity for grown-ups to read to children without having to hide their own yawns. So, in common with very few other books, I think it is a true all-ages cla.s.sic. It affords a terrific opportunity to create cross-generation conversations that a lot of other good books don't.

Wally Lamb Wally Lamb was born in 1950 in Norwich, Connecticut. A former high-school teacher and professor, he is also the author of four novels: She's Come Undone She's Come Undone (1992), (1992), I Know This Much Is True I Know This Much Is True (1998), (1998), The Hour I First Believed The Hour I First Believed (2008), and (2008), and Wishin' and Hopin': A Christmas Story Wishin' and Hopin': A Christmas Story (2009). Lamb is the editor of the nonfiction anthologies (2009). Lamb is the editor of the nonfiction anthologies Couldn't Keep It to Myself: Testimonies from Our Imprisoned Sisters Couldn't Keep It to Myself: Testimonies from Our Imprisoned Sisters (2003) and (2003) and I'll Fly Away I'll Fly Away (2007), collections of autobiographical essays that evolved from a writing workshop Lamb teaches at a maximum-security prison for women. (2007), collections of autobiographical essays that evolved from a writing workshop Lamb teaches at a maximum-security prison for women.

I think I was about fourteen or fifteen. I didn't love reading at that age. I read because I had to for school projects, and a book report was coming due, and I'd already read the shortest books I know- think I was about fourteen or fifteen. I didn't love reading at that age. I read because I had to for school projects, and a book report was coming due, and I'd already read the shortest books I know-Animal Farm and and The Red Pony The Red Pony. So I happened to go into my sister's room, and she'd been yapping about this novel that she had just read that she'd liked, To Kill a Mockingbird To Kill a Mockingbird. And I picked the thing up, and there's a Technicolor picture of Gregory Peck and some little girl in overalls on the cover. I flipped it open and read the first couple of sentences and two days later I, the pokiest reader I knew, had finished the book. It was the first time in my life that a book had sort of captured me. That was exciting; I didn't realize that literature could do that.

I did feel kidnapped by that book because I was in Maycomb, Alabama, with those characters, and my life around me just sort of blurred and I just kept turning those pages because I had to.

I probably didn't read it again until I was about twenty-one. I had bounced out of college and had gone right back to the high school that I had attended. I was an English teacher, and I remembered that To Kill a Mockingbird To Kill a Mockingbird was a book that I had loved and also been drawn to emotionally. And I thought, was a book that I had loved and also been drawn to emotionally. And I thought, Well, I'll try it with the kids. Well, I'll try it with the kids.

And I remember working first of all with a group of slower learners, and I'm thinking, I don't know, these opening pa.s.sages are maybe a little bit of a hurdle to jump over, I don't know, these opening pa.s.sages are maybe a little bit of a hurdle to jump over, but I read that part aloud and then gave the kids an a.s.signment. And little by little, one by one, over the next week or so, it grabbed them. It was probably the first time for a lot of those kids that they became impa.s.sioned about a book. There were some pretty heated arguments about characters' motivations and who said what and why they had said it. but I read that part aloud and then gave the kids an a.s.signment. And little by little, one by one, over the next week or so, it grabbed them. It was probably the first time for a lot of those kids that they became impa.s.sioned about a book. There were some pretty heated arguments about characters' motivations and who said what and why they had said it.

The most exciting thing when you're dealing with students is that the kids began to apply it to their own lives and their own observations, and then we were golden. I taught that book just about every year. I taught high school for twenty-five years, and just about every year, I did To Kill a Mockingbird To Kill a Mockingbird with students. It was a book they read because they wanted to, not because they had to. So it cast the same spell for my students as it had for me. with students. It was a book they read because they wanted to, not because they had to. So it cast the same spell for my students as it had for me.

For a lot of kids, it's the voice of Scout. It's certainly not the adult voice of Jean Louise Finch. It's Scout's voice. I think the fact that she is a tomboy helps the boys. A lot of the guys, as I recall, liked Jem, too. He sort of spoke their kind of language, and a lot of them had annoying little sisters, so that invited them along for the ride as well.

This was in the seventies, when I started teaching, and there was a lot of racial turmoil in the country. Because the characters become sort of personally applicable, I think a story can go a lot further lots of times than a headline can or something on the six-thirty news. So for the kids, I think it became sort of a vehicle by which they could begin to think and sort of process some of these emotional reactions that they were having.

