The Nature of Things

My daughter says she doesn't think she can read Go Set a Watchman , the just released first draft of Harper Lee's beloved book, To Kill a Mockingbird . Both of my daughters grew up with To Kill a Mockingbird and the image of a morally impeccable Atticus Finch. He was one of their heroes. That heroic image was enhanced by the wonderful movie in which the sainted Gregory Peck played Finch to such perfection. It is hard to think of that image being tarnished and changed by the knowledge that the author initially had an entirely different profile in mind for Atticus Finch, and I understand that many of those who loved Mockingbird are very troubled by that. I feel quite ambivalent about it myself. But having now read several reviews of Watchman and more about the history of how it came to be, I think I better understand what Alabama writer Harper Lee was trying to do with her first draft and why her editor in New York wanted her to change it to focus on the voice of the younger J...

Four years ago, in July 2010, the literary world celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of To Kill a Mockingbird and I posted an appreciation of the much-loved book. Here it is once again. *~*~*~* There's been a lot of hullaballoo about the fiftieth anniversay of  To Kill a Mockingbird , Harper Lee's masterwork and only work. Libraries around the country, including our own  Houston Public Library , are celebrating the anniversary with special events. And well they should, for  Mockingbird  is certainly a significant book in the literary history of this country. It may not be a great book by strictly objective literary standards, but it is great in its message of humaneness and humanity and in its moral weight. Lee's story of the summer when Jem broke his arm and all the things that led up to that moment in a small town in Alabama is a simple enough tale of children beginning to learn what the world is all about and losing their innocence, but it is a...

There's been a lot of hullaballoo about the fiftieth anniversay of To Kill a Mockingbird , Harper Lee's masterwork and only work. Libraries around the country, including our own Houston Public Library , are celebrating the anniversary with special events. And well they should, for Mockingbird is certainly a significant book in the literary history of this country. It may not be a great book by strictly objective literary standards, but it is great in its message of humaneness and humanity and in its moral weight. Lee's story of the summer when Jem broke his arm and all the things that led up to that moment in a small town in Alabama is a simple enough tale of children beginning to learn what the world is all about and losing their innocence, but it is also the story of an ordinary man's moral dilemma, how he faced that dilemma and did the right thing, even when it would have been so convenient and so much more comfortable to do the wrong thing. As readers of the boo...