Merry Wanderer of the Night:
to kill a mockingbird

I read Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee

as a companion to To Kill a Mockingbird for the 50th Anniversary. Harper Lee doesn't give interviews anymore so this biography was done entirely from interviews Charles J. Shields did with people who knew Harper Lee and from information he could find from the time period involving her. It was also, basically, done without Harper Lee's permission although the fact that the book is out shows me that she doesn't have a huge problem with it. The biography is made up of ten chapters that begin with Harper Lee's childhood to the point where she quit giving interviews and some more present day stories of her. When I first started the biography I was surprised by how novel-like Shields managed to make it. He did a great job setting up the scene of Harper Lee as a child living in a small town called Monroeville, Alabama. While most of the images were probably created by Shields himself I think there was still some truth in them.

What really amazed me about this book was how much of To Kill a Mockingbird is based on Harper Lee's own life. Her father was a lawyer and the character of Atticus is loosely based on him. Scout is really based on Harper Lee herself, who was a tomboy and had a quick mouth as a child. Dill is based on Harper Lee's childhood friend Truman Capote who was also handed around to relatives like a bowl of mashed potatoes and was a bit eccentric as a child. What I gathered from the book is that the case in the book is based off a couple of cases and experiences Harper Lee had as a child. It was really interesting for me to finish To Kill a Mockingbird and then move on to this book because I saw where so many of the ideas came from. Shields also pulls out quotes from the book and since I'd just finished it I could remember exactly where the quotations came from which gave them a little more context in the biography.

Harper Lee attended University of Alabama where she was a writer and editor on a school publication called the Rammer Jammer. While this section was interesting because I got to see some early writing of Harper Lee's I think it dragged on a bit too long. There is also a section about Harper Lee's involvement in the research of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, which at first is fascinating but turns into a big yawn rather quickly. It's 45 pages! The book is only 280-some pages! I felt like I was reading about Truman Capote and not about Harper Lee for 1/5 of the book. I think that chapter was necessary but really needed to be weeded down. The portrait I came away with was not very different from the portrait I had going into the book, but it was nice to read the story of how To Kill a Mockingbird came to be. There is one point in the biography where Shields makes the suggestion that Harper Lee might be a bit of a one-trick pony. She was asked to submit a short story to a magazine and wrote what sounded like a short story version of To Kill a Mockingbird. He uses this as a possible suggestion for why she has never published a book since To Kill a Mockingbird. I thought this was an interesting idea although I think a lot of authors write similar stories in multiple books.

I give this biography a C.

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I am currently about fifty pages from the end of To Kill a Mockingbird. Yesterday I mentioned that I was planning on watching the movie for the actual fiftieth anniversary, but since I wasn't finished with the book I decided to wait. Today is a rainy day and I have nothing to do, so I think it's the perfect time to actually finish up this book. I've been reading Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee by Charles J. Shields at the same time. I'm not very far into this biography about the extremely private Harper Lee, but I feel like the book is full of information that makes the book even more interesting.

I recently learned that Harper Lee was childhood friends with Truman Capote, but I had no idea that he was that base for the character Dill. I also didn't know that Harper Lee's father was a lawyer and in some ways he is like Atticus in the book. Some of the similarities between her life and the book you could guess, but it's interesting to read an account of them and see how things might have come together. Shields put together this book without interviewing Harper Lee, which made it extremely challenging and I'm amazed by how well he did. He used old interviews and accounts from people who knew or know Harper Lee to create the story. It's a great biography and reads like a novel.

I'm also following the To Kill A Mockingbird Anniversary Facebook Fan Page and found this article by Tom Brokaw about his first experience with To Kill a Mockingbird. It's really interesting to read an account by someone who was there for the release of the book and it made me think about things I hadn't really considered before. Check out this article if you're interested! There are several other posts on the Facebook fan page that are also great for different ideas about the book. Also, be sure to check out Capricious Reader's post about To Kill a Mockingbird as well.

I am an Amazon Affiliate. If you make a purchase using one of my links I will earn a small percentage which will then go back into this blog.

This is my second time reading To Kill a Mockingbird

by Harper Lee, the first time was about five years ago when I was a sophomore in high school. It seems like that was a million years ago, but I remember this being one of the few books I read for class and really got into. I mean, I couldn't put it down. I ended up finishing it in a couple days and had to spend the next five weeks pretending I was still reading it. Coming back to the book, I started out wondering what it was about this book that drew me in so much. There isn't a whole lot of suspense, besides wondering who Boo Radley really is and what he is going to do next. I just don't think that would have been enough to propel me through the novel at fifteen. I have to agree with Capricious Reader's post from today, it was Scout that made me want to read more. Her voice in this novel is perfect, she's tough but not unbelievable, and she is a great storyteller.

And she loves to read. When her teacher in first grade gets upset that she already knows how she becomes so upset she doesn't want to go back to school. I underlined the same quote as Capricious Reader did. I underlined it when I was fifteen, and it still meant as much to me at twenty; "Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing." I think every booklover can connect with that quote, and maybe that was the base of my early love for this novel. It's like Scout is asking us to keep going, to love this book now.

I also love the lazy way Harper Lee describes the town."People moved slowly then. They ambled across the square, shuffled in and out of the stores around it, took their time about everything. A day was twenty-four hours long but seemed longer." How opposite is that from how most people feel today? There aren't enough hours in the day, I don't amble anywhere. I sprint. Everywhere. And I'm always connected with my Blackberry or my laptop or my iPod or whatever. But when I crack the spine on this book I don't look at the time. I just sprawl out in my living room and take it all in. I think I might be reading this book a little slowly, but I honestly don't really know.

If you've never read To Kill a Mockingbird, please do so! And if you have, read it again! This month is the 50th Anniversary of the classic and I'm going to talk about it every Monday along with Capricious Reader. If you do a post on the book visit her site and share the link with everyone.

I am an Amazon Affiliate. If you make a purchase using one of my links I will earn a small percentage which will then go back into this blog.