I know one of the things that happened at our high school during that early era when I was teaching was that the African-American kids were demanding a black history course. And the school was not providing one, so the kids staged a demonstration out on the green near the school. I was thinking about this just today. I think, in its own way, To Kill a Mockingbird To Kill a Mockingbird-and I don't mean to overstate this-sort of triggers the beginning of change and certainly puts onto the stage the questions of racial equality and bigotry in the way, a century earlier, Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin Uncle Tom's Cabin sort of stirred things up and got people riled up enough and motivated to change things. sort of stirred things up and got people riled up enough and motivated to change things.

And then, of course, [there is] the inevitable exploitation of a book that means so much to so many people. I know a little bit about Harriet Beecher Stowe because she lived close by, in Hartford. And I know that she was sort of appalled by some of these really cheesy stage productions that started traveling the country. And I saw at one point, maybe three or four years ago up in Montpellier, Vermont, a staged version of To Kill a Mockingbird To Kill a Mockingbird. It was OK. I wouldn't say it was cheesy. But it couldn't even approach that same kind of experience that reading the book is.

The movie, I sort of go back and forth about. When I was teaching high school, the big treat at the end was to see the movie, and it was fun to talk about the choices that a director makes and casting and all that.

So as is often the case when you see the film version of a book that you loved, I really didn't like it. I loved the performances. I loved the casting of the main characters. I was appalled at some of the casting of the minor characters-Miss Maudie, and Bob Ewell I didn't think looked nearly as grungy as he should have. But also, there were several other characters who had been edited out-Mrs. Dubose, for one.

That for me is one of the most wrenching chapters of the novel. When I was teaching books like To Kill a Mockingbird To Kill a Mockingbird year after year, I was beginning to get interested myself in the underpinnings of how novels work. And that was one of the books that really taught me how to write fiction myself, and I remember vividly the description of Mrs. Dubose in the pain of withdrawal. She puts a finger to her mouth and draws it back and has that sort of string of spittle that goes with it. Man, that's writing! When Jem freaks out and trashes the flowers that she loves so much, that's a dramatic scene. year after year, I was beginning to get interested myself in the underpinnings of how novels work. And that was one of the books that really taught me how to write fiction myself, and I remember vividly the description of Mrs. Dubose in the pain of withdrawal. She puts a finger to her mouth and draws it back and has that sort of string of spittle that goes with it. Man, that's writing! When Jem freaks out and trashes the flowers that she loves so much, that's a dramatic scene.

The novel was really instructive. It's beautiful literature, but it's also a great course in how to write a novel, I think.

I use To Kill a Mockingbird To Kill a Mockingbird with my inmate students. I do some volunteer teaching in a women's prison; I teach writing. And I'll use models from with my inmate students. I do some volunteer teaching in a women's prison; I teach writing. And I'll use models from Mockingbird Mockingbird, particularly when I want to talk about sensual language and how you can evoke emotion and reaction through the use of the five senses.

There's that gorgeous description of Maycomb at the beginning where she says: Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it. In rainy weather the streets turned to red slop; gra.s.s grew on the sidewalks, the courthouse sagged in the square. Somehow, it was hotter then: a black dog suffered on a summer's day; bony mules. .h.i.tched to Hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square. Men's stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o'clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talc.u.m.

Now, I teach my students that, forget the adjectives, it's all about the verbs: "flicked flies," "sagged in the square," "sweltered in." It's all there. It is a one-paragraph course on writing. Writers evoke things that readers can see and hear, but I think those tactile sensations, like "soft teacakes with frostings of sweat," those kinds of things-that's real writing, that's literature. Now, is it sustained throughout the novel? Not necessarily. But it's doing other things at different times. So I think it's a wonderful model.

On some level at least, I think I understand [why Harper Lee hasn't published another book]. I wrote my first novel, She's Come Undone She's Come Undone, over ten years. I was teaching high school at the time; I was getting up on weekends, rising at four o'clock and driving up to the all-night study room at the local university and writing in longhand. I did that over a number of years. So nine years later I had a novel, and I didn't think it was going to be published. But then it was, and I was flabbergasted. It was published in 1992. Then in 1997 I got a call from Oprah Winfrey saying, "Gee, we love this book, and we would like to feature it in this book club we're doing." So that was wonderful. It was a crazy, wild, and wonderful ride. Suddenly this book that had a little modest success by "Wally who?" hit the top of the charts fueled by the Oprah book-club thing. I'd been working for about six years on a second novel [I Know This Much Is True]; the following year it was ready. Lo and behold, Oprah picks that one for the book club as well. So, as great as that was, as exciting, the way that it gave me a much wider stage and millions more readers than I might have had otherwise, I have found that in the writing of my third novel, it's been somewhat intimidating to do because of the reception of the first two novels.

