Discussion for article #232801
Bless her heart, Nelle Harper Lee is a national treasure. That she’s giving up the anonymity she’s always sought tells us how important this forthcoming book is to her
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I’m so excited about this. And learning that we’ll get to spend more time with her Scout, and on the same day learning that we’ll get to know Rosa Parks from her own voice – thrilling!
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A good friend of mine grew up in Lee’s hometown Monroeville and her late sister was my friend’s family’s attorney, and the town called her Nelle. I believe it wasn’t until Mockingbird was published that she began to use her middle name. They were a much beloved duo in the town, and my friend loves her dearly to this day.
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To Kill A Mockingbird was possibly the greatest book I ever read. It was also one of the few books I have read that translated into a superior movie.
As a young man growing up in a very segregated small city in New York, it served as moral guidance at a time when I needed it.
I cannot wait to read the sequel.
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Yes, I believe she omitted the Nelle strictly for her pen name. How lovely to have a personal connection!
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My friend who now lives in New Orleans to this day attends a Monroeville event at the courthouse used in the film where the the trial is reenacted.
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This is incredibly exciting news. Best news of the year thus far actually. I loved Mockingbird, and have every time I have read it. I will be there on the first day to get my copy. Just like Harry Potter. Although, unlike Harry Potter, I do not intend to go to the store in costume.
As a side note, I wish AP had done a much better job emphasizing that Harper Publishing is publishing Harper Lee’s book. There were many times with quotes where I was thinking, who said this, Harper Lee, or Harper publishing?
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Ordinarily you’d wonder if the author of a book so universally loved could make that magic happen again. But one of the things about Mockingbird is how impeccably well it’s written—every paragraph, every sentence works perfectly, you believe every bit, it all flows like a river. I think it’s reasonable to hope that this first one is also really worth reading. To hope for something as good isn’t reasonable, writing careers don’t work that way, but I’m willing to pre-order, let’s say that.
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Agreed. Take just one relatively minor but wonderful feature—the score. Elmer Bernstein said he was thinking about how to get the essence across and he threw away everything about the South, said he didn’t want banjos or that mess, and eventually he realized it was a book about, among other things, being a child. Of course in the book the children go through some difficult things, but they’re still children. So he came up with this haunting melody to express that. As good as any book can be, you don’t have music emanating from the pages. Just had to mention that score. Hauntingly beautiful.
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You might to catch Lawrence O’Donnell’s interview with Gregory Peck’s daughter, Cecilia yesterday. The link below might work. Peck and Lee became best friends, and the daughter always regarded Nelle as a mother figure. The feeling was that it was Peck unleashing his inner Atticus because he was a good, decent, moral progressive thinking man and you couldn’t always count on finding that in an actor.
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