“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 her
“classic,” 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.
Harper Lee in 1960 and
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.”
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