Scout, Atticus, And Boo Part 5

"Because one of her characters used the same expression that my aunt used." That was typical. People wanted to be in the book.

But wherever people read it, we learned that wherever they were, they placed the book setting where they lived. Early on, she got a letter from a young woman in Chicago who was a doctor, and she said, "I'm interested to know when you spent so much time in Greensborough." Now Greensborough is not too far from Tuscaloosa, and the only time Nelle Harper had ever been to Greensborough was when she pa.s.sed through to go to school.

In New York, Nelle could move around without being recognized. Her att.i.tude was, the kind of recognition that was coming out was the kind that was placed on entertainers who wanted wanted to be recognized-who promoted it for their business reasons. She did not think that a writer needed to be recognized in person, and it bothered her when she got too familiar. to be recognized-who promoted it for their business reasons. She did not think that a writer needed to be recognized in person, and it bothered her when she got too familiar.

When she was in New York, right after the publication, she granted some interviews. But as time went on, she said that reporters began to take too many liberties with what she said. And what they would print would be apparently what they wanted rather than what she said. So she just wanted out. And she started that and did not break her rule. She felt like she'd given enough.

You know, when wrong things get in print, they circulate forever. No way to retract them successfully.

She didn't put herself under the burden of writing like she did when she was doing Mockingbird Mockingbird. But she continued to write something. I think she was just working on maybe short things with an idea of incorporating them into something. She didn't talk too much about it. She says you couldn't top what she had done. She told one of our cousins who asked her: "I haven't anywhere to go but down."

We are not very much alike, except we are both old. We both love to read. Nelle Harper loves British literature; I've stuck more with American. More biography and history. It is so intriguing in biography to put things together.

James McBride James McBride was born in New York in 1957. He is the author of a memoir, The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother (1996), and two novels, (1996), and two novels, Miracle at St. Anna Miracle at St. Anna (2003) and (2003) and Song Yet Sung Song Yet Sung (2008). He is the screenwriter of (2008). He is the screenwriter of Miracle at St. Anna, Miracle at St. Anna, a film directed by Spike Lee. McBride is a composer, plays the tenor saxophone, and performs in jazz clubs. a film directed by Spike Lee. McBride is a composer, plays the tenor saxophone, and performs in jazz clubs.

I first read first read To Kill a Mockingbird To Kill a Mockingbird when I was about twelve or thirteen years old. I read a tattered copy in my house, in New York, in Jamaica, Queens. It was just beat-up, it had no cover. The page that says what edition it was, it was all ripped. It was dog-eared and it was yellowed and in my house. When I say dog-eared, that meant a dog might have had a go at it. My brothers and sisters and I read books all the time; we weren't allowed to watch that much television anyway. I thought it was an extraordinary book. I related to a lot of the characters, and it was the first time I read a book by a white writer who really discussed the issues of racism in any way that was complicated and sophisticated. Although I wasn't sophisticated enough to understand all of the issues that were discussed, the characters were so strong and the story was so strong that I related to the characters and to the story. It was a great book. It was a book I've read many times since that tattered edition that I found in my house. when I was about twelve or thirteen years old. I read a tattered copy in my house, in New York, in Jamaica, Queens. It was just beat-up, it had no cover. The page that says what edition it was, it was all ripped. It was dog-eared and it was yellowed and in my house. When I say dog-eared, that meant a dog might have had a go at it. My brothers and sisters and I read books all the time; we weren't allowed to watch that much television anyway. I thought it was an extraordinary book. I related to a lot of the characters, and it was the first time I read a book by a white writer who really discussed the issues of racism in any way that was complicated and sophisticated. Although I wasn't sophisticated enough to understand all of the issues that were discussed, the characters were so strong and the story was so strong that I related to the characters and to the story. It was a great book. It was a book I've read many times since that tattered edition that I found in my house.

I read a lot of it in one sitting. In my house there was no peace. I grew up with eleven brothers and sisters. A lot of the reading that I did, I did in the closet or in a corner somewhere, or late at night when everyone else was asleep. It wasn't a school a.s.signment. It was just a book that I found on my brother David's bookshelf. He had all these odd books there that would make their way around. In my house, if you had a book, you had to hold on to it, because you could get to page 175 and then it would vanish, and you wouldn't get it back, ever. So I held on to it tight until I was done.

Honesty and truth last. My initial response was more or less the same as how I read it now professionally. The writer was very forthright and spoke with great clarity about issues that I think we have a hard time discussing even today. Later, when I penned my own book, the whole business of a child looking at racism and socioeconomic cla.s.sism from the prism of that child's innocence is something that I adapted for The Color of Water The Color of Water. That child's innocence is important in terms of allowing us to see the world from behind the child's eyeb.a.l.l.s. One nice thing for me is that often people compare The Color of Water The Color of Water to to To Kill a Mockingbird To Kill a Mockingbird. That's great. That to me is the highest compliment.

