fiction files redux discussion

By ALLEN BARRA

Georgia had Flannery O'Connor and Carson McCullers; Mississippi had William Faulkner and Eudora Welty; Louisiana inspired the major works of Kate Chopin and Tennessee Williams. Alabama had. . .

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Associated Press
Gregory Peck and Brock Peters in the 1962 film version of Harper Lee's novel.

Well, while Zora Neale Hurston and Walker Percy were born in Alabama, those two great writers didn't stick around my home state for long. And as for Harper Lee—Alabama born, raised and still resident—she doesn't really measure up to the others in literary talent, but we like to pretend she does.

Ms. Lee is at the head of the Southern class in one big way, however: The numbers are imprecise, but according to a 1988 report by the National Council of Teachers of English, her novel, "To Kill a Mockingbird," was required reading in three-quarters of America's high schools. Since its publication 50 years ago this summer, it probably ranks just behind "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," with American high-school students not only required to read the book but to tackle related projects. These range from drawing the courthouse where Tom Robinson, a black man accused of raping a white woman, was defended by Atticus Finch, to writing articles for the Maycomb Tribune recounting the trial, and recasting the movie with contemporary actors. (In 2006 my daughter, attending a public high school in New Jersey, cast Kevin Kline as Atticus and Abigail Breslin as his young daughter, Scout.)

One estimate credits the book with over 30 million copies sold—many, no doubt, due to the enduring popularity of the hugely successful 1962 film version, described by The New Yorker's Pauline Kael as "part eerie Southern gothic and part Hollywood self-congratulation for its enlightened racial attitudes." (Gregory Peck's Atticus, Kael wrote, was "virtuously dull," surely a phrase that can be accurately applied to Ms. Lee's model.)

Ms. Lee's only novel came along at exactly the right time: the year John F. Kennedy was elected president and the beginning of the decade in which the civil-rights movement began to change the South forever.

Naturally, it won the Pulitzer Prize. Its sentiments and moral grandeur are as unimpeachable as the character of its hero, Atticus. He is an idealized version of Ms. Lee's father, who, in real life and by contrast, according to biographer Charles J. Shields, once remonstrated a preacher in the family's hometown of Monroeville, Ala., for sermonizing on racial justice. Atticus bears an uncanny resemblance to another pillar of moral authority—the Thomas More depicted in Robert Bolt's "A Man for All Seasons," which appeared on the English stage the year "To Kill a Mockingbird" was published. Atticus does not become a martyr for his cause like Sir Thomas, but he is the only saint in a courtroom full of the weak, the foolish and the wicked. And like Sir Thomas, Atticus gets all the best lines.

Atticus speaks in snatches of dialogue that seem written to be quoted in high-school English papers. Among them:

• "The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience."

• "Why reasonable people go stark raving mad when anything involving a Negro comes up is something I can't pretend to understand."

• "If you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you'll get along better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view . . ."

• When asked if he loves Negroes: "I do my best to love everybody."

Atticus is a repository of cracker-barrel epigrams. He actually seems to believe the fairy tale about the Ku Klux Klan that he tells Scout: "Way back about nineteen-twenty, there was a Klan, but it was a political organization more than anything. Besides, they couldn't find anyone to scare." They gathered one night in front of a Jewish friend of Finch's, Sam Levy, and "Sam made 'em so ashamed of themselves they went away."

It's impossible that anyone who grew up in Alabama in the mid-1930s, when the book is set, would believe that story, but it's a sugar-coated myth of Alabama's past that millions have come to accept.

In all great novels there is some quality of moral ambiguity, some potentially controversial element that keeps the book from being easily grasped or explained. One hundred years from now, critics will still be arguing about the real nature of the relationship between Tom and Huck, or why Gatsby gazed at that green light at the end of the dock across the harbor. There is no ambiguity in "To Kill a Mockingbird"; at the end of the book, we know exactly what we knew at the beginning: that Atticus Finch is a good man, that Tom Robinson was an innocent victim of racism, and that lynching is bad. As Thomas Mallon wrote in a 2006 story in The New Yorker, the book acts as "an ungainsayable endorser of the obvious."

It's time to stop pretending that "To Kill a Mockingbird" is some kind of timeless classic that ranks with the great works of American literature. Its bloodless liberal humanism is sadly dated, as pristinely preserved in its pages as the dinosaur DNA in "Jurassic Park."

Harper Lee's contemporary and fellow Southerner Flannery O'Connor (and a far worthier subject for high-school reading lists) once made a killing observation about "To Kill a Mockingbird": "It's interesting that all the folks that are buying it don't know they are reading a children's book."

Fifty years later, we can concede both that Harper Lee's novel inspired a generation of adolescents and that Flannery O'Connor was right.

So this guy is a dope

My criticism of his criticism (I'll flesh it out later) follows

1) The George Constanza "What do you mean Fred's Gay?" syndrome - he's talking about the movie - Scout is the heart and soul of the book not Gregory Peck - it's her book and Barra's got nothing to say about her - not one word. How on earth could you read that book and come away with nothing to say about Scout? and of course since he is ignoring Scout he overlooks the fact that the book has a lot more to it than simply the trial of Tom Robinson; that it's about a season in Scout's life and her coming of age etc

2) The question of moral ambiguity - (first of all the generalization "in all great novels there is some quality of moral ambiguity" is problematic but whatever) - you want some moral ambiguity Mr Barra? did you miss the ending of the book?

