The Continuing Legacy of TKAM

 

Some months ago, my dear friend, poet and author Mary Langer Thompson, sent me a copy of the book pictured above, Why To Kill a Mockingbird Matters. I am deeply indebted, as reading Tom Santopietro’s fascinating review of the writing of the novel and the making of the film reminded me once again how much I love this book.

 

Ten years old and starved for books that were slightly more advanced than the Bobbsey Twins and Little House on the Prairie series my friend Cathy had offered, I snuck into the closet where some of my older brother’s books were stored, hoping to find a science fiction or fantasy novel I could get lost in. Instead, I pulled out a tattered paperback with the picture of a bird on the cover. To Kill a Mockingbird. I was a birdwatcher. Why on earth would anyone want to kill a mockingbird?

In Harper Lee’s words, “Thus began our longest journey together.”

Reading it then, at age ten, I didn’t fully understand all the nuances of race relations. I was a young white girl living in a predominantly white community in Southern California. That particular summer was a quiet, lazy one. The fiery tumult of the Watts uprising was still a year away.

What did resonate with me the first time I read TKAM—and every time since—was the story of a girl who was as like me as she was unlike me.

Like me, Scout was a tomboy. (With my first read, I was ever-so-envious of Scout’s overalls; It would be another ten years before I finally had the buying power to purchase my first pair at age twenty. I’m nearly seventy now, and I still wear them often.)

Unlike me, Scout had a comfortable and close relationship with her father (something else I was envious of).

But what a story! Bored of a summer, Scout, Jem, and Dill spent their days imagining life inside the Radley home, in the same way my brother, sister, and I would wonder and speculate about the weird neighbors who’d moved in next door, bringing with them a live monkey that roamed freely about the house and regularly attacked and bit the girl our age who lived there.

In my initial read, the trial of Tom Robinson seemed to interrupt the flow of the book, and I didn’t understand most of it, or the chapters about the well-intentioned but clearly racist (although not to me at the time) missionary society or Scout’s very racist third-grade teacher. Happily, the novel returned to the mysterious figure of Boo Radley in its final pages.

At some point in my childhood or adolescence, I saw the movie based on the book. I have no memory of how I saw it for the first time; it must have been shown on television. But my emotional memory recalls the tenderness that Atticus extended to his young daughter.

Some years later, when my own daughter turned ten, I gave her a copy of TKAM for her birthday. It occurred to me then—since my kid would be reading it—that I should read it again, review it from an adult perspective. My, how differently—how much more heavily—the story landed on my heart. Now that I had more fully experienced the Civil Rights Movement. Now that I had been caught up in race riots at my high school. Now that I had Black friends. Now that I had children of my own, some of them racially mixed.

If I had loved the novel before, I revered it now.

So I count myself most fortunate and blessed that, nearly as soon as I began teaching high school, I was privileged to teach To Kill a Mockingbird as part of the curriculum. I taught ninth grade for 25 of the 27 years of my teaching career, with multiple sections of ninth grade in any given year. How many times now have I read aloud these words, affecting a Southern accent, “Folks call me Dill” or “Scout, let’s get us a baby” or “Hey, Boo”? I have no idea. How many times have I watched my students as they watched the big reveal of Boo Radley in the movie? I have no idea of that number, either. But I can tell you that, despite having read and seen it over a hundred times now, that scene—whether in the book or in the film—still brings me to tears.

In recent years, TKAM has had its detractors. In my humble opinion, the critics who focus solely on the plot thread of Tom Robinson miss the mark of Harper Lee’s great American novel. As much as we may agonize over the stark truth of his situation, the book is not “about” Tom. It’s Scout’s story, one hundred percent. It’s a coming-of-age tale—albeit based on the harsh realities of Southern issues—of a young girl who is, initially, blissfully ignorant of the ignorance in her community. She is six and innocent as the story begins, nine when it closes, her eyes now having been opened to see some of those things that Atticus would have kept her from seeing, if only he could have.

Sixty years on—even after all those years of reading it over and over again to sweet but squirrely freshmen, even after my lofty graduate classes in Faulkner and O’Neill and the many women writers like Toni Morrison who have brilliantly shifted the landscape in modern literature—TKAM is still my favorite book. In nine years and four months, my great-granddaughter will turn ten. I know exactly what gift I will give her for that birthday.

