book discussion
topic: Did she write this?
(showing 1-25 of 37)
date
My big question is, if you wrote a book that won the prize that this one did, would you decide to not ever write again? Did she write this? What's your opinion?
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I think the story was of her father and her childhood (but fictionalized) and she had this one great story in her. Her publishers wanted her to write a second book and she said she would but, as far as I know, she never did. She isn't the first author to have one great story to tell.
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Hah. If I could only write one great novel, this would be in the top ten. Just like there are some bands with one good song in them, so are there writers with one knockout book in them.
And it's balderdash that Truman Capote wrote TKAM. There was some jealousy over the attention Lee was getting, and if Capote had written it, he'd be singing it from the mountaintops. He never once said that he wrote it, but at the same time he didn't do anything to squelch the rumors. With friends like these, huh?
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I would love to have written this book ~ and I may have stopped after this, too. I can think of a few writers who ought to have stopped after their first.
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LOL. Kay, I so agree. Stephen King probably should have stopped after the first 10. Richard Laymon and V.C. Andres continue to write beyond the grave, and it really mucks up their earlier and better work.
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message 6:
by deleted member
02/17/2008 06:18PM
Kelly,
I just saw your posting from January...I'm curious as to why you even ask the question.
Rita
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I agree with Rita-- what even motivated this question? I had no idea there was any doubt whatsoever.
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Yes, there has always been a few whispers of doubt that Harper Lee wrote TKAM and not her good friend and confidant, Truman Capote. These doubts have been raised off and on for years, especially after she failed to write another successful novel. It's all absurd speculation, of course.
There is a recent biography of Harper Lee that discusses this issue.
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wow, i never there was such juicy gossip going around. i suppose that's what happens whenever Capote is involved at all.
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I just read somewhere in the past few days that the rumor about Capote was actually a statement that he made jokingly at a party when he was drunk. Somthing like, "Oh yeah and I wrote TKAM, too." You know the press gets their hands on something and it's off to the races.
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Yeah...and Elvis is alive. Get a life, people.
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No reason to be rude Norman. It's a valid question asked by a fellow member and therfore worthy of discussion.
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I agree that Lee wrote it. Also, it isn't like she never wrote anything else. I remember when I read it in High School my teacher saying that she wrote lots of essays. He also said that this book was "everything she had to say."
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message 14:
by
Coalbanks
(last edited 03/14/2008 04:36PM)
02/26/2008 04:45PM
No argument that Harper Lee did write TKAM but consider the possible influence of Henrik Ibsen's play, AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE(1882), in which a previously respected doctor is villainized when he discovers & attempts to disclose that the town's medicinal baths & economic mainstay are toxic. Could Harper Lee NOT have been aware of & influenced by this play? Did she acknowledge any such influence?
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I've always thought that she had that one story to tell and didn't know what else to say. The story was originally a collection of short stories from her childhood that she merged together for the novel.
I've recently read that Horton Foote writes all of his plays on the same theme -- people trying to go home but learning that they can't. He's always asked why and he answers, that's what he does.
Maybe it's the same for Lee except that there was nothing else to write because it was basically the major event of her childhood. I mean, she certainly was skilled enough to write something else but you've got to have that fire in your belly to undertake a novel and perhaps when the main story was told the fire just couldn't get let again.
Sorry for rambling . . . :)
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I think that it's fine to only write one book. I mean, some people have only one story inside of them, building up over time. After writing a book like To Kill a Mockingbird, that captivated so many people, I can see why Harper Lee decided that she didn't have to write any more. After all, people would expect all of her books to be as amazing as her first one, and that would put a lot of pressure on her. That is why she made the decision to write only one book.
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message 17:
by
Kathryn
(last edited 03/11/2008 08:28AM)
03/11/2008 08:27AM
That's true too. And if your book is never going out of print, it's not like you need the money. But I would think that if you had the urge to write you wouldn't be able to stop. I mean, Hemingway killed himself when he couldn't write anymore, but Harper Lee and Margaret Mitchell were both fine with stopping after one blockbuster.
Different strokes, I guess.
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I had a professor tell me one time that, if a writer has a moderate success then their writing is compared to other writers, but if the writer has an amazing success the first time then the rest of that writer's books are compared to their first one. I don't think this is why Lee never wrote another book, I just think she had this one amazing story to tell.
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I heard an editor interviewed on NPR years ago talk about this. At the time her topic was how publishing is changing so much that close editorial assistance is a thing of the past and she used TKAM as an example. She said that the submitted manuscript had promise but needed help in structuring and so the publisher sent someone to help Harper Lee. They worked on it together for several months. Harper Lee is definitely the author.
As for Truman Capote, in the recent biography of Harper Lee, Mockingbird, the author whose name I have forgotten stated that capote owed her more of a debt for IN Cold Blood than he ever acknowledged.
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Lee worked throughout her life on other projects and was a frequent contributor to numerous magazines. At the time of her death she was working on another book much like Capote's IN COLD BLOOD. I don't think it was ever her intention to write just one book and hang up her typewriter (if you don't know what these were look it up). I think that she never made much money on TKAM and had to eat so she wrote for other mediums to pay the bills.
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Margaret Mitchell wrote her one great book as well but her's is a different story altogether. She never got the chance to wrinte anything else in all honesty as she was hit by a car before she could finish her next book.
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This is a really interesting discussion. IMHO, Harper Lee, who as far as I can determine through my google search is still alive, is the sole author of the book. That’s not to say that she didn’t have other literary influences. A college English professor of mine described TKAM as a rip-off of Intruder in the Dust. There is no denying that the stories are somewhat similar, and while I liked Intruder in the Dust, TKAM is much more accessible to the average reader (this comment comes from a Faulkner fan; he really makes readers work!).
I’ve always been glad that Harper Lee didn’t write a second novel. To me, TKAM is so perfect; what more is there to say?
A few years ago I traveled to Monroeville, visited the courthouse in the center of town, walked along the street where Capote and Lee grew up, and talked to lots of people about the book, its influence on the town and the town’s influence on the book. The people I met in Monroeville are extremely protective of Lee’s privacy. At the time, she was dividing her time between there and New York City. In New York, she can get lost in the crowd, in Monroeville, she is shielded from tourists, so in both places she has the privacy she crave.
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Yes, Harper is very much alive. She was actually given the Presidential Medal of Freedom in November 2007 at the White House.
Also, now that I think about it-- i think Harper definitely had the experience to write TKAM-- afterall, didn't she study law? Perhaps to follow in her father's footsteps.
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An interesting fact about the novel and pop culture. The character of the neighbor lady in TKAM is based on the Fruitcake Lady from The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. The Fruitcake Lady was in reality Truman Capote's aunt who raised him and is the main female character in his story Christmas and Thnaksgiving stories.
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Cody, I never knew that about Miss Maudie/Fruitcake Lady. I love Truman's A Christmas Memory, which is a touching story about his Aunt Sookie. We have a local actress who puts on a one-woman show every Christmas on this story. Either reading the story or watching it acted out, I have to bring Kleenex for the finale.
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