For people who haven’t read the novel the biggest surprise is that the story from the movie is only a small section of it. It’s not a courtroom novel (ala Grisham) at all. It’s more a collection of stories, one of which happens to be about a court trial.
(P.S.- I call the Tea Partier Congresswoman from my district Mayella because she claimed that Hillary Clinton sassed her during the Benghazi hearings.)
TKAM is a great book and I’m glad that GSAW, which is a far inferior book, doesn’t seem to have hurt its standing in the American consciousness. Harper Lee, thank you for all you did, and may you rest in peace.
How sad, but she’ll be immortal, really. I’ve never seen the film, actually. If it is mainly a courtroom thing, I’m not sure I want to. Am interested in what Sampiro says about “Watchman”, which certainly did get some less-than-happy reviews. I feel more inclined to seek it out now.
Miss Mapp, what a perfect thing to say! (Very unlike Benson’s Miss Mapp). 
It’s one of my top 10 books of all time. I need to ready “Watchman”.
There is an old “homework” thread but I couldn’t find it that was pretty dang funny. But while searching for “mockingbird” there are an awful lot of threads
Harper Lee was a genius. My favorite line from the novel is Atticus telling Scout not the use the “N-word.” When she says “Everyone uses it” he replies “Well, now it’s everyone minus one.”
In retrospect, for me that was the climax of the book: the respect that the black community paid to Atticus even after the verdict. Everyone knew things wouldn’t work out well, and that the system had failed Tom, and the black community knew it, but that respect was still a sign of hope that this could be a community someday, rather than a descent into violence.
I had a similar experience. The older grades were talking about the book (I kept thinking it was something about Tequila Mockingbird, which puzzled me).
My parents had a copy of it on their bookshelve, iwth a scene from the movie on the back cover of Atticus holding Scout by Jem’s bedside. So one Saturday I started reading it. Finished it that night. Never re-read it, but still know most of the plot and characters if I want to think about them. Amazing piece of literature.
She was a fan of/had a correspondence with Berkeley Breathed/Bloom County.
I’m kind of amused, WordMan, that you felt it was necessary to explain who Harper Lee was in your title by adding To Kill A Mockingbird. Because she’s so obscure.
GSAW was a draft that I am dead certain Lee never wanted to see the light of day. You don’t fuck with one of the greatest creations in American literature, nor its iconic hero, and that’s why Lee never returned to TKAM for another drink at the well–too much class and way too much respect for her creation.
Her brilliant editor (who clearly deserves nearly as much praise as Lee for shaping To Kill a Mockingbird from the draft of GSAW to its final version) was right not to publish it as-is, and in subsequent Lee was right to keep it from publication, as she so obviously intended.
The fact that Ms. Lee died so soon after its publication makes me even more convinced that she was already a gnat’s eyelash from death, and so her grasping, scum-sucking shark of a lawyer, who knew Lee was about to croak, decided to grab a quick payoff with her wide-eyed B.S. claim of “oh hey look at what I found in this box I’ve had for decades” while she could still latch on to some legitimacy via her barely sentient client.
Whew. Okay, having got that out of my system…
Miss Mapp: “Stand up, Miss Jean Louise. Your author’s passing” is a fantastic and fitting line. Thank you for that!
I did it to make searching easier. By including both the title and author’s name, I was hoping it would pop up in searches when folks were wanting to comment on her death, so a bunch of redundant threads weren’t started.
I did it over on an MPSIMS thread related to the ongoing VW scandal. I used both VW and Volkswagon in the thread title. Just a nerdy thing.
Her eulogy- which she read, edited, and approved of five years ago- is released.
Calm down, edge lord.
Given your username, I’m betting you’ve had that word used against you and never learned what it means:
And, I do need to read Mockingbird again. I don’t really remember much except what was in the movie.
From the article in the NYTimes:
I am not sure I get this.
Since she published very little her fans here might welcome:
Me too. I can’t say how faithful the movie was (I think pretty close) yet that is my favourite Gregory Peck role.
Now there’s something to look forward to. thanks for sharing.
I should go back and re-read it; but for me, it rather improved it. It provides a much more complex story than ‘saintly Atticus who was revered by everybody around except for the very worst racists.’
And we need stories about non-saints who nevertheless come through when they’re needed. We don’t produce anywhere near enough actual saints to pull us through on their own.
I note however that my head has tried to turn Watchmen, written before To Kill A Mockingbird, into having also been set before it; which, if it were true, would allow for a progression in Atticus’ thinking. Of course it’s the other way around, and doesn’t work in that fashion. But a lot of the reaction to Watchman seemed to me to be ‘how dare she show Atticus as not being perfect’ with maybe a side order of ‘how dare she show Atticus’ daughter as not continuing to be revered/fully trusted by the Black woman who helped raise her.’
– I haven’t seen the movie of TKAM; but if it does portray only the court case, it leaves out not only most of the book, but some of the major themes of the book; which is not only about race relations, but also about bullying, child abuse, and treatment of the differently abled. There’s a whole major additional story running along with, and entangled with, the one about the trial. And also a bit about what non-toxic masculinity looks like, though that wouldn’t have been terminology used at the time
The movie does have more, but the trial and events surrounding it are definitely the lion’s share of it. I think they also have the bit with the “town drunk”, for instance.
But yeah, novels are longer than movies, and it’s difficult to pick what to trim out of a novel when filming it.