Homage to Miss Lee: Maudie Atkinson

Miss Maudie (Rosemary Murphy) and Jem Finch (Phillip Alford) in the film version of To Kill a Mockingbird

(The subject of this post is Maudie Atkinson, a character in To Kill a Mockingbird. In the film version of the novel, her character was endearingly rendered by actress Rosemary Murphy—no relation.)

I think about Miss Maudie often, especially when I am gardening. After Scout (and Boo Radley, on some days), she is the character with whom I most identify. Maudie loves to garden, and she loves to be outside. In fact, with the exception of the ill-fated and profoundly ironic "missionary tea" in Chapter 24, Miss Maudie is outdoors every single time her character makes an appearance (well, ok, except for those brief moments during which the rabid Tim Johnson threatens everyone on the block). I like that about her. I also like her sass. When the "foot washing Baptists" shout judgmental scripture at her for being prideful about her flowers, she shouts scripture right back at them—"A merry heart doeth good like a medicine!" Yep, she's my kind of gal. She also puts the hypocritical blowhard Mrs. Merriweather in her place at the missionary tea when she starts to talk crap about Atticus. Atta girl, Maudie.

Alas, love seems to have passed Maudie by, and I guess I identify with that, too, to some extent, now that I've been alone for a couple of decades. I'll tell you what, though, if a man like Atticus Finch lived across the street from me, I'd do a lot more than just befriend his children and perhaps, on occasion, bake him (or his horrible sister) a Lane cake. I'd have enough sense to step up my game—especially if my Atticus-neighbor looked anything like Gregory Peck. Those Lane cakes certainly would be packed with shinny if that were the case, and I'd find a way to deliver them when the kids weren't around.

Of course, due to her spinsterhood, Maudie misses out on raising children, though she goes a far way in helping raise Jem and Scout. She offers gentle advice without scolding or criticizing, which is always my goal with my students. Scout mentions at one point that Miss Maudie allows them to help themselves to the scuppernongs from her arbor or to get a squirt of warm milk from her cow, but you know, the truth is, Maudie doesn't have a cow. Not really. I mean, if she had a cow, wouldn't someone have mentioned the poor beast on the night of the fire? Or the morning after? Other than Scout's vague one-time reference, the cow is never mentioned again, so in my mind, she doesn't really exist.

The best thing about Maudie, of course, is that she is the spokesperson for Atticus, explaining his ways to the kids when they don't understand, encouraging them to appreciate that their father is someone quite extraordinary. It is through Maudie that we learn why "it's a sin to kill a mockingbird" (if we're referencing the novel; in the movie, this wisdom comes directly from Atticus as he speaks to Walter Cunningham at dinner). After the verdict in the Tom Robinson trial, Maudie tries to comfort Jem by telling him that some folks are simply called upon to do the unpleasant things in life that others don't want to do, and that Atticus is just such a person (though Jem's dismay is not in regard to his father's failures, but rather the town's).

I find it fascinating that people often equate Harper Lee with Boo Radley, since she declined to make public appearances (for the most part) or give interviews. But she wasn't a recluse. After Mockingbird came out to such success, she still enjoyed living in New York, and she went about the city shopping and going to baseball games unrecognized by the vast majority of the folks she encountered. (There is something to be said for the anonymity found in the writer's life. My guess is Stephen King can probably still wander around New York City in a baseball cap and shades and his fans are none the wiser).

No, Miss Lee wasn't Boo. She was Maudie. She loved to be outside, loved her town and the Southern way of life, despite its flaws. And she loved her father, the real Atticus (Amasa Coleman Lee), so it makes sense that Maudie is the character who says all the lovely things about Atticus. And she never married, nor did she have children. Lee, like Maudie, lived a quiet life, but a social one, I'm sure. She had her own view of the world, her own particular hope for its growth and enlightenment, and she put that hope forward with gentle words. She was a woman who, with her novel, created a space of comfort, wisdom and acceptance, much like Miss Maudie's porch was to Scout.

Pretty sure Harper Lee didn't have a cow, either. In fact, I'm certain of it.

In Memoriam: Harper Lee

In 1966, desperate to find a book to read, I snuck into my brother’s room when no one was home and browsed through the books in his closet. I don’t know what made me choose To Kill a Mockingbird, but I do remember that once I began, I couldn’t put it down. I was twelve years old.