Now, I have no idea whether Harper Lee struggled against that kind of stuff. I just know that it does change the equation when people are waiting for a novel or writing you letters saying, "Aren't you done yet?" So every sentence becomes something that you worry about. The best days for me as a writer are the days when I can get up from the desk and open the door of my office and chase everyone's expectations out of the room and just write it for myself. But that doesn't always happen.

Harper Lee had, I believe, role models throughout her life-people who were giving her the message that books mattered. And I think that sort of seeped into your bones after a while. For me it wasn't like that. But I think, from what I know, that was the case.

And then, of course, she had her friend Truman Capote, who was also doing it. I would guess probably that when they were kids they might have been shooting stories back and forth and telling stories collaboratively.

I believe Capote's first fiction was published prior to To Kill a Mockingbird To Kill a Mockingbird. So then she gets to see what that's like, I would imagine that provides even more motivation, because here's not only an author who has a book but somebody I know.

Atticus Finch is certainly a paragon. He's a model that we can all aim toward. In a sense, he is so perfect, and I understand that she modeled the character somewhat on her own father. And, of course, I don't buy for a minute that anyone's father, my own included, or me as a father, has achieved that kind of perfection, is always spot-on in terms of what to say and what to fight for. But I imagine [her father] must have been a wonderful man, and certainly the book does seem like a tribute to some really fine values. And fighting when you need to fight.

I started writing fiction late in my life. I was about thirty years old, and most fiction writers start a lot earlier. Very early on, I slammed into the wall of all I didn't know about how to write fiction. So I entered a program at Vermont College. It was a Master in Fine Arts program in writing, and I had the good fortune of working with a wonderful teacher named Gladys Swan-great writer, terrific teacher. Gladys has these big thick, c.o.ke-bottle-bottom gla.s.ses that, I mean, whatever she says, it sounds like the oracle, it looks like the oracle is speaking to you, and in a sense she was. She said to me, "Wally, what would you like to get out writing fiction?" I hadn't even asked myself that question, so I had to sort of wing it and make up an answer. I said, 'Well, To Kill a Mockingbird To Kill a Mockingbird is a novel I love, and it's a novel I don't have to work overtime to teach. The kids slip into the stream and allow the story to take them where it takes them. I guess probably my goal would be to write the kind of fiction that teenagers would want to read." And Gladys frowned at that, and she said, "Well my dear, the first thing that I have to tell you is, Don't prejudge who your audience is going to be. Don't write fiction for teenagers or for anybody else. Write it for yourself. Write to explore what you need to explore. Write it to satisfy you, and then send it out, and whoever needs it will find it." is a novel I love, and it's a novel I don't have to work overtime to teach. The kids slip into the stream and allow the story to take them where it takes them. I guess probably my goal would be to write the kind of fiction that teenagers would want to read." And Gladys frowned at that, and she said, "Well my dear, the first thing that I have to tell you is, Don't prejudge who your audience is going to be. Don't write fiction for teenagers or for anybody else. Write it for yourself. Write to explore what you need to explore. Write it to satisfy you, and then send it out, and whoever needs it will find it."

That proved to be wonderful advice for me. And I came, over the years, to the realization that I bet is true of Harper Lee as well. You start with who and what you know. You take a survey of the lay of the land that formed you and shaped you. And then you begin to lie about it. You tell one lie that turns into a different lie. And after awhile, those models sort of lift off and become their own people rather than the people you originally thought of.

And when you weave an entire network of lies, what you're really doing, if you're aiming to write literary fiction, what you're really doing is, by telling lies you are trying to arrive at a deeper truth. Your work is no longer factual, but it's true. It's true not only for you and your own experience, your singular experience, but it also hopefully becomes true for other people. And your readers are nourished by that.

