Harper Lee

[Agnes Selby]

Will the "Watchman" kill the "Mockingbird?"

[John F]

Of course not. But it does confuse matters, since it was written first.

[lennygoran]

This week's metrofocus had something on it--she wasn't a recluse by any means according to the interview-had many friends and social activities in NYC:

http://www.thirteen.org/metrofocus/watch/

Regards, Len

[Agnes Selby]

Of course not. But it does confuse matters, since it was written first.

I hope you are right John F. "To Kill A Mockingbird" is a classic. For high school students in many
countries it is required reading. Atticus Finch is the perfect father and a perfect man with deep social understanding and tolerance.

Now, in the Watchman he appears a racist. It is difficult to reconcile the two personalities.
One who represented goodness and the other who represented evil.

The Sydney Morning Herald published the first chapter of the "Watchman". It is badly
written and totally uninteresting. It is a great pity that this book was ever published.
But then, the lure of money....!

When asked which was his favourite role, Gregory Peck said it was his role as Atticus Finch in
"To Kill A Mockingbird". I doubt very much he would have undertaken the tole of the Atticus
Finch who enjoys attending racist meetings.

Regards,
Agnes.

[Agnes Selby]

This week's metrofocus had something on it--she wasn't a recluse by any means according to the interview-had many friends and social activities in NYC:

http://www.thirteen.org/metrofocus/watch/

Regards, Len

She lived a full and successful life. She is still alive aged 88 but she is blind and deaf.

[jbuck919]

This week's metrofocus had something on it--she wasn't a recluse by any means according to the interview-had many friends and social activities in NYC:

http://www.thirteen.org/metrofocus/watch/

Regards, Len

She lived a full and successful life. She is still alive aged 88 but she is blind and deaf.

One of her best friends was Truman Capote. (Some of this is recounted in the movie with Phillip Seymour Hoffman.) No one who traveled in those circles was a slouch my any measure.

I have never read any early interviews with her or any relevant biography, but I have always suspected that she knew that she only had one masterpiece in her and, since it made her relatively rich overnight, she had no "writer's compulsion" to try for more. (The problem then becomes, to paraphrase T.S. Eliot, how is an author to while away the day except to write?) That is not a criticism, but an observation. There are other novelists who have retired after one brilliant best-seller, and some who should have. In the second category I would put Herman Wouk, who should have quit with The Caine Mutiny.

[John F]

...To paraphrase T.S. Eliot, how is an author to while away the day except to write?

Did Eliot actually say something like that? I didn't think he was so silly, or so detached from real life. As it happens, Harper Lee told an interviewer, Thomas Lane Butts, why she never wrote again. "Two reasons: one, I wouldn't go through the pressure and publicity I went through with 'To Kill a Mockingbird' for any amount of money. Second, I have said what I wanted to say, and I will not say it again." There's no good reason to doubt her.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harper_Lee

[jbuck919]

...To paraphrase T.S. Eliot, how is an author to while away the day except to write?

Did Eliot actually say something like that? I didn't think he was so silly, or so detached from real life. As it happens, Harper Lee told an interviewer, Thomas Lane Butts, why she never wrote again. "Two reasons: one, I wouldn't go through the pressure and publicity I went through with 'To Kill a Mockingbird' for any amount of money. Second, I have said what I wanted to say, and I will not say it again." There's no good reason to doubt her.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harper_Lee

What Eliot said was more along the lines of "Writing poetry is easy. It's figuring out what to do with the other 23-1/2 hours of a day that's hard." Sorry I don't have a link. Eliot is at best an uneven poet, and some of his most famous poems strike me as facile, lazy even, their success being dependent on having written what the Zeitgeist was looking for, or having Ezra Pound as an advocate, or both, or something like that.

As for Harper Lee, for whatever reason, the point is she knew when to stop and then actually did stop.

[lennygoran]

One of her best friends was Truman Capote. (Some of this is recounted in the movie with Phillip Seymour Hoffman.)

I think I saw some where they grew up near each other--also that they had a little falling out though later on? Regards, Len

[John F]

As for Harper Lee, for whatever reason, the point is she knew when to stop and then actually did stop.

Actually, she only stopped publishing, she didn't stop writing. "She did work on a follow-up novel—'The Long Goodbye'—but eventually filed it away unfinished. During the mid-1980s, she began a factual book about an Alabama serial murderer, but also put it aside when she was not satisfied." Too self-critical, I suppose - or maybe she was put off by the pressure and publicity she complains about in that interview, which she most likely gave after beginning and abandoning those two books.

[lennygoran]

During the mid-1980s, she began a factual book about an Alabama serial murderer, but also put it aside when she was not satisfied." Too self-critical, I suppose - or maybe she was put off by the pressure and publicity she complains about in that interview, which she most likely gave after beginning and abandoning those two books.

Interesting about the serial killer. The TV documentary mentioned her relationship with Capote and if I remember correctly seems to fit with this 2006 article:

"The notion that Capote wrote some or all of Mockingbird is almost certainly a canard, although he did suggest some cuts here and there. (The next-door neighbour who befriends the Finch children, Dill, is an homage to Capote.) Hohoff, on the other hand, was instrumental in giving the book structural shape....By the end of the 1960s, her agent was dying of cancer. Lippincott was despairing of her, and she had a big falling out with Capote over his failure to give her more than a shared mention in his dedication for In Cold Blood. Intriguingly, she and Capote both failed to complete another book after their acknowledged masterpieces. Both appear to have had a tough time with fame - Capote became addicted to it, along with drugs and booze, while she felt compelled to run away from it.
There may also have been something about the experience of digging into the mass murder of the Clutter family in Kansas that haunted them - as the recent movie Capote suggests - or simply helped unravel what was, for both writers, a key friendship in their lives. Shields has unearthed many of Lee's notes for the book, and argues that many of her contributions were either ignored - for example, her devastating insights into the mother, Bonnie Clutter - or went unacknowledged. The real truth thus may be not that Capote secretly wrote chunks of To Kill A Mockingbird, but rather that Lee had more than an idle hand in the writing of In Cold Blood."

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-enter ... 80965.html

Regards, Len

[John F]

Different project. See the Wikipedia article.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harper_Lee

[lennygoran]

Different project. See the Wikipedia article.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harper_Lee

Interesting-I didn't know anything about the 1980 research-wonder if the Capote book of the 1960's was on her mind? This Reverend project is quite an incredible mystery in itself!

http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-tur ... me-project

Regards, Len

[John F]

From the opening sentence, it seems the murder trial was what attracted Lee's interest, and of course "Mockingbird" centers on a trial. Not so "In Cold Blood." This speculation gets us nowhere.