The character description and construction in To Kill a Mockingbird To Kill a Mockingbird is really the ceiling against which great character writing will forever b.u.mp, in a lot of ways. The characters are so strong and definitive, yet they have a great deal of ambiguity, and they have a great deal of innocence and then soiled innocence. They have a great deal of obvious depth and they are swept by the events of their time. Which brings to mind one thing that I've always found odd about the description of Harper Lee by other writers. They describe her as a very brave writer because she wrote about these subjects. I think she's a brilliant writer. I think Martin Luther King was brave; Malcolm X was brave; James Baldwin, who was gay and black in America and who had to move to France was brave. I think that by calling Harper Lee brave you kind of absolve yourself of your own racism. What writers are standing up now at this time when we've attacked Iraq, killed thousands and thousands of people, not to mention thousands of our own? I don't recall any great sweep of fiction writers other than maybe E. L Doctorow and Paul Auster, a couple of others, who, when it counted, stood up and said, is really the ceiling against which great character writing will forever b.u.mp, in a lot of ways. The characters are so strong and definitive, yet they have a great deal of ambiguity, and they have a great deal of innocence and then soiled innocence. They have a great deal of obvious depth and they are swept by the events of their time. Which brings to mind one thing that I've always found odd about the description of Harper Lee by other writers. They describe her as a very brave writer because she wrote about these subjects. I think she's a brilliant writer. I think Martin Luther King was brave; Malcolm X was brave; James Baldwin, who was gay and black in America and who had to move to France was brave. I think that by calling Harper Lee brave you kind of absolve yourself of your own racism. What writers are standing up now at this time when we've attacked Iraq, killed thousands and thousands of people, not to mention thousands of our own? I don't recall any great sweep of fiction writers other than maybe E. L Doctorow and Paul Auster, a couple of others, who, when it counted, stood up and said, I'm a writer, this is who I represent, this is what I feel, this is what's right. I'm a writer, this is who I represent, this is what I feel, this is what's right. So, by calling her brave, we kind of absolve ourselves of our own responsibility. She certainly set the standard in terms of how some of these issues need to be discussed, but in many ways I feel the bar's been lowered, the moral bar's been lowered. And that is really distressing. We need a thousand Atticus Finches. So, by calling her brave, we kind of absolve ourselves of our own responsibility. She certainly set the standard in terms of how some of these issues need to be discussed, but in many ways I feel the bar's been lowered, the moral bar's been lowered. And that is really distressing. We need a thousand Atticus Finches.

As an adult, it occurs to me that the black characters in the book, heroic as they are, they don't survive. The societal violence that takes place to Tom Robinson affects his family for generations, at least fictionally. In real life, my wife's great-grandfather was shot while he was standing in line to get feed, because a white guy just told him to move and he wouldn't move. That murder just goes on and on; it's told to generations of people in my wife's family. And similarly in Harper Lee's book, that part of the story was something that for me has never been quite resolved in the manner that I would like to have seen it resolve. That wasn't her purpose, to tell Tom Robinson's story, but that's partially my purpose as a writer.

I think the challenge that she laid out for us, the writers who follow in her wake, is to make sure that the various dimensions of these stories are told properly, and that we stand up in our own time to talk about issues that count now. It's easy to poke fun and say, "I would have done this," or "What a brave women she was," and so on and so forth, but when it counted, Harper Lee did what was necessary. And how many of us now are doing what's necessary in terms of standing up for the good and for the just?

She wrote about what she knew, but that doesn't absolve her of the responsibility of handling the character Tom better. Look, I wish I'd written the book, so let that be said. I'm not criticizing her work. She's a great writer. She's an American treasure, there's no question about it. But just like anything else, when the imprint of racism lays its hand on you, you have to be conscious as to how that affects you and your work. I think she did the best she could, given how she was raised. That still doesn't absolve the book or this country of the whole business of racism.

I love Calpurnia as a character, but what's her daughter's name? I think she was a wonderful character, but you always live in that tight s.p.a.ce when you're black. Harper Lee's approach gave Calpurnia some dimension. Calpurnia had a deep understanding of these issues, although she was restricted in terms of what she could do about a lot of these things.

I met Kurt Vonnegut before he died, and I was asking him, because his black characters were like Harper Lee's in the sense that they were really magnetic and very powerfully written and multidimensional, at least to a degree. And I said, "How do you write with such authority about black people?" And he said, "Well, my parents weren't always around, and so I was raised by a black woman who was very near and dear to me." So he took that into his work. I don't know that Harper Lee had the same experience, but her work reflects a familiarity with black folks that's more than you'd find here in New York or in Philadelphia. Our Southern brothers have had that experience of growing up together, and while there's some distance between them, there's also a lot of common ground.

Who are the real separate ones in our society, those who claim to "know your pain" or those who have been your fellow citizens, for whom you have changed a flat tire, who've changed your flat tires? In that regard, I appreciate what Harper Lee has done. I appreciate what she's done in every respect. When my daughter was in ninth grade honors English, she had to read Margaret Mitch.e.l.l's book Gone with the Wind Gone with the Wind. How do you explain to a thirteen-year-old girl a book that depicts blacks as rapists and white-women chasers and savage people? How to explain that to a ninth grader? And what are you saying to them when that book is your honors English reading for the summer? On the other hand, when she read To Kill a Mockingbird To Kill a Mockingbird, it's a book that she really liked. She could relate to it, as tragic as it is, and as difficult as it was for her to read.

Margaret Mitch.e.l.l is not the writer that Harper Lee is. Harper Lee writes with the greatest clarity and a superb amount of detail, superb amount of plot, character, content, all the kind of stuff that you need to push a book forward.

