Part 3 (1/2)

Alice comes to work at age ninety-eight dressed in the kind of clothing that you might have expected a woman to be wearing in 1940. The only difference now is she wears tennis shoes with them. But they are different. They complement each other. And it has always been very interesting to me to be with both of them.

For a long time, my wife, Hilda, and I would go with Nelle Harper and Alice out to Daily's Catfish every Sat.u.r.day for lunch. We'd sit in the same place, order the same thing. And the conversation that would go on between the two of them and around the table was just a wonderful enlightened conversation about the times. Both of them [are] grounded in great values. They hold on to old values, which is the tradition of this town and of this area.

I once referred to Nelle Harper as being conservative, and she corrected me. She said, ”I'm not conservative. I'm independent.”

Today, the Monroeville town square-it looks like the book. You walk up on the square and look at the storefronts around it and the old courthouse. You can close your eyes and imagine that you are back in the days of that book. Monroeville has changed a lot, but it still holds a lot of the traditions and understandings of reality that were extant in [the thirties]. In other ways, it is a modern town. People are very highly educated. In the church where I was the pastor, I had a very highly educated congregation.

People around here keep up with Nelle Harper, but they're also very protective of her. If an outsider comes in and tries to find where Harper Lee is, n.o.body will tell them. Many people who are looking for Harper Lee end up in my office, because a few stories have gotten out about my being a friend of hers, but the people in this town are protective of her. They care about her a great deal.

A lot of people think that she's a recluse, which is absolutely untrue. She's a person who enjoys her privacy like any other citizen would. She's not reclusive; it's very different from that. She's open, she loves to be around people and a.s.sociate with people. She does not like to be exploited by people. And she does not like to have her works exploited for profit by people.

For instance, for many years she would come to the book-shops here in town and autograph books for them to sell. And she wanted them to be sold for the same price they would ordinarily be sold for. She quit doing that when she discovered that people started taking signed books of hers and selling them on eBay for several hundred dollars. She quit signing books because she did not want people using her signature to exploit people in any way.

She has to be careful about how she relates to people, because she will get exploited. Any person who is a famous person, a celebrity, ends up in a situation where they are exploited by people trying to get their signature, have their picture made with them, or have a little bit of the reflected glory of that person in their own life. It happens. It happens.

But she is a real good person. She'd give you the s.h.i.+rt off her back.

She's just a common ordinary person with a brilliant mind who knows how to put a sentence together and a paragraph in an unusual way. If you were to read letters that she's written, it's almost like a chapter in a book.

She's funny in a smart way, in a brilliant sort of way. Her humor is not cra.s.s but a cla.s.sical kind of humor, describing things, and describing people and situations in which she has found herself from time to time. Her storytelling is almost like the writing of To Kill a Mockingbird To Kill a Mockingbird.

She's the sort of a friend that I'd say anything to. You don't have to pretend to be somebody you're not around her simply because she's a celebrity. We argue about issues and argue about the meaning of things almost like a brother and a sister would discuss things with each other. We are very close friends.

Being famous and a celebrity is probably a lot of fun the first two or three months, but after you've been a celebrity for fifty years, I'm quite sure it gets old, when you have people look at you not for who you are but for the image that they have of you. And there are a lot of mythologies that get developed about her and about her relations.h.i.+p to Truman Capote. There are people who ask me, ”Are you sure that Nelle Harper Lee wrote To Kill a Mockingbird To Kill a Mockingbird, or did Truman Capote write it?”

Well, if you read the two authors, it's very obvious that Truman Capote did not write To Kill a Mockingbird To Kill a Mockingbird. But Nelle Harper did help him write and do the research for In Cold Blood In Cold Blood and went to Kansas and helped him. But there are a lot of mythologies that developed, and it's hard to disabuse people of the thought that maybe she didn't write that entire book, that maybe Truman did help her, which really isn't true. and went to Kansas and helped him. But there are a lot of mythologies that developed, and it's hard to disabuse people of the thought that maybe she didn't write that entire book, that maybe Truman did help her, which really isn't true.

