To k--- a Mockingbird is a great book. I've read it twice. I'm grateful for Harper Lee's literary contribution with Mockingbird.
I got halfway through her second novel 'Go Set A Watchman' that was released last year but put it down to read something else. I certainly need to return to that book in the near future.
Harper Lee, whose debut novel, "To k--- a Mockingbird," immortalized her name with its story of justice and race in a small Southern town and became a classic of American literature, has died. She was 89.
Her death was confirmed Friday by the City Hall in Monroeville, Alabama, where she lived.
In a statement, Lee's family said, "The family of Nelle Harper Lee, of Monroeville, Alabama, announced today, with great sadness, that Ms. Lee passed away in her sleep early this morning. Her passing was unexpected. She remained in good basic health until her passing. The family is in mourning and there will be a private funeral service in the upcoming days, as she had requested."
Added nephew Hank Conner in the statement, "This is a sad day for our family. America and the world knew Harper Lee as one of the last century's most beloved authors. We knew her as Nelle Harper Lee, a loving member of our family, a devoted friend to the many good people who touched her life, and a generous soul in our community and our state. We will miss her dearly."
Reaction from people moved by Lee's work, including Apple CEO Tim Cook and Congressman John Lewis (both Alabama natives), actor Matthew Modine, author John Green and Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, who had been jailed in Iran, was swift.
Her publisher, Harper Collins, also released a statement.
"The world knows Harper Lee was a brilliant writer but what many don't know is that she was an extraordinary woman of great joyfulness, humility and kindness," said the company's president and publisher, Michael Morrison. "She lived her life the way she wanted to- in private- surrounded by books and the people who loved her. I will always cherish the time I spent with her."
"Mockingbird," which was published in 1960, was drawn from elements of Lee's childhood in Monroeville. In steady prose shaded by memory and lyricism, she describes how an impulsive girl, Scout Finch, her older brother, Jem, their friend Dill and a variety of other townspeople get caught up in the case of Tom Robinson, a black man who's been accused of r--- in the Depression-era town of Maycomb, Alabama.
Through it all, no character is more indelible than that of Scout's widower father, Atticus Finch. The scrupulous, fair-minded lawyer who defends the falsely accused Robinson in a racist courtroom set a standard for goodness and bravery that still resonates more than 50 years later.
"I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand," Atticus says to Scout at one point. "It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see through it no matter what."
The book won the Pulitzer Prize, and Gregory Peck, who played Atticus in the acclaimed 1962 movie, earned an Oscar for best actor. Finch was named the greatest hero in movie history in a 2003 American Film Institute survey. His reputation is such that a 2010 poll by the American Bar Association Journal was titled "The 25 Greatest Fictional Lawyers (Who Are Not Atticus Finch)."
An earlier draft of the book, titled "Go Set a Watchman," was published in 2015. The book was criticized for a different portrayal of Atticus, who voices racist sentiments, and questions arose as to whether Lee actually wanted it released.
Despite mixed reviews, the book was one of the top sellers of 2015.
Throughout all this, Lee maintained a low profile. She had assisted her friend Truman Capote, the basis for Dill, while he researched his novel "In Cold Blood," and though he reveled in the praise and fortune that came with fame, she resisted it.
"I never expected any sort of success with 'Mockingbird,'" she told critic Roy Newquist for an interview published in 1964. "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. Public encouragement. I hoped for a little, as I said, but I got rather a whole lot, and in some ways this was just about as frightening as the quick, merciful death I'd expected."
Even as "Mockingbird" became a fixture on high school reading lists and demands for her became ever more pronounced, she took shelter in New York and Alabama, hiding in plain sight. It wasn't that she was reclusive, exactly; it's that she preferred to let her work speak for itself.
At one event in her honor -- and there were many -- she was asked to address the audience at the Alabama Academy of Honor. She turned down the opportunity.
"Well, it's better to be silent than be a fool," she said.