Two years later, the movie starring Gregory Peck (and the inimitable Robert Duvall as Boo Radley) aired on television, and all the characters I had fallen in love with came to life in black and white. That same year, men who had become my heroes in the Civil Rights Movement mostly because of my reading of the novel—Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr.—lost their lives to the socio-political war that was devastating the country at that time.

To say this novel shaped my life is an understatement. I lost my father at a young age and was raised by a non-nurturing mother. Like so many others who’ve read this book, I both envied and longed for the type of strong, loving relationship Scout shares with Atticus. And I yearned for the wisdom of Atticus in my life.

When Atticus looked down at me I saw the expression on his face that always made me expect something. “Do you know what a compromise is?” he asked.

And I learned volumes about parenting from his example:

I had spent most of the day climbing up and down, running errands for [Jem], providing him with literature, nourishment and water, and was carrying him blankets for the night when Atticus said if I paid no attention to him, Jem would come down. Atticus was right.

This was such an important book in my life that when my own daughter turned twelve, I bought her a copy—and I ended up re-reading the novel from start to finish, falling in love with Atticus even more, now that I was a parent myself.

By the time my daughter was a teenager, I had become a teacher. In my second year of teaching high school, I was assigned freshman English. That year we read To Kill a Mockingbird together, and for twenty-five out of the twenty-seven years of my teaching career, I have read it again—mostly aloud, affecting a Southern accent, and always, always fighting back tears in certain sections:

“Miss Jean Louise, stand up. Your father’s passin’.”

“Hey, Boo.”

“Mr. Tate was right.”

Atticus disengaged himself and looked at me. “What do you mean?”

“Well, it’d be sort of like shootin’ a mockingbird, wouldn’t it?”

Before he went inside the house, [Atticus] stopped in front of Boo Radley. “Thank you for my children, Arthur,” he said.

(Gregory Peck’s line in the screenplay version is, “Thank you, Arthur. Thank you for my children,” as he extends his hand to shake Boo’s. To my mind, it is one of the simplest yet most beautifully moving scenes in the film.)

He turned out the light and went into Jem’s room. He would be there all night, and he would be there when Jem waked up in the morning.

In my early years of teaching, I was sometimes criticized for readingewwww aloud to my students. (‘They’re in high school now. They need to learn to read and comprehend on their own.’) To my way of thinking, these folks had it all wrong. What better way to learn to comprehend the dynamics of literature than to hear the words come alive? Hearing someone who is familiar with the text stream through the long sections of dialogue in the courtroom scene has to be better than trying to parse through Tom Robinson’s style of speech (“No suh, I’s scared I’d be in court….”) while keeping track of who was speaking and what significance there was in the sometimes calm, sometimes accusatory exchange of questions and answers.

Because I read the novel along with my students, I’ve read it in excess of a hundred times. Each spring I read it with a new batch of kids, and each time I learn something new. It took me years to figure out why Harper Lee included the chapter on Mrs. Dubose—because as a writer, I know that every chapter has a purpose, but for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out how Mrs. Dubose supported the theme of the novel. Until I realized what she stood for. And then the epiphany came like a bolt of lightning.

“You know, she was a great lady.”

Yes, Atticus, just as the pre-Civil War South was, and it, too, suffered from a disease that ravaged it.

Over the years, as I’ve taught Mockingbird, I’ve thought fondly of Harper Lee. She would have been in her sixties when I first began teaching the novel. After I’d been teaching it for several years, I wrote her a long letter, never expecting any response, just wanting her to know how meaningful the book had been to me as a child and as an adult. She never answered, but this was her way, and everyone knew it. As the years went by, I would occasionally seek out her name on the internet to see how she was faring. Every year I’ve been able to tell my students as we finish the novel, “So Harper Lee is still alive…” (because 1960, the year the book came out, seems like hundreds of years ago to them). As it turns out, we are currently reading the book in my class. Tomorrow in each class period, I will tell them that Harper Lee has died, and we will talk about the legacy she has left behind.

Lee’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel helped solidify the Civil Rights Movement in America. Since its publication, it has never been out of print. Countless generations of readers, old and young, have found friends and role models in Jem, Scout, Dill, Atticus, Calpurnia, Miss Maudie, Tom Robinson and the rest of the characters. The novel will continue to influence readers for generations to come.

Rest in peace, Harper Lee. Thank you for your life, thank you for your work, thank you for your heart. Your words will be with us forever.

