Harper Lee: A celebrity who didn’t live or behave like one
NEWYORK: Harper Lee was an ordinary woman as stunned as anybody by the extraordinary success of ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’.
“It was like being hit over the head and knocked cold,” Lee — who died aged 89, according to publisher HarperCollins — said during a 1964 interview, at a time when she still talked to the media.
“I didn’t expect the book to sell in the first place. I was hoping for a quick and merciful death at the hands of reviewers but at the same time I sort of hoped that maybe someone would like it enough to give me encouragement.”
‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ may not be the Great American Novel. But it’s likely the most universally known work of fiction by an American author over the past 70 years, that rare volume to find a home both in classrooms and among voluntary readers, throughout the country and beyond.
Lee was cited for her subtle, graceful style and gift for explaining the world through a child’s eye, but the secret to the novel’s ongoing appeal was also in how many books this single book contained. ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ was a coming of age story; a courtroom thriller; a Southern novel; a period piece; a drama about class; and, of course, a drama of race.
“All I want to be is the Jane Austen of South Alabama,” she once observed.
The story of Lee is essentially the story of her book, and how she responded to it. She wasn’t a bragger, like Norman Mailer, or a misanthrope like JD Salinger or an eccentric or tormented genius. She was a celebrity who didn’t live or behave like a celebrity.
By the accounts of friends and Monroeville residents, she was a warm, vibrant and witty woman who played golf, fished, ate at McDonald’s, fed ducks by tossing seed corn out of a Cool Whip tub, read voraciously and got about to plays and concerts.