Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), passed away this morning at age 89, apparently dying in her sleep. She’d not been well for a while, with some even claiming that she wasn’t compos mentis enough to approve the recent publication of Go Set A Watchman, the first draft of Mockingbird, which appeared last year to lukewarm reviews.
But Mockingbird was a true classic, and even if Lee was a one-book author, that book will live for generations. How many of you haven’t read it? I doubt there are many, at least among Americans. The 1962 movie, too, was a classic. I also know her because she was Truman Capote’s bestie, accompanying him to Kansas for the arduous job of researching Capote’s In Cold Blood (1966; another classic work you should read).
Lee became pretty much of a hermit after the movie came out, living modestly in Alabama and trying to avoid publicity. But she continues to garner praise and honors for her book. In 2007 she received the National Medal of Freedom from W (below).
Lee and Capote:
Lee with Gregory Peck, who of course played Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, nabbing an Oscar for Best Actor. The film won two other Oscars, though not Best Picture.
And here’s Mary Badham (born 1952), who played Scout—then and now. She was nominated for Best Supporting Actress (but didn’t win) at the age of ten:
Mockingbird was the first film role of actor Robert Duvall (Boo Radley) years before he became a big star.His effective presence there is oft forgot.
Lee has twice appeared as a character in movies about Truman Capote. I liked Catherine Keener in the role opposite Phillip Seymour Hoffman as Capote.
Yes! I recently watched the movie a couple of times again (we own a DVD) and I was startled to see him in that role. I did not realize it was his first.
Great movie, great book.
Another great early role for Duvall was as Janice Rule’s cuckolded husband in the 1966 film The Chase (which also features Robert Redford in his first co-starring role). The movie has a great cast, with Marlon Brando, Angie Dickenson, Jane Fonda, and E.G. Marshall among others. It’s on my list of Lost Classics.
I read To Kill a Mockingbird in high school and didn’t like it (of course; context). Reread it a few years ago and was amazed at how good it is.
Indeed!
Knowing it was going to be taught at some point, I made sure my kids had already read it before then! Same with Huckleberry Finn.
And I’ll second the endorsement of In Cold Blood a terrific book that was the type specimen for a new kind of NF writing (well, nominally NF anyway).
The “nonfiction novel.” The other great exemplar of the genre is Norman Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song. Together, they form an American simulacrum of Crime and Punishment.
+1. Or maybe +2, two books. Both are great books. I read the Mailer twice. Must re-read the Capote.
The Executioner’s Song has been sitting, untouched, on my bookshelf for years. I think you’ve just inspired me to read it.
In some ways, it’s Mailer’s least Maileresque work, with deceptively simple prose and an effaced narrative presence.
I’ve read it a couple of times, too, and really like it. Hope you enjoy.
A truly important book and movie. I can’t imagine anyone having read the book or seen the movie that wouldn’t have deeply affected
mentally and emotionally. I find it interesting that Gregory Peck performed in two such truly important films of that time (and yet): “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “Gentleman’s Agreement”.
In re the occasional discussion here about humans gaining knowledge, or not, from the humanities: I feel confident that most people who read this book or saw this movie gained knowledge. Not all the same, certainly. But, that doesn’t happen with science either.
“wouldn’t have been deeply affected mentally and emotionally”. Need another cup of coffee!
You could also make the case for Peck’s roles in Man in the Gray Flannel Suit and On the Beach — at least as near also-rans.
I can’t recommend more highly the audiobook version of To Kill a Mockingbird, narrated by Sissy Spacek. Her narration is brilliant and captivating. Her sweet southern drawl is the perfect voice for the adult Scout, recounting her childhood story.
Fist saw this movie as a kid at the drive-in theater when it first came out. Have seen it many times since as well as the book and consider it one of the best. Do not think there was ever a better adaptation from book to movie.
Harper Lee was a great writer and human being.
crap….should be first
Somewhere a metafictionalist is sitting down to write “Scout and Jem in Search of a New Author.”
Here is the link if this does not display:
http://img.memerial.net/memerial.net/6648/no-information-on-killing-birds.jpg
Superb. I never read the book but the movie is easily one of my all time favorites.
Except of course it does have one remark, an interesting one to those involved in “free thought” and the like.
Scout reports that Atticus used to say that to kill a mockingbird was a sin.
In the book, but not in the movie, IIRC, she then says that this was unusual because she doesn’t remember him calling anything else one.
She was one of the few bright spots in my home state. Shame that she is gone… On a lighter note, Truman was quite a little guy! Looks like something that fell from a charm bracelet.
Capote was one of the great icons of mid-20th century American pop culture — of American letters too, with classics like Other Voices, Other Rooms and Breakfast at Tiffany’s to his credit. In Cold Blood seemed to empty him out, inasmuch as he never wrote much after that (although the dissolute lifestyle probably didn’t help, either).
I’m sure I started to read it at school – “the day we made Boo Radley come out” – but I really don’t remember finishing it.
I guess it behoves me to read it now.
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PS. Christopher Tolkien has done well out his father‘s early draughts, but at least they were sold as such (with many notes) rather than pretending they were fully fledged books in their own right.
Another author, Umberto Eco, also died today, at age 84. Strangely I had just acquired one of his books yesterday and was curious to see when he lived (I had some vague notion that he lived in the 1800s), when I came across his obituary, apparently minutes after his death was announced.
Ah, that would explain the slight rash of Harper Lee headlines in the papers. None of which actually mentioned that she’d died.