A Writer's Moment: 'That makes you think'

A Writer's Moment: 'That makes you think':   “The book to read is not the one which thinks for you, but the one which makes you think.” – Harper Lee   Born in Alabama on this date...

'That makes you think'

 

“The book to read is not the one which thinks for you, but the one which makes you think.” – Harper Lee

 

Born in Alabama on this date in 1926, Nelle Harper Lee became one of America’s most acclaimed novelists even though she wrote just two books.  But, of course, the first of those was To Kill a Mockingbird.  Published in 1960 it achieved immediate success, rocketing to the top of most bestseller lists and winning the 1961 Pulitzer Prize. That singular achievement led to her being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2007.

 

Lee also was feted for assisting Truman Capote (the model for her character Dill in Mockingbird) in his research for his 1966 masterpiece In Cold Blood.   Between them, Lee and Capote created a new kind of journalistic reporting, obtaining “notes” from a primary source without actually writing them down.  Both were able to remember things in minute detail, and they would spend hours after interviewing sessions re-creating those interviews.  Their skill with the technique led to sources to “opening up” in ways they might otherwise have not wanted to do.

 

Lee lived her last 50 years as a recluse.  Until her death in 2016, she granted almost no requests for interviews or public appearances.  And with the exception of a few short essays, she published nothing further until 2015 when her so-called “prequel” to Mockingbird – Go Set A Watchman – came out.   Mockingbird’s universal acceptance had seemed to cause her to freeze up when it came to further writing.

 

“I never expected any sort of success with ‘Mockingbird’ … I just sort of hoped someone would like it enough to give me encouragement,” she once said.  “I got rather a whole lot, and in some ways this was just about as frightening as the quick, merciful (writing) death I'd expected.”

A Writer's Moment: 'These are our tools of thought'

A Writer's Moment: 'These are our tools of thought':   “I think that novels are tools of thought. They are moral philosophy with the theory left out, with just the examples of the moral situati...

'These are our tools of thought'

 

“I think that novels are tools of thought. They are moral philosophy with the theory left out, with just the examples of the moral situations left standing.” – Jill Paton Walsh

 

Paton Walsh was the writing name of Gillian Bliss, born in England in April of 1937.  A novelist and children's book writer, she was best known for her novel Knowledge of Angels, nominated for the Booker Prize, and for the Peter Wimsey–Harriet Vane mysteries that either completed or continued the work of renowned British crime writer and poet Dorothy Sayers.

 

Paton Walsh, who died in 2020, also earned considerable acclaim for her series featuring college nurse and part-time detective Imogine Quy, set at the fictional St. Agatha College in Cambridge, and for her two-dozen highly successful children's and young adult titles, including the much honored A Chance Child and Grace.

 

"There is nothing more important than writing well for the young,” she once noted, “especially if literature is to have a continuance."

A Writer's Moment: 'It begins in childhood'

A Writer's Moment: 'It begins in childhood':   “I believe that poetry begins in childhood and that a poet who can remember his own childhood exactly can, and should, communicate to chil...

'It begins in childhood'

 

“I believe that poetry begins in childhood and that a poet who can remember his own childhood exactly can, and should, communicate to children.” – William Jay Smith

 

Born in Louisiana in April 1918, Smith was the U.S. Poet Laureate from 1968-70, and Poet-in-Residence at Williams College for many years.   The author of more than 50 books of poetry for adults and children, including the multiple award-winning children’s book Laughing Time, he was twice honored as a finalist for the National Book Award.  For Saturday’s Poem, here is Smith’s,

                                    The World Below The Window

The geraniums I left last night on the windowsill,
To the best of my knowledge now, are out there still,
And will be there as long as I think they will.

And will be there as long as I think that I
Can throw the window open on the sky,
A touch of geranium pink in the tail of my eye;

As long as I think I see, past leaves green-growing,
Barges moving down a river, water flowing,
Fulfillment in the thought of thought outgoing,

Fulfillment in the sight of sight replying,
Of sound in the sound of small birds southward flying,
In life life-giving, and in death undying.

 

A Writer's Moment: 'Somebody's daydream'

A Writer's Moment: 'Somebody's daydream':   “Treat your life like something to be sculpted.”  – Larry Niven   Born in Los Angeles in April of 1938, Laurence van Cott Niven has be...