To Kill A Mockingbird, 50 Years Later
On a snowy winter's day in 1958, a despairing young writer slogging through her first novel wrenched open the window of her cheap New York City apartment, gathered the typewritten pages of her manuscript and hurled them all out the window into the snowy banks below.
It had been a hard winter. Two Christmases before, friends pooled their money so that she could quit her job at an airline reservations desk for one year and concentrate on writing. She knew how much they believed in her and what they sacrificed for that belief. Her conviction that she was now failing them was crushing, and this fear sent her only copy of the book fluttering into the snow.
In tears she called her editor, Tay Hohoff of J.B. Lippincott Company, to report what she had done. He listened. Then he ordered her to get her ass downstairs and pick those pages up.
On July 11, 1960, her novel was finally published. Now celebrating its 50th anniversary, Nelle Harper Lee's first (and only) novel To Kill A Mockingbird remains one of most simply elegant works in American fiction. The modest and classy Harper Lee turns 84 tomorrow and is alive and well in Alabama. (My biography of Lee is at Shmoop).
If you haven't read To Kill A Mockingbird, then get up from your desk, walk out of the office and get to the nearest library or bookstore (don't want to be fired? Then you should have read it twenty years ago like everyone else). If you have, then perhaps you'd like to check out the 50th birthday celebration going on tomorrow at Symphony Space in NYC. It features readings and discussions with several really intelligent people, but all you really need to know is that Stephen Colbert is going to be reading from the book.
| "Atticus, you must be wrong...." "How's that?" "Well, most folks seem to think they're right and you're wrong...." "They're certainly entitled to think that, and they're entitled to full respect for their opinions," said Atticus, "but before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience." |
Posted on Tuesday, Apr 27, 2010