We would like to think that she would write something else. But one book's been enough for her. It's been enough. She has controlled her own destiny. She doesn't have a PR person. She doesn't need one. The fact that she doesn't give interviews makes everybody all the more interested in her and in her life and in her book. I think she has led a happier life and certainly more contented life because she has chosen how she has related to the public. It's been with care and great caution that she's done so. She is a proud but a humble person. She loves people; she does a lot of good that n.o.body ever knows about. She does a lot of good through the church.

You read that book and you see how you ought to rear children; you see how you ought to relate to your fellow citizens. You see what your att.i.tude should be toward people who are different. And that is an issue in every age.

The persons may differ, but the issues are still there. And this book addresses those issues in an interesting and gentle way. It doesn't push them on you, but you can't read the book without seeing those values.

Rosanne Cash Rosanne Cash was born in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1955. Her fourteen alb.u.ms include Seven Year Ache Seven Year Ache (1981), (1981), The Wheel The Wheel (1993), (1993), Black Cadillac Black Cadillac (2006), and (2006), and The List The List (2009). She is the author of (2009). She is the author of Bodies of Water Bodies of Water (1996), a short story collection; (1996), a short story collection; Penelope Jane Penelope Jane (2000), a children's book; and (2000), a children's book; and Composed Composed (2010), a memoir. (2010), a memoir.

I was born in Memphis. I wasn't raised in the South, but I've spent plenty of time there. It makes me proud. It's the perfect Southern story. This whole book is a guide to parenting, number one. And then the language, of course. The naturalness that Atticus has with his children-there isn't this sense of modern angst about parenting. There is a beautiful intimacy between Atticus and Scout that you just want to get inside and that gives you so much feeling of love and comfort and integrity. Its beauty never ceases to amaze me and strike me. There's just this beautiful naturalness that he has and sense of confidence in his own skill as a parent. And respect for the child, that mutual respect. I just love it so much, it just gives so much satisfaction to read it. was born in Memphis. I wasn't raised in the South, but I've spent plenty of time there. It makes me proud. It's the perfect Southern story. This whole book is a guide to parenting, number one. And then the language, of course. The naturalness that Atticus has with his children-there isn't this sense of modern angst about parenting. There is a beautiful intimacy between Atticus and Scout that you just want to get inside and that gives you so much feeling of love and comfort and integrity. Its beauty never ceases to amaze me and strike me. There's just this beautiful naturalness that he has and sense of confidence in his own skill as a parent. And respect for the child, that mutual respect. I just love it so much, it just gives so much satisfaction to read it.

It's perfect. She created a whole world inside these pages that we get to enter in forever. It's perfect.

I don't remember the act of reading it for the first time, but I remember taking that feeling of integrity and sense of conscience and the idea that the way you behaved, whether people saw you or not, was central to becoming yourself, becoming who you were going to become in the world, that you had to first carve out a central sense of conscience.

My daughters have read it on their own. I'm looking forward to reading it to my son. He's not quite ready, but I think very soon. These kinds of people are rare in modern life-someone with absolute integrity. Atticus is a real grown-up. He knows who he is. He knows what's right and wrong. He acts out of compa.s.sion and personal integrity.

Those lessons you learn from your parents, the really key, profound life lessons, they're seared in your memory. They're few and they're precious, and this book makes poetry of it. If you find people like that, hold on to them; they are few and far between.

Mark Childress Mark Childress was born in Monroeville, Alabama, in 1957, and grew up in Mississippi. He is the author of six novels, including Crazy in Alabama Crazy in Alabama (1993), (1993), Gone for Good Gone for Good (1998), and (1998), and One Mississippi One Mississippi (2006). (2006).

