A Marvelous Companion Piece to a Beloved American Novel

books:


	• Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee Charles J. Shields Holt Paperbacks, 2007 - 368 pages average customer review:based on 45 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Wonderful Biography - Top Notch Reading

I love a good biography and this one is right up there with the best. It's clearly written, does not waste your time with a lot of hypothetical stuff, and the author keeps his assumptions and analyses to himself - while reporting in an interesting and involving what he has heard from those who know Harper Lee. Some biographers seem to think they are junior Freuds, and this author avoids this pitfall. Thank you! I came away feeling I would like Harper Lee, I got an understanding of her and how she came to write this book - and I also get why she hasn't written another. Nothing big, or life changing - just life went along and somehow the time and attention required to write a novel just never got put together again. Makes sense to me. I liked that the people interviewed were quoted extensively and not interpreted - I realize I'm being redundant - but biographers who analyze instead of reporting give me hives. Truman Capote was not a nice man, and I'm glad that we finally got the true scoop on his involvement with "To Kill A Mockingbird" - darned little - and her input into "In Cold Blood" - a whole lot. The rumors that he actually wrote "To Kill A Mockingbird" are shown to be absurd, and really, does anyone think that self involved little twerp wouldn't have been all over the media if actually had? He never won the Pulitzer himself, and certainly would have made sure to get credit for such an important book had he actually had anything to do with it. Don't miss out on this book. It's a good read and absolutely fascinating.

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An Excellent Substitute

As a result of Shields's biography of Lee, those of us with interest in her can know much more about her background, her challenges, and her successes than we did before. My respect for her has been enhanced considerably by reading this book. It's the next best thing to Lee's own memoirs, which perhaps will yet appear.

For some time I resisted acquiring and reading this volume, bothered because it was described as unauthorized by its subject. Now, after reading it, I am very grateful to its author for the thoughtful and careful effort that went into it. It is generally quite sympathetic to its subject, and I would surmise that any passages which might offend her are few and far between.

In one quote attributed to a sorority member at the University of Alabama during Lee's years there, Lee is described as someone who would today be called a nerd. This nerd reader was delighted to see her so classified.

A minor annoyance with the book has to do with several geographical errors, errors which should have been detected and corrected by careful editing. Their survival in print reduces somewhat the reader's confidence in the overall accuracy of the book. An example is the reference to Evergreen's location as west of Monroeville, when it is actually to the east.

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Let's Leave Harper Lee Alone Now!

Harper Lee was recently honored by President Bush with the Congressional Medal of Honor, the nation's highest honor for services to literature. Her sole classic novel, "To Kill a Mockingbird," has been ranked second to the Bible as having one of the most impact on people's lives. It is so widely read and is considered one of America's greatest novels. Unfortunately for us, Lee has never written or published another novel. You can only imagine that creating such a first classic novel that she would try again. Maybe she has in private but she has declined interviews and avoids the limelight and publicity. She makes occasional appearances like at the White House to be honored by President Bush, the memorial service for Gregory Peck who played Atticus Finch in the movie version. Besides, she has maintained a low key image despite her childhood friend and relationship, Truman Capote. There should be a book written about their relationship. They both grew up in Monroeville, Alabama and were neighbors. Nelle Harper Lee assisted in researching his classic non-fiction book, "In Cold Blood" about the Clutter murders in Kansas. After that book's publication, Lee was pretty much offended and slighted by Capoute. It might have to do with that he was resentful of her success from "To Kill a Mockingbird." While she attended his funeral, she and Truman were never as close again. He went off on the deep end and his life ended prematurely. He never recovered. Besides the point, Lee returned to life after the book and film's success. She never attended the Oscar ceremony preferring to watch it at a friend's home on television. Lee did not own a television at the time. Lee's personal life is less exciting. The author provides a disclaimer as to why she never married or about her sexual orientation. Maybe she never recovered from the unrequited love in college of one of her male professors, it's hard to imagine that this simple woman with an extraordinary mind and ability to fight much like her father did in the courtroom but with words would not find a soulmate. She now lives with her ninety one year old sister, Anne Lee, and attorney in Monroeville, Alabama. Lee has maintained her hometown identity with trips to New York City where she also maintained a residence until recently. The author paints a loving portrait of one of America's best read authors. While we know so little about her personal life, we can see that maybe she never found the right husband or man much like her father who inspired Atticus Finch. Anybody else would have been second rate, Lee never settled on that or maybe she was too shy to ask. She is polite, Southern, responsible, and has a conscience that we would expect no less from a woman who has inspired and written "To Kill a Mockingbird." She doesn't need the limelight while she maintains a normal life. While TRuman sought celebrity, fame and money as the means of his happiness, Lee has found her own sense of fulfillment in her Methodist upbringing and faith and her hometown roots. She has never left or forgotten Monroeville, ALabama who love and cherish one of our favorite writers. Anything published as "To Kill a Mockingbird" would have never been as successful or seen in the same way. You are only as good as your last book, the critics would have said.

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Nelle, this book's for you

Could those of us who have read and enjoyed To Kill a Mockingbird harbor anything other than love and respect for Nelle Harper Lee?

Truthfully, yes, we could and we do. Many of us harbor (in addition to love and respect for her) a deep curiosity about her life. But how to satisfy that curiosity while maintaining a loving and respectful distance from this most private of authors? Charles J. Shields has solved this problem for us by creating a carefully researched, loving, respectful, and thoughtfully presented biography of Lee.