E Ticket Ride

Bunny Tibbs--before her bath

In the first 20 years or so after Disneyland opened in Anaheim, park guests purchased a ticket book if they intended to go on any of the rides. Attractions were rated A-E, with the A venues being of a milder sort, such as visiting with Mr. Lincoln, while the E tickets were reserved for the wildest of rides, such as the bobsleds (also known as the Matterhorn).

I have been riding, in this past week, that well known roller coaster of emotions, ranging anywhere from pure joy to very intense anger, and everything in between. Thanks to a couple of truly great friends who have listened carefully while I vented about the anger parts and validated those feelings ("It sounds like you were really angry..."), I've moved past all that.  So, on to the highlights!

1.  I finished reading Brian Doyle's soon to be released novel, The Plover, this week. I spent two weeks savoring his words and the love with which he imbues them. It is a novel about the sea as much as Moby Dick is about a whale, and that is to say that, while he sets his protagonist squarely on a boat in the ocean, the tale is as much about the human condition as it is anything else. It is beautifully rendered. For those of you who love literary novels and stories of people who are broken yet still able to love and love lavishly, buy it. Well, pre-order it if you're reading this prior to April 8, 2014. Just click on the highlighted title in this paragraph.

2.  Bunny Tibbs reappeared. (To find out who Bunny Tibbs is, read the blog post which precedes this one.) I came home from work to find Bunny lying face down on Thom's comforter in the garage. Apparently he'd been doing a lot of excavating that day. Or maybe he missed her and needed to spend time with her. I have to confess, that after promising him I would no longer touch his toys, I did pick her filthy self up off the blanket and toss her in with a load of rags. She was spotless and ready for bed that night, and he seemed surprised to see her in her beautified condition. Twenty-four hours later, she'd been buried again, but this time somewhat half-heartedly, as one ear remained above ground. Since then he's brought her out of his own accord, and she hasn't gone underground again. Waiting to see how much my dog now trusts me.

3.  Thomas went for his first real hike in the mountains today. In the first weeks after he came home, he wasn't able to travel far due to getting car sick, a result of his extreme anxiety. (Cleaning huge gobs of dog barf from the floor of the extra cab made me glad I opted to buy the Ranger Edge--with rubber floor mats.  Easy-peesy!) I've been taking him on car rides a couple times a week since then, going just a little farther each time. Last weekend we went to the far side of Upland. Today we went to the foot of Mt. Baldy. And oh, what a great time we had. For him, being able to hike along a forest path without cars whizzing by or particularly boisterous bully breeds barking at him from behind fences gave him the opportunity to act like a dog, sniffing the air and the ground and peeing on stuff. Atta boy, Thomas!

Bonus points to #3: Thom went everywhere with me on the lead--over rocks, under tree trunks that were fallen across the trail and, most importantly, into the stream, actually placing his dainty 'My toes shouldn't touch moisture' feet in the water.  Good boy!

And: On the way back, we encountered two lovely young women who had brought their three dogs out to enjoy the gorgeous spring-like conditions. One of the girls was a former student of mine, and the other is a volunteer at the Upland shelter, so as we approached and I called out, "Hi ladies! Are your dogs friendly?" I heard in stereo, "Is that Ms. Murphy?!?" "Is that Sgt. Tibbs?!?" (My dog is no doubt a greater celebrity than I am.) While I reminisced with my former student, she walked right up to Thomas to pet him and, amazingly, he didn't pull away, just stood calmly as she held out her hand, then patted his head. He's never let any stranger approach him like that before. Guess the hike was good for him. In addition, their dogs surrounded him and invited him to be part of their pack in a wonderfully diplomatic way. Thom stood his ground; like me, he's not much of a joiner. But again, he didn't pull away, just let them sniff and wag to their hearts content.

4. Finally, on Friday I read Yeats' poem, "The StolenChild," to my freshman Honors classes, and I showed them this video. These are the moments in teaching that I love the most. Taking them, hand in hand, into the land of the imagination, is like Thomas into the forest. They could go their entire lives without it, as could he, but how much more their lives are enriched by these experiences.

Under the apple boughs

A year ago British author Peter Maughan contacted me through Amazon and asked if I would read one of his novels as he was in need of reviews.  I downloaded The Cuckoos of Batch Magna but just couldn't get to it until summer.  When I finally read it, I fell in love with Peter's writing.  It was easy to give Cuckoos a 5-star review because it is just plain adorable (if a book can be such).

