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IT’S A WIN TO READ MOCKINGBIRD
I have to confess up front that when it
comes to Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird I had
always wondered what all the fuss was about.
Last winter, when an otherwise compos mentis
friend from Alabama asserted that, next to the
Bible, TKAM (as it seems to be called by those in
the know) “is the most widely read book in the
English language," I couldn't help myself, called
a timeout and asked for a footnote for that as
sertion. She hemmed and hawed a bit and said
that she'd get back to me. In due course, I was
told that this finding came from a professor at
Auburn who surveyed students in his Alabama
history class and found this student population
to be enamored of TKAM, in second place, I as
sume, behind the Bible.
Mystified and intrigued at how I could
have been denying myself the pleasure of this
Universal Literary Good,
I read it. Couldn't swear
that I'd ever tried it
before. Probably not.
Then, my wife and I read
it aloud at our evening
reading hour. And we
watched the OVD with
Gregory Peck. A good
enough read, and. per
haps, an even better
watch. But hardly a ULG and not good enough,
in my opinion, to account for its place as one of
the top-10 selling American novels of the 20th
Century. Now there's a superlative I have come to
believe to be true, even if I have not contributed
personally to the statistic.
Primed as I was with this fresh interest
in TKAM and Harper Lee, I therefore took up
Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee by Charles
J. Shields (Henry Holt, 2006) with keen anticipa
tion. And well primed by Atticu', I determined
to start off by climbing into Shields' skin and
walking around in it as I read the book. After
all. in Mockingbird he is attempting to do what
no one else has done before with absolutely no
cooperation from his subject and working with
the scantiest of publicly available materials.
Shields says that he himself wondered whether
there was the stuff of a book-length biography
in Lee, but he rose to the occasion, he tells us,
by seeking to locate via bulk emails anyone who
may have known Lee and be willing to talk, by
assembling quantities of material using Google
(the title produces, or did when I last checked,
over 6,730,000 hits) and even by purchasing
some Lee-related artifacts via eBay.
Janet Maslin, in reviewing Mockingbird for The
New York Times, refers disparagingly to Shields'
methodology as taking "the art of the cyberclip-
job to bold new heights." But what's a biogra
pher to do when faced with a paltry quantity of
biographical raw materials? And Shields is forth
right about documenting much of his text with
footnotes to personal recollections by octogenar
ians, newspaper clippings and the like. We know,
therefore, that the picture he paints of Nelle (who
is said to have used the name "Harper" for her
novel because she was apprehensive about having
her name mispronounced "Nellie") is one which is
built up from common threads of what may very
well be faulty nr self-serving memories. We know
where we stand.
Reading Shields'
book, we construct the
image of a bright, very
independent, tough and
tough-minded child who
follows the beat of her
own drummer. A person
bound and determined
to pursue a writing
career by leaving her
beloved Monroeville against her family's wishes
and taking her lumps in New York, just like her
childhood friend and next-door neighbor Truman
Capote. A person who slaved away writing, and
rewriting... and rewriting a book inspired by
love, as Shields puts it, "love for the world of the
South, for her little town, for her father and her
family, and for the values she found among the
people she most admired."
Even more fascinating is the picture Shields
gives us of Lee's life after TKAM. Although she
appears to have worked hard on a second novel,
her heart may not have been in it Or, more pre
cisely, she may have come to realize that she had
written the best novel that she had in her and
that anything in the way of a TKAM follow-up
would have been a letdown. At some point in her
life (that's as specific as Shields is), she told a
cousin inquiring about another book: "Richard,
when you're at the top there's only one way to
go." How many writers, how many people in any
career for that matter, have the good sense, and
discipline, after having achieved success, to say.
"Enough is enough." And the financial rewards
from TKAM were more than enough to support
Nelle's quiet, very private life.
The real success of Mockingbird is in giving
the reader a feeling that Shields genuinely has
an appreciation for what makes Nelle Harper Lee
tick. And that's no small success. Shields says
that his book "aims to capture a life but is not
a conventional biography, because—despite her
novel's huge impact—Lee's writing life has been
brief, and her personal life has been intensely
private." He knew what he was trying to do, and
I think he did it.
Another thing Shields has done for us is to
put to rest (although like most conspiracy theo
ries, it may never be totally eliminated) the sug
gestion that Capote actually wrote, or even had
a major hand in, TKAM.
Doing that has done the
world of letters a real
service.
So what's not to like
about Mockingbird?