Through Scout's eyes we see her father as this idealized figure -

(no kidding she's recounting her memories of her father from when she was a child which by the way applies to most of Barra's criticism of cracker barrel fairy tales and sugar coated myths - we're dealing with the view point of a child Barra you idiot - I guess since Barra missed Scout's existence in the first place this was lost on him as well - and since he missed this he missed the ambiguity split between the narrator's perception and recounted event which btw has all sorts of implications including reliability of source and voice as characterization that his misreading doesnt take into account but here comes the most glaring one in this context...)

- so Barra goes on at length about Atticus being this upright paragon of virtue, a card board construct spouting homilies and platitudes etc

but then Mr Barra, Atticus decides to collude with the town sheriff to cover up a killing and let Boo Radley off the hook - did you miss this part? - Mr upright paragon Atticus Finch colludes with local law enforcement to cover up a murder.

And why? consider the parallels between a hypothetical Boo Radley trial and the one Atticus loses in defending Tom Robinson - Tom is clearly innocent, Boo less so though his actions are defensible legally. Both men face the prejudices of their peers. Boo is persona non grata no less than Tom, the strange bogey man in the haunted house.

Atticus makes a strange and one might say morally ambiguous decision here at the end for a Lawyer who spends the trial spouting 'homilies and platitudes' about justice and the rule of law etc don't you think? He tuns his back on the system and moral code he espouses and takes the law into his own hands sitting in place of judge and jury. Has his faith been shaken to its foundations by the blind prejudices of his neighbors? there's something going on there that Mr Barra has overlooked - something, oh I dont know.... what's the word for it? Ambiguous? well let's just say that the character of Atticus has a little more room in it than Barra supposes afterall.

ok... i'm drunk right now. but fuck that article. it was a great book. firstly because i loved it and that makes it great to me, and the world, damn it. secondly, my daughter read it and liked it better than the twilight books. and even at 11 yrs old she says that this stephanie is a bad writer (uses the adjective pretty too much... as my daughter noticed) but writes an interesting story... at least for kids. stupid article. don't ask me to explain why the book is great right now. i'm about to piss my pants... fucking rum. scout was a great narrator... lee a great voice. allen barra an asshole. brian drunk. nuff said.

Brian, please promise me you will get equally drunk in August.

i've been practicing :P

I think the novel is about tenderness and empathy. Would there have been a way to adequately capture the political side of this novel and preserve the fragile and colloquial tone? Not a chance.

Also, None of us can deconstruct the images and messages we have come to understand from the decades to follow. It isn't fair to project those sensibilities on an author who hadn't been there yet.

The literature selections for high school students have always been a mystery to me. I have no opinion on that.

Finally, if someone wants to further appreciate the movie, the score is incredibly touching. I like the score, the movie and the book just about equally and for the same reason. Tenderness.

Edit: I forgot to say thank you for the really interesting material. E.

. . .awesome post, monk! lee had oodles of voice and could tell a great story . . . i feel like this criticism is leveled at the film more than the book . . .

By Anna Quindlen

From the new book "Scout, Atticus, and Boo," edited by Mary McDonagh Murphy (HarperCollins, 2010)


I took "To Kill a Mockingbird" out of the library at Holy Child Academy, where I went to school through eighth grade. But I can't exactly remember what year it was or how old I was.

I totally remember the experience. It's just all these people In this town, and you are visiting and you stay, and then at the end, you can't believe that you have to leave, and then sooner or later, you go back again and revisit them all over again. "To Kill a Mockingbird" is probably in the top three of books like that, where you utterly live in the book, and walk around in the book, and know everyone down to the ground in the book, and then leave, and then inevitably come back. I can't imagine anyone I like reading "To Kill a Mockingbird" and then not rereading it.

I've realized over the years that I have a completely different orientation toward the book than most people do, because at some essential level early on, and even as I got older, I don't really give a rip about Atticus. I mean, he is fine and he is a terrific dad and he does a wonderful thing, and so on and so forth.

But for me, this book is all about Scout. And I don't really care about anybody else in the book that much, except to the extent that they are nice to Scout and make life easier for Scout. I love Calpurnia because of Scout. I really like Jem and feel like I know him because of Scout. I'm totally perplexed by and sort of furious at Atticus when he has their aunt move in, who is just a heinous creature and is clearly there to get Scout to wear a skirt and wash her face, because I so don't want her to do anything like that. I think one of the reasons I became so obsessed with Harper Lee, when I was older and knew more about her biography, is because everything that she did convinced me that she was just a grown-up Scout who hadn't gone over to the dark side of being a girlie girl.

I looked over the book again about three months ago. It's still always about Scout to me because there really aren't that many of those girls. There were hardly any of those girls in our real life, and there aren't that many of them in books. So you store them up as a hedge against the attempts of the world to make you into something else...."


more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07...

An older cousin of mine (much older) read TKM for the first time recently. He loved it. It was the first novel he had ever read, because he has dyslexia. He is also very much in the WSJ demographic, since he is the principle owner of a successful business and not liberal. It is not a book to be understimated, and its politics are not, in the end, the source of its enchantment.