The longest chapter in the biography is about Lee's contributions to the research for Truman Capote's best-selling "non-fiction novel," In Cold Blood. Capote, of course, was Lee's neighbor and friend when the two of them were growing up in Monroeville, Alabama, the tiny community that served as the model for fictional Maycomb in To Kill a Mockingbird. Capote figures prominently throughout the biography, especially in the chapters about Lee's childhood.

The primary focus of the biography is Lee's long years of work on To Kill a Mockingbird and her subsequent realization that she would never publish another novel. To help us see those years in perspective, Shields provides extensive background on Lee's immediate family, her forebears, and her experiences coming to maturity in depression-era, small-town Alabama. He also describes her college and law school careers (she never graduated), and he quotes extensively from sorority sisters and others who matriculated with her.

The book draws on an astonishing variety of sources, ranging from the Kansas Bureau of Investigation detectives that Lee met while working with Capote on In Cold Blood to a student who hand-carried the manuscript of To Kill a Mockingbird back to Lee after Lee's former high school English teacher lightly marked It up with editorial comments for Lee's consideration. The portrait of Lee that emerges shows her to be kind, generous, independent of spirit, and deeply loved and respected by those who know her.

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A Marvelous Companion Piece to a Beloved American Novel

According to Charles Shields in his revealing biography MOCKINGBIRD, Nelle Harper Lee should properly be regarded as a "one and a half hit wonder." Lee is of course renowned for her authorship of the perennial ninth grade classic TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, a coming of age story of social injustice that still stands up exceedingly well to rereading more than four decades beyond my first high school year. Far less well known, even after two Hollywood movies on the subject, is Ms. Lee's integral and formative role in the research and editing of Truman Capote's equally classic documentary fiction, IN COLD BLOOD.

Well known as a media recluse, Ms. Lee has quietly divided her post-MOCKINGBIRD days between her hometown of Monroeville (AL) and her adopted New York City. Shields makes clear that his biographical subject resolutely refused to participate in the effort, but Shields has compensated through extensive research and interviews with seemingly anyone and everyone who has known Harper Lee. The results are about as insightful as one could accomplish without the Ms. Lee's own involvement, and the author wisely elects not to psychoanalyze his subject or speculate too intensely on her failure to produce a second novel of her own.

Mr. Shields's work is replete with information about Ms. Lee's family background, her student years in law school, and her efforts to compete with an accomplished older sister for her father's approval. Most interesting are the biographical details that spill over into Ms. Lee's writing of TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. Her stern, lawyerly father A.C., who undoubtedly served as the model for Atticus Finch, her emotionally absent mother who became Jem and Scout's deceased mother in the book, her strange neighbor two houses away who became Boo Radley, her childhood association with pre-adolescent Truman Capote who became Dill, her Monroeville neighbors whose quirkly characteristics or behaviors became citizens of Maycomb, and on and on (including her use of the Kansas state motto, "Ad Astra Per Aspera," in Scout's Halloween pageant, the phrase discovered while she was working with Capote on IN COLD BLOOD).

Of equal interest to Ms. Lee's childhood and collegiate background are the struggles Shields documents concerning her writing, particularly the creation of TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. Ms. Lee comes across in this rendition as far less polished and naturally capable a writer than most readers might have expected. By Shields's account, the novel might never have emerged without substantial direct coaching and guidance from editors who gave the book extraordinary attention from its earliest days. These early struggles, including the editorial rejection of a post-MOCKINGBIRD magazine article, inevitably prefigure the mystery of Ms. Lee's apparent failure to complete or publish another work. Paradoxically, Shields presents Ms. Lee as being almost more integral to the success of Capote's IN COLD BLOOD than to her own novel.

Mr. Shields also devotes significant attention to the story of this classic novel's translation into a classic movie. Particularly fascinating is his account of Gregory Peck's recruitment for the lead role (Rock Hudson was the director's first choice) and Peck's subsequent heavy influence in how the story was rendered cinematically. Despite his Oscar-winning performance and the general success of the movie, it appears nevertheless that Mr. Peck single-handedly altered the movie's perspective from being coming-of-age, child-centered to being standing-brave-against-social-injustice, Atticus-centered.

At times, the author's exhaustive research nearly overwhelms his subject matter in trivial and distracting details. However, that tendency stands as a minor critique relative to his success in telling the background story of an American literary and cinematic classic as well as that of its fiercely independent, iconoclastic, semi-reclusive author. For readers, viewers, and/or appreciators of TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, Charles Shields's MOCKINGBIRD is a must read in its own right.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

?A fine, well-rounded portrait of Harper Lee. Mockingbird is good reading.??Star-Tribune (Minneapolis)
To Kill a Mockingbird?the twentieth century?s most widely read American novel?has sold thirty million copies and still sells a million yearly. Yet despite her book?s perennial popularity, its creator, Harper Lee, has become a somewhat mysterious figure. Now, after years of research, Charles J. Shields brings to life the warmhearted, high-spirited, and occasionally hardheaded woman who gave us two of American literature?s most unforgettable characters?Atticus Finch and his daughter, Scout.
At the center of Shields?s evocative, lively book is the story of Lee?s struggle to create her famous novel, but her colorful life contains many highlights?her girlhood as a tomboy in overalls in tiny Monroeville, Alabama; the murder trial that made her beloved father?s reputation and inspired her great work; her journey to Kansas as Truman Capote?s ally and research assistant to help report the story of In Cold Blood. Mockingbird?unique, highly entertaining, filled with humor and heart?is a wide-ranging, idiosyncratic portrait of a writer, her dream, and the place and people whom she made immortal.

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