In September, I learned of and purchased another work by Peter which is a much shorter piece, maybe 60 pages if it were in page form.  (It's available for Kindle.)  This one is entitled Under the Apple Boughs, and I just have to say, if you want to completely immerse yourself in lyrical writing for a couple of hours, if you want to stroll the lanes of rural England in your imagination and view the sights through the eyes of an author who loves where he lives, spend $4.00 and download this narrative.

Peter's work has been characterized as "The Wind in theWillows for grown-ups."  Exactly.  Except... there is a thoughtful, gracious yet self-effacing intelligence in this writing that is nothing less than literary brilliance.

I began reading Apple Boughs after a particularly grueling week which was rife with heartbreak.  Sometimes, as Yeats lamented, 'the world's more full of weeping than we can understand.'  Beginning the narrative was like discovering the door to the SecretGarden and walking through to find the garden reclaimed and vibrant with trees and flowers and birdsong.  For three nights running, just before sleep, I would disappear behind that gate and wander slowly with Peter through the gardens of his imagination.  Our time together ended far too soon, but by the end of it I felt my soul had healed a bit.

If you're looking for a last minute gift for someone with a Kindle who loves the written word--especially if they love pastoral work--it takes only a couple of clicks to gift this book.  Heck, just get it for yourself and you can "lend" it to a friend for free later.

Oh, and if you're still in the spirit of giving after you read (and love--I promise) Apple Boughs, take a second and post a sentence or two in review of it so that we can share Peter's love of words with others.

May the spirit of the season abound in love!

Death of an Icon

Losing Ray Bradbury from this world is like being told that hot fudge sundaes have ceased to exist and I will never have the experience of eating one again in my life. Losing his creative and imaginative writing, his brilliant and adoring words, is tantamount to losing something that is both tangible and visceral. Great writers die and their works live on, but Bradbury’s presence and persona imbued him with a god-like aura, I think because wherever he went, he simply oozed joy and love and enthusiasm.
During the science fiction phase of my young adulthood, I read and loved The Illustrated Man and The Martian Chronicles. In college, first one professor then another told me Bradbury stories. This man who loved the idea of dinosaurs and time machines and rocket ships refused to drive cars or fly in planes. He was a hopeless romantic. He loved everyone. He swore like a sailor. A prof at UCR had us read a short story by Bradbury in which he reverses history (with the deployment of a time machine) and Ernest Hemingway does not blow his brains out with a shotgun. My hero.  (For time travel enthusiasts who ascribe to the "butterfly effect," please note that the term was coined from Bradbury's short story, "A Sound of Thunder.")

Though he traveled the world (and especially adored Paris), Bradbury loved living in Southern California and agreed to countless speaking engagements here. When he came to speak at nearby Chaffey College, my friend Lana and I went to see him. We arrived an hour early and sat in the front row. Though mesmerized by his often shouted remarks (“I love America! I love the freedom of our democracy! If you don’t like the sons-a-bitches, you can vote them out and vote the bastards in! And if you decide you don’t like the bastards, you can vote them out and vote the sons-a-bitches back in! It’s wonderful!”), I did have the presence of mind to notice him take one sip from a tall glass kitchen tumbler that had been placed on his lectern. Afterward, as the auditorium cleared, I told Lana I wanted to take it, but I’d never stolen anything before, so I was deeply conflicted. Just then a stagehand appeared to clean up, and I asked him if I could have the glass if I promised to replace it. He handed it to me. It sat on the highest shelf of my kitchen cabinet for a year—until Lana’s daughter dragged it down to get a drink of water, dropping it in the sink, where it shattered. Nothing lives forever….

In the fall of 2010, I saw Bradbury speak at the Duarte Authors Festival. Wheelchair bound, he was frail and attended by several handlers. But he had lost none of his enthusiasm. He told story after story of living life as a writer, admonishing the crowd repeatedly to “love each other, love everyone.” That was how he lived his life.

Geez, Ray, a light has gone out down here. But… I’m curious. What are you doing now? Smoking cigars with Hemingway? Buzzing around from planet to planet? Riding on the backs of dinosaurs? Enjoy yourself. It’s going to take me the rest of my short time here to read what I haven’t yet read of your life’s work. May I be so prolific, so imaginative, so original in my own writing. Farewell for now, my friend.