The opening pa.s.sages are kind of difficult for high school kids. There's some pretty highfalutin language there that can be roadblocks for kids, particularly kids who don't like to read. And beginnings of books often are hard to get past. So when I was teaching high school, what I would very often do is read some of those first pa.s.sages and get past the history of Maycomb County. The novel, of course, starts with Scout's voice, but then it sort of becomes the adult Jean Louise, who is filling you in, giving you the exposition. But when Scout's voice kicks in in earnest and begins to tell you the story of what began that summer and ended three years later, then the kids are OK. What they do is, they dip their foot into the water, and then they ease into the stream, and the story and the language, and the voice in particular, take them down a smooth ride. And then you don't have to worry about whether or not they're doing the a.s.signments; they're reading voluntarily and jumping forward, so you say, "Read chapters twelve and thirteen for tomorrow," and they'll finish the book.

Scout's a blast. I love the fact that she's a little smart-a.s.s. I love the fact that she can be self-deprecating. I enjoy the fact that she speaks first with her fists and then has to sort of back up three to four steps. She's, in a sense-and I haven't really thought too much about this-but she's sort of an extension of a Huck Finn character. Of course, we love Huck for those same reasons. I think she's very typically an American character in that she's poking at the boundaries of good taste, and what's proper. I love some of scenes between Scout and Aunt Alexandra because she debunks a lot of that phony baloney stuff in ways that readers just love.

Alice Finch Lee Alice Finch Lee, Harper Lee's older sister, was born in Bonifay, Florida, in 1911. She has been practicing law at Barrett, Bugg & Lee in Monroeville, Alabama, since 1944.

My father was totally a self-made person. Back in those days, they didn't have much rural education. He probably went to a school less than a year, all told. But he was one of the best-educated men you ever knew. By sixteen he had read himself, educated himself, and he took the teacher's examination and taught school at sixteen. His family were all farmers, and my father was determined not to be a farmer. He took math and became an accountant, and he began to get jobs. My father became a bookkeeper for sawmill companies, and he moved around wherever. He came to Monroe County and was bookkeeper for a big sawmill down in a place called Manistee. My father eventually began to keep books for a sawmill company in Finchburg. That's where my mother lived. That's where they met. Then my father and mother were married in 1910 and lived in Florida, where he was keeping books for a mill down there, and I was born there. I am the only alien in the family, the only one not born in Alabama.

When I was growing up, [Monroeville] was an all-Protestant community, and now it's not. We have a flourishing Catholic church. That is one of the differences. When I was growing up, we didn't have things like the golf course. By the time I was an adult, we had the beginnings of a golf course, which was at the same time used as a landing field for planes to come in. Back in those days, we didn't have sewers. We had to go to separate facilities to go to the bathroom. And when I was in the fourth grade, a young boy in my room had been excused [to go to the bathroom]. He rushed back in the building and said, "Something is flying around out there." And with one accord the whole fourth grade rushed out. And there was a plane circling over. And that was the first airplane I could ever remember seeing.

I grew up riding trains. I loved to ride a train. To this day, if they had them, I'd ride them. There were no bridges over the Delta. The railroads were our arteries of transportation. Now when my mother grew up out in the country, the Alabama River was their highway.

Nelle Harper and I were fifteen years apart. We had different childhoods. I was an only child for nearly five years, and I wasn't too happy when our little sister [Louise] was born. But I adjusted to that. And then, nearly five years later our little brother [Edwin] was born. And then, almost five years later, my baby sister, Nelle Harper, was born. So we grew up almost like only children. We were not companions for each other until we were adults.

When I went to college, she was just learning to walk. I was gone during that early part. Then I came home and stayed here until 1937. She was growing up then. She was a very young child. Despite people wanting to make To Kill a Mockingbird To Kill a Mockingbird a biography or an autobiography or a true story, we had a mother. We loved both parents. a biography or an autobiography or a true story, we had a mother. We loved both parents.

Nelle Harper grew up quite the little tomboy. The nearest child to her was the brother [Edwin], and he was definitely the big brother, even though that gap was between them. Where we lived there were no small children in the immediate neighborhood when Nelle Harper was born. Most of the people who were growing up there were my contemporaries and not small children. Back in those days, we did not have problems that people face today, and children could go where they wanted within reason.

