In my latest for the Guardian, I argue that though “To Kill a Mockingbird” may not be a great novel, it may well be something more important than that: a book that changed us all for the better.
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Orwell said that literature is judged great by its ability to survive in the competition of the literary marketplace. “Mockingbird” has survived for half a century; pose the question again in 100 years and you’ll have a definitive answer.
I watched the film “Capote” to see the interplay between Truman and his close friend Nelle. Suffice it to say Harper Lee put up with a lot. Capote –as portrayed– was not particularly impressed with To Kill a Mockingbird.
Did Harper Lee Whitewash The Jewish Past?
To kill a Mockingbird
As ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ turns 50, caught up in the backlash against Atticus Finch is the novel’s Jewish question.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Eric Herschthal
http://www.thejewishweek.com/arts/books/did_harper_lee_whitewash_jewish_past
Mockingbird is an easy read. It envelopes you slowly, like a summer nightfall; it doesn’t jolt you with techno-whiz or pace or testosterone like a modern airport best seller. Set in the Depression era American South, the atmosphere is placeless and timeless; it could be many places and times, but it’s just distant enough not to be ours. The story unfolds through the freshly opening eyes of a child, but its luster and depth come by way of a mature woman’s remembrance of that childhood.
Injustice – to Tom Robinson, to “Boo” Radley, to the white farmer unable to release his entailed farm, to the whole town owing to the Depression – permeates the story. What dominates it, though, is a sense of warmth and wonder, frankness and quiet courage, self-sacrifice, a dignity so rare it makes us stand in mute thanks, and a child’s love for an impossibly wonderful father. We want to live in the world Harper Lee remembers and invents, or make ours a little more like it than it was when we came here. source