Via my favorite left blog, here is a pointer to a fascinating
story about Harper Lee, author of
To Kill a Mockingbird. I know Mom always loved the book and thought she might be interested. I didn't know a thing about Harper Lee myself.
Her book on racial injustice in the South may have sold 10 million copies and she is a key character in the Oscar-nominated film Capote, to be released this month, but Lee herself disappeared from public life for more than four decades. She followed the well-trodden path of literary recluses like JD Salinger and Thomas Pynchon. All had written huge hits and then shunned fame by withdrawing from the world. Harper Lee was just another mystery.
A key character in a film about Truman Capote?!?!
Her first brush with fame came when she worked as Truman Capote's assistant on his seminal work In Cold Blood, the exploration of a multiple killing in Kansas. Six years in the writing, the book, which created a genre of crime writing, was dedicated to Lee; Capote, who had been a childhood neighbour of Lee, credited her for doing 'secretarial work' on the project.
Amazing. With this kind of obscure trivia, I'm now feeling better armed for that Jeopardy tournament.
1 comment:
I guess my remembrance of your relating to the small town lawyer bit and southern life translated into my mistaken belief that you loved the book. As you can see from my own reading lists, racial injustice is actually one theme I find to be interesting, because I seem to keep picking them up from the bookshelf.
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