The Christmas that Nelle Harper was going to be ten, all she wanted was a bicycle. Now, my sister Louise was going to be married on the day after Christmas. Nelle Harper was ten years old. Louise was leaving home. Nelle Harper wanted to know for sure she was getting that bicycle. So she had gone all around to all the merchants and places that carried a bicycle, and she could not find that Mr. or Mrs. Lee had bought a bicycle. She was very disgusted. She was convinced she was not going to get the bicycle for Christmas. So she just said, disgustedly, "n.o.body's having a Christmas except Wheezy. She's getting a husband." So she was very downcast. Christmas morning, when she found that bicycle under the tree, she couldn't believe she had it. She just got on that bicycle and took off, and we didn't see too much of her during the rest of the day.

At home we were pretty much allowed to go in the direction we wanted to go, unless we were headed the wrong way. But we knew we were expected to go to Sunday school and church on Sunday, which we did. We knew we had to go elementary, high school, whatever it is, through the week. But we were pretty much left on our [own] resources for entertainment.

Nelle Harper was very athletic. She liked to play with the little boys more than the little girls because she liked to play ball. She played football with them, baseball with them, and that was gone when she got up into junior high. But as I said, this was during the Depression, and children basically did not have many store-bought toys. They made their own recreations, and it was not difficult to do.

When I was little, I was a great paper-doll cutter-outer. We would order paper catalogues and make paper-doll furniture out of it. We would have whole paper dollhouses and paper dolls to reside, families and that. Maybe several of us in the neighborhood would go together and do this. I was never much in sports. Not interested, except as a bystander. I liked to watch ball.

I was a child of the Depression. After my first year of college, I had to stop. I came home and worked. There were no jobs around. People think this is the first time our country's ever been through anything like this. But I can a.s.sure them there has been another time like it. I worked at the Monroe Journal Monroe Journal. In fact, my father and I bought it and I worked there until '37. I wanted to go back to school. I got a job in Birmingham at the Internal Revenue. That was the year Social Security had become law, and this whole Department of Social Security was being created as a part of IRS. So I went to Birmingham and I finished pre-law at night. I started taking it, not with the idea of finishing. I started for the improvement of skills in my job, as a number of people that work in IRS did. When I had done a couple of years of that, I had gotten hooked on wanting to go on to law school. So I finished law school there. I was in Birmingham seven years. Nelle Harper was growing up in those years, and during the war years, people who worked for the government were not allowed to use public transportation, and gasoline was rationed. I didn't get home too often. I took the bar the summer of '43 and pa.s.sed it. My father asked me at that time if I were interested in coming home and practicing with him. He wasn't pushing or anything. He was just being like he'd always been: "Do your own thing, but do it well." And I said I would have to have two questions answered. And Daddy said, "What are they?" And I said, The first one is, when you grow up in one town, you are always Mr. Lee's little girl. Would I be an adult separate and apart from you?" And my father said, "I think you've been gone long enough for that not to happen." And I said, "The second thing is, how is a small town going to react to a woman in a law office?" There were not many around in those days. And my father smiled and said, "You'll never know until you've tried it." And I decided to try it.

When I came home to build a practice, everybody knew I worked for IRS. They all a.s.sumed I'd do income tax. I'd never had done any [income tax] but make my own. Back in those days, not everybody had had to file an income tax. But the government had come up with a Victory tax, which taxed everything above $600. So everybody had to file something. I was of use with people wanting to file income taxes. I didn't have to depend on Daddy's practice.

My brother was in the service. He wanted to be in the Air Force, and because he was not twenty-one, which was the age of maturity back in those days, he could not go in without my father's permission. Daddy wanted him to finish school and then go in, but the youngsters back in those days were just absolutely on their ear to get into the Air Force. Ed was in college at Auburn. Finally my father said, "Go ahead and take the test for the Air Force, and if you pa.s.s, I'll sign it. But if you don't pa.s.s, you'll go back to school and finish your degree." Ed failed to pa.s.s. He thought he was the perfect specimen, but back then they didn't take anybody with any little injury. Ed had injured a knee when he played football, and while it didn't bother him and he was not crippled, he wasn't perfect. So he went ahead and enlisted as a private from Monroe County so he would be counted against this county's quota. Then right after that, they sent him to Miami to go to officer's training school, at which time he would come back to Auburn and get his commission.

Well, when he'd been in Miami for six weeks, they picked him up and sent him to Harvard. He didn't finish his OTS [officer training school]. He was to go to Harvard for six weeks and be trained as a statistical officer, then go back to Miami and finish his OTS. Well, they didn't let him go back. When he got through at Harvard, they gave him his commission as a second lieutenant, shipped him over to San Francisco, presumably to go to the Pacific. He had been at sea about three days. They called the ship back, and it put in at Seattle. They removed about four young men from the ship, and my brother was one of those. The ship went on the way it was headed. My brother was shipped back to New York to sail for England. He had literally covered the four corners of the United States in the process of getting his commission.