The first time I read To Kill a Mockingbird To Kill a Mockingbird I was in Monroeville, Alabama. It was two doors down from Nelle Harper Lee's house. And I was on the porch of Miss Wanda Biggs's house. Miss Wanda Biggs was my mother's best friend. She was one of Monroeville's notable busybodies. She was the Welcome Wagon lady, who chased Gregory Peck all over town to give him a welcome basket. She also operated a switchboard from her home. She got the doctors and the lawyers, and she answered phone calls for everybody. So she knew everything that was going on in town. I was in Monroeville, Alabama. It was two doors down from Nelle Harper Lee's house. And I was on the porch of Miss Wanda Biggs's house. Miss Wanda Biggs was my mother's best friend. She was one of Monroeville's notable busybodies. She was the Welcome Wagon lady, who chased Gregory Peck all over town to give him a welcome basket. She also operated a switchboard from her home. She got the doctors and the lawyers, and she answered phone calls for everybody. So she knew everything that was going on in town.

I was about nine years old, and she said, ”I think it's time for you to read this.” She put it in my hands, and it was a first edition signed to her that I'm sure I spilled Coca-Cola on, and every other thing. G.o.d, I wish I had that book. Every few hours she would wander out and say, ”Now you see that stump over there? That's the tree where Boo hid the presents for the children. Did you get to the part yet about the school? If you go down this little pathway, that is where the school is.”

That was the first adult novel that I had ever read, and I was just about the age of Scout when I read it, and I was reading it in the setting where it happened. And it's the reason I'm a writer today-something about seeing that ugly little town, which at that point had been sort of stripped of all of its charms, transformed into this magical thing that was in my hands. I guess it would be like if you came from Reggie Jackson's hometown, you'd want to be a baseball player.

It became real to me that Miss Wanda knew the lady who wrote this, that this was a novel written out of this place where I was right now, and how it somehow became this magic on the page. I'll never forget being in that swing reading it. It took me about three days. I read it about every year, just as a refresher course. It's a really good book.

Every time I go back, I'm impressed more by the simplicity of the prose. I think the reason that we think it's so cla.s.sic is that the prose is not adorned; it's very plain. Although it's plainly written from the point of view of an adult, looking back through a child's eyes, there's something beautifully innocent about the point of view, and yet it's very wise. So it's a combination of either a wise child or an innocent adult, the point of view.

The fact that Scout is surprised by people's racism is what was revolutionary about the book. Most little kids in little towns like that, they weren't surprised, because racism was all around them. It was the fabric of life. When I was three years old, my grandmother and I would walk down the main street of Greeneville, which was the little town where she lived, and black men would get off the sidewalk as a sign of respect. And if I walked down the sidewalk, at five years old-by myself-they would get off the sidewalk as a sign of respect to me. And this was in the mid-sixties, after the book came out.

We think of this book as being a postcivil rights novel, but it was published before the biggest explosions of the civil rights movement, and helped bring it along, I think. You know that famous quote Lincoln [reportedly] said to Harriet Beecher Stowe, ”Oh, here's the little lady whose book caused such a big war.” I think the same can be said of Harper Lee, that To Kill a Mockingbird To Kill a Mockingbird was one of the most influential novels, not necessarily in a literary sense, but in a social sense. was one of the most influential novels, not necessarily in a literary sense, but in a social sense.

It gives white Southerners a way to understand the racism that they've been brought up with and to find another way. And for white Southerners at that time, there was no other way. There were either outsiders yelling at you because you were a racist cracker, or your leaders, George Wallace saying, ”I'll never be out-n.i.g.g.e.red again.” There was no middle ground. Most white people in the South were good people. Most white people in the South were not throwing bombs and causing havoc, but they had been raised in the system. I think the book really helped them come to understand what was wrong with the system in a way that any number of treatises could never do, because it was popular art, told from a child's point of view.

We think of it as a contemporary book, but it is set in the thirties. So it also helped the white Southerner because there was distance between the South she was writing about and the present day when it was published. That allowed them to feel, ”Well, we've moved a little beyond that.” And because she was a white Southerner, there was something that allowed them to hear what she was trying to say.