People are going to be reading Harper Lee as long as people draw oxygen in this country, and they should. To Kill a Mockingbird To Kill a Mockingbird [is] a great book now, it was a great book yesterday, and it will be a great book tomorrow. Whoever writes whatever in the [is] a great book now, it was a great book yesterday, and it will be a great book tomorrow. Whoever writes whatever in the New Yorker New Yorker magazine or whatever, it'll be tomorrow's fish wrap. It is a great book. magazine or whatever, it'll be tomorrow's fish wrap. It is a great book.

If sentimentality can't be literature, my response to that is like, dippity do dah, dippity ay dippity do dah, dippity ay. Send a copy of Dr. Seuss's The Sneeches The Sneeches. The sneeches, after awhile they don't know who's the sneech, their ident.i.ties are all spinning around in a circle. To Kill a Mockingbird To Kill a Mockingbird is not overly sentimental. It's just a clear vision of what America was at that particular time, when people were filled with hope, ambiguity, love, compa.s.sion, anger, rage, everything. is not overly sentimental. It's just a clear vision of what America was at that particular time, when people were filled with hope, ambiguity, love, compa.s.sion, anger, rage, everything.

I think it's not fair to lob darts and grenades at a work like this that was written with the hope that people would see what the possibilities are in this country. It's unfair at a time when you can walk into any major bookstore and 95 percent of what you see is just really wasted trees. I just can't imagine that someone would think that To Kill a Mockingbird To Kill a Mockingbird isn't anything but a great American work. Really. isn't anything but a great American work. Really.

She didn't need a mother in that book. It would have probably soiled the book somewhat. And that's a complicated character to deal with in the South, particularly at that time: White female characters-they were restricted in many ways.

It is the metamorphosis of this young girl, evolving from a child to a girl to an almost woman as a result of her experiences without a mother-though she had neighbors who cared, and she had Calpurnia, as well. Yeah, that's a difficult one, though, because Calpurnia would be the one who people would target and say, "Here we go, you know, it's the stereotypical black mammy. I mean, how many of these do we need?" But first of all, it's rooted in reality, and secondly, it worked.

When the writer gets to the mainland, n.o.body asks how they got there. No one cares how William Faulkner wrote; they just know that he wrote. So who cares if you got there on the t.i.tanic t.i.tanic, or you paddled with a boat, or you jumped from lily pad to lily pad? You got to the mainland, and that's what counts.

If you only have one solo to play, then play the one solo. Why come back again and dance again? Why come back and hit the stage again? You've already branded the stage to ashes. You've killed it!

One time John Coltrane and Miles Davis were playing in one of the clubs in New York City, and John Coltrane was taking the solo, and he just kept soloing and soloing. Miles finally walked off the stage. And then Miles is meandering, waiting for Coltrane to finish; he smokes a cigarette, and Coltrane's still playing. Finally, Coltrane is finished, and Miles comes back on-stage, and they finish the song, and then he turns to Coltrane and says, "Why are you playing so long?" And Coltrane says, "I don't know, Miles. I just can't seem to stop once I get started." And Miles says, "Why don't you try taking the horn out of your mouth?" And so, maybe this is Harper Lee just taking the horn out of her mouth.

There's another Coltrane story that's more relevant. Coltrane, towards the end of his life, was touring Europe. And he was soloing. And during the middle of a solo, he put his horn down and started beating his chest and singing and shouting. And so after they played, the drummer-I think his name was Ras.h.i.+d Ali-he went up to Coltrane, he said, "John, what's the matter? What's wrong with you, why'd you do that?" And Coltrane said, "There was nothing else to play on the horn." Maybe for Harper Lee there was nothing else to play. She sang the song, she played the solo, and she walked off the stage. And we're all the better for it. We're very grateful to her for the amount of love that she's given us.

If you're going to say something, let it be that. I wish I could do that. If I could afford to do it, if I weren't compelled to write, I would say The Color of Water The Color of Water would be where I stop. It's easy for one to leave behind what you've already done. You've planted the garden, the tomatoes have grown, and you eat them, and they come back again next year if you're lucky. There's nothing as terrible as the comedian who tells the same joke twice. Tell the joke, get off the stage, and move on. She told the story that we needed to hear. Unfortunately, it's as relevant now as it was decades ago when she first penned the book. would be where I stop. It's easy for one to leave behind what you've already done. You've planted the garden, the tomatoes have grown, and you eat them, and they come back again next year if you're lucky. There's nothing as terrible as the comedian who tells the same joke twice. Tell the joke, get off the stage, and move on. She told the story that we needed to hear. Unfortunately, it's as relevant now as it was decades ago when she first penned the book.

And interestingly enough, the book still has the kind of lean muscle that is missing from so much of the fiction that we read now. A lot of it had to be true. You can't make that kind of stuff up. If you made it up, someone would say it's not believable. So that's what separates her book from that of many other great Southern writers.

It is a difficult business, to write, and it is difficult business to really throw your heart on the page and dissect what is real and present it to people. It's kind of like ripping half your arteries out. So if she spends the rest of her life, whatever's left of it, just repairing from that one great shout, then amen. Amen to that.