Well, a statistical officer did not fly. He was not a pilot, but he could fly if there was s.p.a.ce on anything. He got to England, and he had ways of letting us know where he was through the censor. He wrote one letter and made reference to Chaucer, so of course we knew where he was in England. I remember one time when he was in France, in his letter he said, "Do you remember that little redheaded Fleming girl in Monroeville? That was Nancy." There were ways that he could communicate with us and let us know where he was. He was with the Mustang group, the 158th fighter pilot outfit that flew the Mustangs. Mustangs wiped themselves out of business. They were the fastest things that could go with the bombers for protection. Eventually, as the war went on, and after D-day, and the bombers could get closer and closer to Berlin, they did not need the protection. So they wiped themselves out of a job, literally. So when the war was over in England, Ed expected to be shipped to the West, to the Pacific, but VJ Day came quicker than they could get him over there. So he finally got out of [the] service, came home, finished college, married, had two children and then died of an aneurism in his sleep. He had been called back up into service when the Korean thing was on the way. He was in Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery waiting to see where he was going to be shipped when he died of the aneurism. His daughter was three years old and his son was nine months old. His son is a local dentist now. And his daughter lives in Alexander City.

Nelle Harper had a vivid imagination all of her life, and early on she would compose stories. Daddy gave her an old beat-up typewriter, and she typed that way [gesturing hunt-and-peck method] the rest of her life. She never knew anything but the hunt-and-peck system, but she could go quite well with that.

I think in the back of her mind the idea [to be a writer] was there, not necessarily expressed. But in college she went to law school because she thought the disciplines of law were good training for somebody writing. She never intended to practice law.

I read the ma.n.u.script and OK'd it. I thought it was very good but was surprised by the reception it got. [I don't have a favorite part]; I just look at the book as a whole.

After the ma.n.u.script had gone for publication, my father had a heart attack, and Nelle Harper was down here. Then after that, she went to Kansas with Truman Capote to help him research the Clutter murders out there, and that was just on the eve of the publication. Mockingbird Mockingbird had not hit the stands when she was out there the first time. When they went back the second time, had not hit the stands when she was out there the first time. When they went back the second time, Mockingbird Mockingbird was beginning to do quite well. was beginning to do quite well.

Here was this little boy next door, here was this little girl next door, and they played together a lot. I've known Truman Capote's mother's side of the family, not his father's side.

When [Truman's grandparents] married, they had five children. The youngest of the children fell off a horse, took pneumonia, and died. The young mother grieved herself to death, and there was n.o.body to take these children, so a bunch of cousins, three old-maid sisters and one brother, unmarried, who were living at the house next door to us in the neighborhood, took all of those children and reared them and educated them. The oldest of all of them was Truman's mother [Lillie Mae Faulk]. She went to Troy State University Normal School and met Archie Persons and married him.

Archie Persons was very highly educated and very smart, but did not use his mind to make his living. Then Lillie Mae eventually went to New York and met Joe Capote, and once she married him, they took Truman to New York permanently.

Some of the other descendants of Truman's cousins still live around here, and they have tried to promote Truman and his ancestry. They had as much imagination as Truman. You'd get the strangest ideas about how they grew up over the years. Nelle and I have had hysterics over how they said the Faulks lived.

Truman became very jealous because Nelle Harper got a Pulitzer and he did not. He expected In Cold Blood In Cold Blood to bring him one, and he got involved with the drugs and heavy drinking and all. And that was it. It was not Nelle Harper dropping him. It was Truman going away from her. to bring him one, and he got involved with the drugs and heavy drinking and all. And that was it. It was not Nelle Harper dropping him. It was Truman going away from her.

My father lived until April of 1962, so he was here when it came out and when she won the Pulitzer. He knew about that. He was a very proud father, a very proud father.

Nelle Harper says that everybody around Monroeville was determined to see themselves in the book. They would go do anything-come up to her and say, "I'm so-and-so in the book." One day, for instance, a lady in town said to me, "I am so glad Nelle Harper put my aunt Clara in the book." And I thought to myself, Who could be Aunt Clara in the book Who could be Aunt Clara in the book? And I said, "Verna, what makes you think that?"