Shields, a former
English teacher who
taught TKAM to high
school freshmen, some
times falls victim to the
sort of hyperbole TKAM
idolaters are prone to. In
doing so, he reveals the
probable source of my
friend's claim that got me
interested in TKAM in the
first place: "In a 'Survey
of Lifetime Reading
Habits' conducted by
the Book-of-the-Month
Club in 1991, research
ers found that To Kill a
Mockingbird ranked sec
ond only to the Bible 'as
making a difference in people's lives'" I'll accept
that, considering the source. What I won't buy
is that it is "the most popular novel in American
literature in the 20th century." Who's to say?
And that it is "the bestselling novel of the 20th
century." Simply untrue, although the precise
identity of that record holder is elusive.
Forget mere hype. Of more substance are the
ridiculous errors like having Nelle enroll in the
Women's College of Alabama in 1928. At the
age of two? Or saying that "On December 31,
1942, the federal government had passed the
first income tax law in United States history,
named the Victory Tax." Off by almost 30 years.
Come to think of it, without the last comma in
Shields' sentence, this statement might be true.
Shields has a New York Public Library branch "a
block" from the door of Nelle's 1539 York Ave.
apartment. It's actually three-plus blocks away.
No, Nelle has not been maintaining her cur
rent New York apartment at 433 East 82nd St
for 45 years (p. 3) if she moved there in 1967
(p. 264). Unless this is 2012. The U.S. Supreme
Court hands down decisions, not "acts." And
so on. These bloopers are in the context of a
book which puts the dreaded [sic] after Truman
Capote's misspelling of redeved and by an author
who says that he has limited the scope of his
work so as not 'to risk producing errors that
might find their way into future accounts of
Lee."
Shields also has a habit of showering the
reader with irrelevant detail in attempts to ob
scure understandable gaps in relevant informa
tion or to augment his scanty sources. Do we
really need to know the
daily schedule for recruits
at Maxwell Airfield to
understand Nelle's life
at nearby Huntingdon
College?
Another quibble I
have is with his tendency
to use quotations from
Lee's fiction to flesh out
his biographical narrative.
Although educated in a
hotbed of New Critics,
I have learned that
biographical detail can
indeed be useful in ex
plaining a literary work.
But I don't believe it's a
two-way street. Authors
do make things up and
embellish their "facts."
So, I'm mighty leery of
his using passages from
fiction to provide bio
graphical details. At this
point, I suppose I should once again remember
to climb back into Shields' skin and acknowledge
the paucity of biographical materials which may
have pushed him over the edge in this respect.
But I come, not to drown Shields in a sea
of pedantry, but to praise him for giving us a
fascinating, if imperfect, and very personal in
troduction to Nelle Harper Lee, the author of a
novel taught in 74 percent of the nation's public
schools, with only Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth
and Huckleberry Finn assigned more often. But
isn't this where I came in?
William S. Kable
Having decided that enough is enough. Bill Kable reads
to the blind one-on-one and practices his pedantry in
New York City.
Reading Shields' book,
we construct the image of a bright
very independent, tough and
tough-minded child who follows
the beat of her own drummer.
Mockingbird
a rniTMii or
HARPER LEE
Participants Needed in Research Study
Pregnancy, Back Pain an
The Pregnancy, Back Pain and Exercise
research study seeks to further our
understanding of the health consequences
of moderate intensity resistance exercise
training for pregnant women. The
knowledge gained from this study will
provide physicians and other health care
and exercise specialists with sound evidence
in prescribing exercise for pregnant women
with back pain. The exercise program is
designed to improve the strength of the
back, abdominal and leg muscles and will
emphasize safety and gradual progression.
If you are interested in participating in this
study or would like more information
please contact:
Tameka R. Gude, Project Coordinator
Phone: 706-542-4138
E-mail* tgude$uga.edu
http*y/pr ojects.coe.uga.edu/bpepstudy
ELIGIBILITY
• Must not b« past th* second month of
th* second trimester (21 wt«b)
• Must b« bstwwn the ages of 18 and 35.
• Must hare currant back pain or a
history of back pain.
• Mutt bs able to raad and speak English.
• Must b* willing to b* randomly
assigned on* of thraa mrtM programs.
• Must hav* pragnancy health care
provider's approval
• Must b* fra* of cart am complications.
INCENTIVES
• No cost for suparvtsad narcisa program
• Babysitting provid*d at nrrcsr and
tasting sessions.
• Receive $150 for participation at th*
assigned condition durng pregnancy.
• Receive $20 for sach of th* thre* on*-
hour tasting sessions ($60 total!
• Receive payment for s*v*n pregnancy-
ralatad health education classes for
participants assigned to the condition
including health education ($7$ value).
Th* University of Georgia
Department of Kinesiology
CELEBRATING 8 YEARS
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toy, off of all store merchandiseI Massive
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