From the Bookshelf of Never too Late to Read Classics…

To Kill a Mockingbird

Harper Lee

Start date: April 15, 2016

Finish date: May 15, 2016

Why we're reading this: We read this in February 2015 as a Group Read, but we only had 50 Members at the time! One of the more po…more
[close] We read this in February 2015 as a Group Read, but we only had 50 Members at the time! One of the more popular Classics that we have reconsider for a Re-read!

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Jul 29, 2011 Yair Ben-Zvi rated it really liked it · review of another edition

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Apparently unlike most people in the US, or in much else of the English speaking world, bookish or otherwise, I never read this book when I was younger. Oh sure, I'd heard it mentioned and discussed many times and of course the movie adaptation was brought up some (I'm from LA, we do movies) but I myself had never taken the plunge. An uncle of mine however, long ago recommended it, citing it as his favorite story and him being EXTREMELY well read and me having a short attention span and many oth Apparently unlike most people in the US, or in much else of the English speaking world, bookish or otherwise, I never read this book when I was younger. Oh sure, I'd heard it mentioned and discussed many times and of course the movie adaptation was brought up some (I'm from LA, we do movies) but I myself had never taken the plunge. An uncle of mine however, long ago recommended it, citing it as his favorite story and him being EXTREMELY well read and me having a short attention span and many other books to read first, I put this one on the back burner.

Now several years later and two MORE recommendations (both from women who said they will name their first son 'Atticus', what a world) later, I've read the book, and I have to say I'm impressed.

To me what makes this book work is a twofold approach of atmosphere and perspective. Scout's narration while naive and innocent, never strays into the pitfalls of diabetes inducing sweetness or self-slapping ignorance, it's just a regular (but well read) kid and how she sees the world. Her perspective and how it changes over the course of the story gives the plot its heart and even, at times, its humanity. And it's also this idea of childhood and how children see the world that gives this novel wings as, for the duration of the story, you truly feel, if not young again, then at least like you've seen the world from a perspective you thought long shelved, long thought unnecessary. Reading this story I couldn't help but get swept up in the hope that so many children have, some might call it assumption, of the world around them and the life ahead of them. That all will simply be okay because it couldn't possibly turn out any other way. Summers are long and wonderful, winters are spent with loving families, and everything can only get better. The bittersweet revelation (not only wrapped up in Tom Robinson's fate) but of, inevitably, growing up and realizing life as we live it now just doesn't allow for that kind of perspective outside of impenetrable denial or outright madness, is painful, but beautifully depicted.

Now as for the atmosphere it's for the most part expertly accomplished. Harper Lee gives us such a genuine and convincing portrait of this town at this time (Alabama in the 1930's, culled from her own life and experiences) that it actually reads at time like a small town newspaper or gazette...and this is much to the story's benefit.

Why four and not five stars? Well, let me first say that I don't believe in perfection...at all...in anything. Least of all in art, and especially in literature. This isn't because I'm a cynic (though I am) and it's not because some literature is sublimely grand (when some of it is) but rather because perfection to me is untenable. It's just a meaningless word attempting to define a concept that is without precedent or evidence. The works I've given five stars too like Joyce's Ulysses, Goethe's Faust, Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, or almost anything by Kafka, are not flawless. Hell no. They're loaded down with flaws. But what makes these works pieces of brilliance is that their flaws, their idiosyncrasies actually work to make them better novels, better stories, and better pieces of art. To me, art is short for artifice, it's always an attempt, always an effort to take something and make it a greater total then the sum of its parts. Does Harper Lee succeed in doing that here? Of course. As much as the others? Not quite.

We learn much of Scout, Jem, and to an extent Atticus (who's a wonderful character though leaning just a bit towards fairy tale falseness though mostly saved by his dry wit and being just a bit, and noted by others, out of place in his own time and place) but the other characters are just angles, bits of a picture that, had it been fully drawn out, could have been something rivaling Faulkner. This is especially egregious with the character of Boo Radley, I wished WISHED we heard more of his story...though it speaks greatly to Lee's skill that a character who only has (spoiler) one line can be so damn compelling. Also Tom Robinson doesn't get much screen time, relatively speaking, and I would've loved to hear more from and about him. On the American Southern writers note I have to say Lee's use of the vernacular is easily as good as anything Mark Twain ever wrote.

All in all, it's a wonderful book, the few negatives I've mentioned don't weigh down the story with more than a passing glance. The next to final image of Scout on Boo Radley's porch in the rain, looking down her street in the rain, is something at both light and heavy. We've seen a child's innocence robbed (Tom Robinson's ultimate fate, the significant mention of Hitler and his persecution of the Jews of Germany) but also reaffirmed (the actions of Atticus, Boo Radley, the general and genuine goodness seemingly at heart in all people, though only slowly coming to the fore), and all done without an ounce of false sentimentality, Lee has given us an incredibly complex study of not only innocence under fire, but of the maturation of what I can only call the heroic conscience. A lovely work. ...more

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