The movie doesn't have the power of the book. It's a wonderful movie. Gregory Peck is a wonderful actor. I even met Brock Peters later in life. But the movie just doesn't have the resonance and the depth of the book. That is one reason why The Color of Water The Color of Water hasn't been made into a film yet. Because every time I see hasn't been made into a film yet. Because every time I see To Kill a Mockingbird To Kill a Mockingbird as a film, I say to myself, as a film, I say to myself, This is nothing; this has not one fifth of the resonance and depth of the book. This is nothing; this has not one fifth of the resonance and depth of the book. And so And so The Color of Water The Color of Water may never become a film, not while I'm living. Maybe my kids might want to option it out, but for me, I doubt if it'll ever be made into a movie. And that's part of the reason, because I saw what was done with may never become a film, not while I'm living. Maybe my kids might want to option it out, but for me, I doubt if it'll ever be made into a movie. And that's part of the reason, because I saw what was done with To Kill a Mockingbird To Kill a Mockingbird. And that was a pretty credible job by a great cast.

The problem [is] when you start talking about the characters like Calpurnia, who basically vanishes during the movie, and even Brock Peters's depiction of Tom, which was really well done. You know, Atticus Finch comes off as a liberal who is trying to do that right thing. I've had my fill of liberals who are trying to do the right thing.

Atticus Finch was a citizen in a town who saw wrong and moved to right it, despite what his neighbors thought. It was beyond him trying to do the right thing. He knew G.o.d was watching, and he was trying to get to heaven. Gregory Peck, who really was a civil rights advocate, did a wonderful job with what was handed to him, with the script that he had. But I don't think that you can deal with the complexities of the book in film. You just can't do it.

Boo Radley comes off as like a zombie, when in fact Boo Radley is anything but that. The whole business of Boo Radley in his house, by the way, is just brilliant stuff. Copied and emulated by writers everywhere, the haunted house on the block. It's a cla.s.sic childhood theme, but not for black people. Yeah, we had the spooky house on our block too. But we had the spooky cops who would stop us on the way to school when you had your flute and open up your case. "What's in your flute case?" But in general, it is a cla.s.sic childhood theme. Unfortunately there's always a but but when it involves black folks. when it involves black folks.

Still, what other writer during that time was willing to take on this subject with the kind of honesty and integrity that she did. What other white writer? I can't think of anyone.

Diane McWhorter Diane McWhorter grew up in the fifties and sixties in Birmingham, Alabama. She is the author of Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama: The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution, Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama: The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2002, and which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2002, and Dream of Freedom Dream of Freedom (2004), a young-adult history of the civil rights movement. (2004), a young-adult history of the civil rights movement.

My first experience of To Kill a Mockingbird To Kill a Mockingbird was actually the movie, which came out when I was in fifth grade and really too young to have read the novel. So the experience of reading the book was superimposed on the movie, which made it extra magical because it kind of reinterpreted what was by then a major part of my ident.i.ty. was actually the movie, which came out when I was in fifth grade and really too young to have read the novel. So the experience of reading the book was superimposed on the movie, which made it extra magical because it kind of reinterpreted what was by then a major part of my ident.i.ty.

The movie was probably the most vivid memory of my childhood, for the following reason. My fifth-grade cla.s.s at the Brooke Hill School for Girls, which was a lily-white private school in Birmingham, Alabama, had a big dinner party on the night of the local premiere. And the movie had opened about three months late in Birmingham in the spring of '63, reputedly because the content was so controversial that no theaters would show it. So the Birmingham Jaycees [Junior Chamber of Commerce] had a campaign to bring it to town, and it was this big deal. Our cla.s.s dinner party was at the home of Studie and Walker Johnson, who were the twin daughters of the family that owned the Coca-Cola bottling franchise in Birmingham, and whenever we went to their house, we got to drink as many six-and-a-half-ounce bottles of c.o.ke as we wanted. We had sort of fancy food; I recall there was sour cream in one of the dishes or something. And then seniors from our school drove us to the theater. The reason this was such a big party was that our cla.s.smate Mary Badham played Scout in the movie. So the first bit of cognitive dissonance I ran up against that evening was seeing Mary on the screen, because in the year between when she shot the movie and when she came to Brooke Hill in fifth grade, which was when I met her, she had hit p.u.b.erty. The little Scout who looked seven years old in the movie was this gawky preteen.

Mary came from a kind of an eccentric family. They lived in this Addams Familytype house. Her mother was British and had dyed auburn hair. Her father was much older; he had been a general, and they were from a fairly old Birmingham family-to the extent that any family in Birmingham is old, since the city was founded in 1871! But anyway, it was fabulous seeing Mary up there, because she was so cute. And she got to roll down the street in that tire.

Every Southern child has an episode of cognitive dissonance having to do with race, when the beliefs that you've held are suddenly called into question. For a lot of Southern kids, the cla.s.sic instance was when you got on the bus with your beloved "maid," as they were called, and then the bus driver reprimanded her or made her go to the back of the bus. For me, it was seeing To Kill a Mockingbird To Kill a Mockingbird. I remember watching it, first a.s.suming that Atticus was going to get Tom Robinson off, not only because Tom Robinson was innocent but because Atticus was played by Gregory Peck, and of course he was going to win. Then, as it dawned on me that it wasn't going to happen, I started getting upset about that. Then I started getting really upset about being upset, because by rooting for a black man you were kind of betraying every principle that you had been raised to believe in. And I remember thinking, What would my father do if he saw me fighting back these tears when Tom Robinson gets shot? What would my father do if he saw me fighting back these tears when Tom Robinson gets shot? It was a really disturbing experience. I'm sure that other girls in the theater that night were going through the same thing, but we never spoke of it at all. It was a really disturbing experience. I'm sure that other girls in the theater that night were going through the same thing, but we never spoke of it at all.