It's just a child trying to understand, trying to make sense of something that doesn't make any sense, trying to organize it. I guess I've spent my whole writing career trying to do the same thing, laboring in the shadow of making sense of what race meant in the South. How do you grow up having come from that system? It's a lot of interesting problems.

I don't think that kids today read it with the same edge that we did as children, because the segregation was still very real when I was reading that book. When I went to the swimming pool, there were no colored children allowed. The signs said WHITE WHITE and and COLORED COLORED. When we went to the Dairy Queen, there were two lines: There was a white window, and there was a black window. So, it was a radical book at that time in the South. It might not have been that way in the rest of the country, but it said radical things.

There are a lot of people in the novel who are not quite what they seem, and there's a few people who are what they seem, and they're the heroes of the book-Miss Maudie, and Atticus, and old Boo, too.

Scout was about half boy. Scout's a real tomboy, you know, and Dill was about half girl. The two of them, they were both odd birds in their town, which is sort of the other theme that runs through the book. They're not like the other kids either. If you notice any time that other kids are seen in the book, it's always in opposition; our little group is never playing with them. And I think there's one moment where she talks about it, because she was the daughter of the lawyer, people thought she was above them. There's some stuff about the social stratification of the town too, that is really interesting. There's just a lot in the book. And that's why I keep rereading it, because I always find something new.

I was looking at the movie recently and realizing how much Gregory Peck made the movie Atticus's movie. And the book is really Scout's book. It's Scout and Jem's book. It's really about the children's learning; the whole town teaches them a little bit at a time.

I don't really remember Dill from my first reading of the book. It's kind of that weird little kid in the movie made a bigger impression on me. So that's one of the elements of the book I find hard to separate from the movie, because I saw the movie four or five years after I read the book.

It's really well done. Scout's entrance is one of the greatest entrances in movie history. She swings into the frame on the tire swing and drops. It's just so Scout, it's perfect. And it's a beautiful script. I think probably Miss Nelle would be the first to say that Horton Foote adapted that with infinite care and it's one of those rare cases where the movie's not as good as the book but it's right up there and doesn't take away from the book.

Atticus-what can you say about him? When you were a kid, you wanted to have a dad like that. There's something a little bit idealized about him. And I'm sure that's the way with all great heroes of fiction. He's a little bit too good to be true, but in the book he's got more b.u.mps than he's allowed to have in the movie. So I like him a little better in the book. He's more recognizable to me.

Whenever people talk to me because I was born there, they say, ”What's in the water in Monroeville?” Well, there's nothing in the water, but it's like I said, the most famous person in Alabama was Harper Lee. She was a novelist. I think most kids never meet a novelist.

Miss Wanda was pointing out to me the parts of it that were physically real. I think she was doing that to keep me going through the book. She didn't realize that I was completely hooked on it. It's something that really fascinates readers, like which part's true, which part is made up. And I've never quite understood that. To me, everything in a novel's real, and I really don't care where the author got it. But for readers that is important. They love to know how much of it was autobiographical.

Any writer who says he doesn't write out of his own life is lying. Of course he does-all your writing is based on your own life. But it's ”Do you transform the material?” And I think that's what she did, and put such magic on it. But yeah, her life was probably something like the life in there, but it wasn't so beautifully dramatically shaped, and there wasn't one moment that pulled it all together. That's the beauty of fiction, that's what fiction can do: give shape to narrative.

I have absolutely no idea why she never published another book. But I don't blame her, and I think in a way it was probably the right decision, although I sure would love to have had the other books. When you bat the ball out [of] the park the very first time you ever step up, why would you ever pick up the bat again? I think she was very wise to stay away from it. She's probably had a much happier life because she did that. I think, for some people, publicity's just like poison. I think she had just enough of it, just enough fame right there at the beginning that, one day, she probably woke up and said, ”I don't want to do this anymore.” It might also have been knowing Truman and watching what it was doing to him at that point in their lives. Even though he was wildly famous and successful, he wasn't very happy. I think she probably saw that.