Last March, my nephew and his wife welcomed a beautiful baby girl and named her Harper Lee, not because they’re huge fans of the author or her famous novel, but just because they love the name. I must confess that until this past summer I’d never read To Kill a Mockingbird, was never assigned it in high school or college, and though it was high on my reading bucket list, I’d frankly never had the impetus I needed to trot down to the local library or bookstore and acquire it. There was always a more current bestseller to contend with.
Enter little Harper Lee. Her exquisite face and namesake shot that novel’s place from the middle of my bucket list to the top, so late one night last August I ordered the book off Amazon and was excited when it arrived. I saw the sweet-faced girl on the cover, knew she was the Scout I’d long heard about, and started reading.
Now I must also confess that about 60 pages in, I found Scout’s voice and her many character references, both direct and indirect, charming, compelling—and confusing. Though it wasn’t entirely foreign, I couldn’t quite “get” the rhythm and syntax of Scout’s voice, which I heard as simultaneously child- and adult-like. This is one of the most engaging aspects of Lee’s novel (there are many, of course). Like an intricate dance step, I had to practice the auditory one-two-three, one-two-three; in my first reading, the muscle memory wasn’t indelible. I also had to figure out the nature of this Boo Radley (what a great name!) fellow Scout, Jem, and Dill are so bent on harassing throughout most of the book’s first half. Their preoccupation with the phantom-like Boo caught me entirely off-guard, as I’d long heard the crux of Mockingbird centers on the trial of a black man accused of raping a white woman. Naturally, I had expected to bear witness to the actual or fabricated crime, the characters involved, the courtroom scene, but those don’t spring to life until the second half of the novel. My first lesson, as in life: never assume!
I still have questions about the book’s opening because it seems to contradict the edict we fiction writers hear on the first day of creative writing class: “Show, Don’t Tell.” From the first sentence to the top of page seven, we are told about Jem’s broken arm, the Ewells, Simon Finch, Atticus, John Hale Finch, Maycomb, Montgomery, the Haverfords, the aforementioned Boo Radley, and other names and places, and that’s just up to page five. No wonder I couldn’t keep it all straight! Not that the writing isn’t stellar, but it’s a lot of information to take in so quickly. I’d love to hear your thoughts on why the author begins with so much backstory. True, some of it alludes to the trial, and our narrator is now grown and looking back on this meaningful event, so the opening serves to frame that. I wonder, though, if Lee’s manuscript came across an agent’s or editor’s desk today, would they advise the author to begin on page 7, when Scout and Jem first encounter Dill in Rachel Haverford’s collard patch? Hmmm.
What I love most about this book is the childhood depiction of these three. On my second reading, Scout’s voice and vernacular coalesced, and I realized that Dill is Capote to Scout’s Lee. How amazing is it that these two eminent authors were childhood friends. What were they drinking in the hickory-infused water and smelling in the eucalyptus-scented air? If they could package and send it to Long Island, I’d rattle the grill on the post office door to be the first to try it!
Of course, Lee’s writing is impeccable. She’s a master of simile, as in the following examples: “Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o’clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum,” and how Boo Radley’s house affects Dill: “…it drew him as the moon draws water.” Aside from Lee’s gift for simile, the narrative is so richly detailed, it’s as though Scout knows every blade of grass that grows in Maycomb County. And much of that detail has a great dash of humor, as in the following: “Boo was about six-and-a-half feet tall, judging from his tracks; he dined on raw squirrels and any cats he could catch, that’s why his hands were blood-stained—if you ate an animal raw, you could never wash the blood off. There was a long jagged scar that ran across his face; what teeth he had were yellow and rotten; his eyes popped, and he drooled most of the time.”
Aside from Mockingbird’s timeless message about the evils of racism, the injustice of betrayal and hypocrisy, there’s a trove of writing lessons to learn if you have the time and inclination to read or reread the text as one who luxuriates during a sultry Alabama summer afternoon. Take each sentence slowly; savor its richness. Notice how from page seven to 323, the scenes are primarily shown, not told; that is, they are carefully depicted, as though Lee has sketched Radley’s sagging house, the cootie crawling out of Burris Ewell’s scalp, and all the narrative details that follow. Underline the specifics in both description and dialogue, how carefully they define each character. Then emulate with exercises. Carefully depict a home in your story or novel. What quirk or habit does your main character have? What sets his or her face apart from the seven billion others on the planet? As I write this, I’m learning and doing, and I plan to go through the entire novel again, hoping that by careful study and osmosis, I’ll acquire even a fraction more craftmanship. No writer, I imagine, was ever harmed by this, or by Lee’s inherent reminder of the lightning that strikes when we state things simply, directly. Let each specific word and detail capture time, space, and character.
Equally important is to find joy in this endeavor. To remember why we love sitting down with a pen, a laptop, setting down word after word, page after page. The process is the journey. Approaching Mockingbird with the intent of author-as-teacher I’m sure will unveil a rich field of discovery.