We became obsessed with Scout. We started imitating Mary Badham and using her Scout expressions like "Cecil Jacobs is a big wet hen!" and "What the Sam Hill are you doing?" I remember asking my mother after seeing the movie, "What is Sam Hill?" There were all sorts of words I didn't understand, like entailments entailments and and chiffarobe chiffarobe. The one thing a lot of us memorized was the "Hey, Mr. Cunningham" speech, when Scout turns away the lynch mob in front of the jail. I look back on that as the little secret rite of pa.s.sage we Brooke Hill girls shared, that we could cross over to the other side by identifying with turning away the lynch mob instead of being part of it, which was closer to where we were metaphorically in that time and place.

I think this may be one of those cases in which celebrity trumps controversy, because my mother, at least, was caught up in the whole Mary Badham phenomenon. The entire community was excited about her being nominated for an Academy Award for best supporting actress and annoyed when she lost to Patty Duke, who had played Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker The Miracle Worker. I certainly never talked to either of my parents about the content of the movie-and I barely even understood what rape was at the time. So it wasn't a parent-child talking opportunity at all.

But that experience summed up the whole school year to me. While researching my book nearly twenty years later, I was going through the local newspapers looking at the spring of '63, which was, of course, when Martin Luther King came to Birmingham and led the demonstrations that brought segregation to an end in America, with the fire hoses and police dogs attacking the children. I was scrolling through the newspapers, and I saw the movie ads for To Kill a Mockingbird To Kill a Mockingbird, and I thought, Wow, that's when that was? Wow, that's when that was? Then I was reading the paper about the opening of the demonstrations in early April of 1963, and the very day that Project C, as King's campaign was called, began, there's an article saying something like "Klieg lights in Birmingham. Police ride up to the movie theater." It was about the premiere of this movie. I had never put those two together in my mind. What a perfect example of what C. Vann Woodward would call the irony of Southern history, that these two events should coincide. Then I was reading the paper about the opening of the demonstrations in early April of 1963, and the very day that Project C, as King's campaign was called, began, there's an article saying something like "Klieg lights in Birmingham. Police ride up to the movie theater." It was about the premiere of this movie. I had never put those two together in my mind. What a perfect example of what C. Vann Woodward would call the irony of Southern history, that these two events should coincide.

My friends and I became addicted to the movie and would go downtown every Sat.u.r.day for matinees to see it again and to keep learning more speeches from it. Then one day our parents said, "You can't go downtown to the movies anymore." It was after the fire hoses and police dogs were turned against the young demonstrators. If you ask people my age in Birmingham, white people, what those demonstrations meant in their lives, they will, to a person, say, "Our parents would not let us go downtown to the movies anymore." And in my case, the movie that we were going downtown to see was To Kill a Mockingbird To Kill a Mockingbird. The experience of watching the movie that first time was so traumatic, and I just remember trying to fight back those tears. I was the age that you don't want to cry in movies anyway, for anything. But to be crying for a black man was so taboo that I never forgot it.

I finally read the book in eighth grade, the year I was also reading a lot of those Daphne du Maurier and Mary Stewart books. I'd have these lost weekends of reading. I was just knocked out by it because I didn't think that the book would be even better than the movie. The voice-over in the movie is kind of straight and sincere-rather un-Scout-like, actually-but the narrative voice in the novel is salty and mischievous and hilarious. For example, I love the pa.s.sage about Miss Maudie's reaction to a mere blade of nut gra.s.s in her yard, how she "likened such an occurrence unto an Old Testament pestilence." But it's funny, I don't have a specific memory of when I read the book, because it's one of those things that I feel has always been with me. I also don't remember hearing about the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing, which was also one of those things that I felt was always in me.

There weren't that many people in Alabama to be proud of back then, and to be able to claim someone like Harper Lee was quite inspiring. We had Harper Lee from south Alabama; we had Bear Bryant, the winning football coach; and then we had Wernher von Braun to the north in Huntsville, building the rocket that put us on the moon. Then again, von Braun was a transplant from n.a.z.i Germany, so that left Harper Lee and Bear Bryant.

What are the odds of two people like Truman Capote and Nelle Harper Lee coming simultaneously out of a town like Monroeville? It's phenomenal, the incredible contrast between them: the one, who is considered the conscience of the country, and the other, who was probably a sociopath.

Most non-Southern readers would not understand how Atticus could stand up for Mrs. Dubose, because she was such a racist. Southerners understand this perfectly because the racism is kind of a given, especially in the time frame of the novel. One of the powerful and instructive things about the book is that even though it's such a cla.s.sic indictment of racism, it's not really an indictment of the racist, because there's this recognition that those att.i.tudes were "normal" then. For someone to rebel and stand up against them was exceptional, and Atticus doesn't take that much pride in doing so, just as he would have preferred not to have to be the one to shoot the mad dog. He simply does what he must do and doesn't make a big deal about it. Another skillful thing about the book is that Scout really does reflect the conditioning.

She does use the N word and still has that childlike befuddlement when she asks Calpurnia why she talks differently around her own people than she does around the Finches. Somebody now might find that too politically incorrect to put on the table. A lot of the novel is about what one is allowed to say, as in the morning after Scout averts the lynch mob, Atticus and Aunt Alexandra are arguing about whether he should have mentioned in front of Calpurnia that Mr. Underwood despises Negroes. It's interesting that she, the highly prejudiced one, is supposedly concerned about Calpurnia's "feelings." And in yet another layer of complexity, Mr. Underwood had been covering Atticus with his shotgun from his newspaper office the night before, siding with him against the mob-a little unsentimental coda to the scene that the movie left out. Harper Lee is willing and able to show without judgment what the conditions were like, partly because the action takes place in the past and partly because it's seen through the eyes of a child. But for a white person from the South to write a book like this in the late 1950s is really unusual-by its very existence an act of protest.

I think some of us have to leave the South to love it. You can't write about it if you don't love it, and it may be hard to love when you are down there amongst 'em.

Jon Meacham Jon Meacham was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in 1969. He is the editor of Newsweek Newsweek and the author of three books, including and the author of three books, including Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friends.h.i.+p Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friends.h.i.+p (2004) and (2004) and American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House, American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 2009. which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 2009.

I first read first read To Kill a Mockingbird To Kill a Mockingbird when I was in the eighth grade at McCallie School in Chattanooga, Tennessee, which is on Missionary Ridge, the old battlefield there. It was a small paperback, the kind if you got it all wet, it would be trouble. I remember very clearly reading it at home when I was about thirteen. The story was particularly appealing. I would have been Jem's age, more or less, and we knew that world of being outdoors all the time in the summer in the heat. It was not a foreign landscape to me: Boo Radley and the houses you didn't go to-I think every Southern neighborhood has that sort of mythology. Certainly ours did. when I was in the eighth grade at McCallie School in Chattanooga, Tennessee, which is on Missionary Ridge, the old battlefield there. It was a small paperback, the kind if you got it all wet, it would be trouble. I remember very clearly reading it at home when I was about thirteen. The story was particularly appealing. I would have been Jem's age, more or less, and we knew that world of being outdoors all the time in the summer in the heat. It was not a foreign landscape to me: Boo Radley and the houses you didn't go to-I think every Southern neighborhood has that sort of mythology. Certainly ours did.

We all like to think that Atticus Finch was our father or our grandfather. They weren't, or it would have been a much better South, a much better country. There wouldn't have been the need for the novel if everyone had been like Atticus. He wasn't a caricature, either of good or of evil. And that's the way most folks were, and are. If you were a Southerner, you recognized almost everyone in To Kill a Mockingbird To Kill a Mockingbird, and they weren't perfect. I think the courageous thing that Miss Lee did was end it on a tragic note. Melodrama would have ended with an acquittal. Instead it's a tale of good and evil that ends on a note of gray, which is where most of us live.

The ambiguity of the moral conclusion of the book became ever more real as I got older. I was with Harper Lee once in Sewanee, Tennessee, a couple of years ago at an occasion where Winston Churchill's daughter and Miss Lee were receiving honorary degrees from the University of the South. At one of the events, the recipient stands up and says how they got to be where they are, and when Harper Lee stood up, she simply looked at Churchill's daughter, Mary Soames, and said, "I would like to thank Lady Soames for everything, because if her father had not done what he did, I wouldn't have been able to write anything at all." And then she sat down. It was one of the most remarkably gracious things I have ever seen.

Telling it through Scout's eyes gives it a kind of Huckleberry Finn quality. Unlike some other narrators, Scout ages well-better, surely, than Holden Caulfield. For me, it evokes the kind of Southern courthouse world I grew up in, and the idea of paying tribute to a man even after he lost is quite moving and n.o.ble in many ways. Again, [I remember] being quite surprised even when very young that Atticus did not turn out to live happily after. I think the reason the book endures is it doesn't end on a fairy-tale note, and neither does life.

The fact that there has not been a second book is one of the great details in American literature: If you get it right once, stop.

Allison Moorer Allison Moorer is a singer/songwriter whose ten alb.u.ms include Mockingbird Mockingbird (2008) and (2008) and Crows Crows (2010). She was born in Mobile, Alabama, in 1972. After her father killed her mother and himself in 1986, Moorer moved to Monroeville, Alabama, to live with relatives. (2010). She was born in Mobile, Alabama, in 1972. After her father killed her mother and himself in 1986, Moorer moved to Monroeville, Alabama, to live with relatives.

I first read first read To Kill a Mockingbird To Kill a Mockingbird when I was fifteen. I was in high school. It wasn't on our required summer reading list, even though I actually went to high school in Monroeville, Alabama, where Harper Lee lives, still, today. When I was a little kid, I remember seeing a copy of the book in my grandparents' house. And I always wondered about it, for some reason. I thought it was an interesting t.i.tle, and I remember one of my older cousins was reading it. when I was fifteen. I was in high school. It wasn't on our required summer reading list, even though I actually went to high school in Monroeville, Alabama, where Harper Lee lives, still, today. When I was a little kid, I remember seeing a copy of the book in my grandparents' house. And I always wondered about it, for some reason. I thought it was an interesting t.i.tle, and I remember one of my older cousins was reading it.

I just reread it, and it's a very different book when you're an adult than it is when you're a kid-the significance of it in terms of justice, in terms of what's right and wrong, why people are the way they are, why people are racist, why people are bigoted. I am from the South; I live in New York part-time now. So reading about Southern people and Southern ways and the small-town South as someone who doesn't live there 365 days of the year anymore is interesting-to look at it from an outsider's point of view now.

What I see in the Southern small town is a lot of beauty, but I also see a lot of sadness. People are not small-minded because they want to be; they're small-minded because they have to be. I'm convinced that small-mindedness is a necessity for people who don't have an opportunity to be any other way. I don't believe that people want to be racist or h.o.m.ophobic, or whatever it is that they are. I think that it's a necessity for them to believe these things in order to function so their little worlds will hold together.

When I read the book, I saw what everybody who reads the book sees, that Tom Robinson was not guilty of what he was accused of. I didn't know how to wrap my head around what it really meant when I was fifteen and reading it at that time. I don't know if I do at this point grasp the notion of what it truly means to accuse someone of a crime they didn't commit.

I wanted to be Scout. I thought Scout was the coolest thing in the world. Obviously Scout's a very precocious child, and there were all kinds of things I liked about her. I liked that she could run and play with Jem and Dill. I liked her sense of humor and the whole Boo Radley subplot.

I didn't understand what the Boo Radley thing was about when I read it at fifteen. I didn't understand that Boo Radley is there as a character to represent our judgment of the things that we do not know. I definitely get that this time at the age of thirty-three.

Scout looked at the world through wide eyes rather than narrow ones. Her relations.h.i.+p with Calpurnia was really cool. I loved that she doesn't dig her aunt. When she says she could have sworn [Aunt Alexandra] was wearing that corset under her dressing gown, I thought she was exceptionally cool.

Monroeville is one of those typical old Southern towns built around the town square where the courthouse was. I haven't been to Monroeville in at least ten years. My aunt and uncle moved away, so I have no reason to go back there. There are quiet little streets. There was a black side of town, and there was a white side of town, and there still is. There's a little country club. It's just one of those little Southern towns that ['s] not going to get any bigger. It's going to get smaller. That's what happens to those towns.

The language really takes me back. This book was set in the thirties. My grandmother on my mother's side was born in 1926, so the way she talks is very much like the language in this book. The Southern way of speaking has changed quite a bit from that time. Even when I'm reading what Scout is thinking and what she's saying, I always put a soft r r on it. That means instead of saying "close the door," it's "close the do-ah," like my grandmother says. on it. That means instead of saying "close the door," it's "close the do-ah," like my grandmother says.

The Cunninghams: I remember being in school, being in first grade and noticing the kids who got free lunches, and I never had to have a free lunch, but I wondered at times why I didn't get free lunches, because we certainly didn't have any money. It was a pride thing. My parents weren't about to let me get free lunch at school, but there were parents who did, and I noticed. You know, kids do notice: that's one thing we forget. They take in everything.

The moment in the movie when somebody scares Dill and he turns around and says, "Good Lord, Aunt Stephanie, you like to scare me to death." I still say it, I do. That's what I say when I get scared. It's funny.

Harper Lee strikes me as a person who didn't ever want to put on airs, and that's another small-town activity she probably didn't want anything to do with. I get the feeling that people probably wanted to claim her in Monroeville early on, but they finally just gave up.

I wanted Atticus to be my dad. I wanted him to play with his kids. I loved who he was, and I loved that he was such a strong character and such a great dad to them. But I wanted him to have more fun.

I lost my mother at fourteen. So it was very fresh at that time. When I read it this year, I tuned into it in a different way. Kids who grow up without mothers-you can kind of spot 'em. They have a look or a way of being that's maybe a little different. Scout and Jem have Calpurnia, and lucky for them, because she obviously loved them and took an interest in them. But they're running around free. People looked out for them. I never see kids in trees anymore. I used to climb trees.

The thing about Scout that strikes me is she's so tough and so able to take care of herself. That toughness comes through in a way that I recognized. I grew up that way, feeling like I had to take care of myself and the rest of the world. I see that in Scout. She sort of has the world on her shoulders. That happens to kids that lose their parents. It happens to kids who have dysfunctional parents. In Scout you can feel her burden. She feels like she's got to figure it all out, or she's holding it all up. I definitely identified with that.

It's certainly none of my business-a person's art is their art-but I do find it fascinating that Harper Lee produced this amazing piece of work and that was it. And maybe that's all she had to say. Maybe that's it.

James Patterson James Patterson was born in Newburgh, New York, in 1947. He is the author of more than fifty novels, including the Maximum Ride and Daniel X series for young readers. His Web site, Readkiddoread.com, is aimed at young reluctant readers. Patterson has sold more than 170 million books worldwide.

I read read To Kill a Mockingbird To Kill a Mockingbird in high school, and it was one of the few books I really liked. Part of my problem with going to this particular high school is they just didn't give us many books that would turn us on. My mother was a teacher, my father was an English major, but for some reason didn't bring books to me that might have turned me on as a reader as a kid. I was a good student, but I just didn't get turned on to reading. The two books I remember from high school that I did like a lot were in high school, and it was one of the few books I really liked. Part of my problem with going to this particular high school is they just didn't give us many books that would turn us on. My mother was a teacher, my father was an English major, but for some reason didn't bring books to me that might have turned me on as a reader as a kid. I was a good student, but I just didn't get turned on to reading. The two books I remember from high school that I did like a lot were To Kill a Mockingbird To Kill a Mockingbird and and The Catcher in the Rye The Catcher in the Rye-the usual, the staples. What I remember most about To Kill a Mockingbird To Kill a Mockingbird was-and I think this probably is more of an American trait than in other places-I think we are particularly attuned to injustice. The stories that deal with injustice are really powerful here. I think we have more of a sense of that than they do in some places where injustice is more a fact of life. Here, much less so, for some people less so. So that really got to me. I loved the narration, how it went from a pleasant story to a quite horrifying one. was-and I think this probably is more of an American trait than in other places-I think we are particularly attuned to injustice. The stories that deal with injustice are really powerful here. I think we have more of a sense of that than they do in some places where injustice is more a fact of life. Here, much less so, for some people less so. So that really got to me. I loved the narration, how it went from a pleasant story to a quite horrifying one.

With both this book and Huckleberry Finn Huckleberry Finn, it just got you thinking a lot about the way the world had changed, the way people think, and how they think so much differently now, Sometimes people will criticize To Kill a Mockingbird To Kill a Mockingbird because of certain language, but it expresses views of how people thought in the 1930s. Similarly people will write books about us now, and I am sure [in the future] people will be scandalized by the way we eat and the fact we're still having these ridiculous wars and whatever. But I think it's useful to kids, and it was useful to me to look back to an earlier time and see how different things were. because of certain language, but it expresses views of how people thought in the 1930s. Similarly people will write books about us now, and I am sure [in the future] people will be scandalized by the way we eat and the fact we're still having these ridiculous wars and whatever. But I think it's useful to kids, and it was useful to me to look back to an earlier time and see how different things were.

My connection was more to Jem, because he was a boy. I found the drama just kept building and building and building. In the beginning, you are suspecting something about Boo, which should tell you something about yourself, that you suspect him for no reason. It was a very, very emotional thing. The suspense was unusual in terms of books that I had read at that point, books that...had really powerful drama which really did hook you. Obviously, I try to do [that] with my books.

It was probably the first page-turner that I ever read, and yet it had greatness for a lot of reasons: the quality of the storytelling, the complexity of the story, the subject matter, the way it looked at a period with some compa.s.sion but also criticism of things going on.

Millions of kids in this country never read a book that they love. Part of the reason is they haven't been given a book they might fall in love with. I hope there would be more of an effort to mix it in school-more material that kids say, "I really liked To Kill a Mockingbird To Kill a Mockingbird. It was cool." I cared about the characters. I thought about the book. I learned something.

I think To Kill a Mockingbird To Kill a Mockingbird holds up because it's like an awful lot of cla.s.sics, it's just good storytelling. It grabs your interest and it holds you. It keeps surprising you. Charles d.i.c.kens was a master at this. Whatever Harper Lee had on her mind, she must have realized that readers can get bored. When I write a story, I think I am telling a story to someone sitting across from me and I don't want them to get up. I would not like to have that happen, so I am always conscious of that. I would think that Harper Lee was also conscious of that. A lot of people might not stick with the story, and she wrote something that got you interested and kept surprising you. holds up because it's like an awful lot of cla.s.sics, it's just good storytelling. It grabs your interest and it holds you. It keeps surprising you. Charles d.i.c.kens was a master at this. Whatever Harper Lee had on her mind, she must have realized that readers can get bored. When I write a story, I think I am telling a story to someone sitting across from me and I don't want them to get up. I would not like to have that happen, so I am always conscious of that. I would think that Harper Lee was also conscious of that. A lot of people might not stick with the story, and she wrote something that got you interested and kept surprising you.

One of the nice things about it was in the beginning it really puts you in touch with being a kid again. Books about childhood that do that are always irresistible to me. I'm always writing on my ma.n.u.scripts, "Be there," which is to try to be there as a writer so the reader can be there. Even though not a lot happens the first summer with Dill, you're there and you are going along with the whole mini adventure. At this stage you have a feeling about Scout and Jem and Atticus, and then, oh my G.o.d, the building just crashes in, and the suspense kicks in [with] a little bit of what's going to happen to Tom Robinson, and this isn't fair, and especially as an American kid: This isn't fair, this isn't right. And when Jack, my eleven-year-old, read it, he had that same reaction: This isn't right. This isn't fair. This shouldn't happen.

Anna Quindlen Anna Quindlen was born in Philadelphia in 1952. She is a Pulitzer Prizewinning columnist and the author of fifteen books, including the novels One True Thing One True Thing (1994), (1994), Rise and s.h.i.+ne Rise and s.h.i.+ne (2006), and (2006), and Every Last One Every Last One (2010). Her nonfiction books include (2010). Her nonfiction books include How Reading Changed My Life How Reading Changed My Life (1998), (1998), A Short Guide to a Happy Life A Short Guide to a Happy Life (2000), and (2000), and Good Dog. Stay. Good Dog. Stay. (2007). (2007).