Reported on the front page of the NYTimes online.
A wonderful, powerful story that came at a time when it was a welcome meditation on the American character.
Thank you, ma’am.
To Kill a Mockingbird had a profound impact on me in my youth.
I might pull out my copy and re-read it, and maybe watch the film in her honor.
Requiescat in pace, Ms. Lee.
I’m betting you will find it a startlingly better book than you remembered. And sometimes Christian apologists will say that Jesus must have been real, because no human could create someone as good as he was. Well - try Atticus Finch on for size!
I’ve never read To Kill A Mockingbird, but I watch the film almost every time it’s on. Still relevant today.
The book is wonderful too.
RIP, Madam.
“Seventeen bullet holes in him. They didn’t have to shoot him that much.”
I encourage you to read it. The film is one of the best adaptations you are ever likely going to see, and as such reading the book feels like spending more time with the characters rather than getting annoyed at differences.
I think it is time for my children to watch it this weekend.
Sorry to hear this. Her health has been poor for years.
No work of fiction has ever affected and influenced me the way To Kill A Mockingbird did. In addition, I never expect to see a better movie adaptation of a book I love.
RIP
Miss Jean Louise, stand up. Your author’s passing.
Damn.
But, you had a nice long run, madam. Thank you for the gifts you brought.
Nice.
It’s almost appropriate that it happened in Black History Month
To Kill a Mockingbird is my all-time favorite novel.
I just tried to say that out loud, and surprised myself by choking on tears. R.I.P. Harper Lee
We got assigned to read it in high school. We were supposed to read the first couple of chapters over the weekend. I picked it up Saturday morning and finished it by dinner. It’s the only book I’ve read in one sitting. Such a good story.
I’m in the minority I think, but I also enjoyed Go Set a Watchman very much and consider it a worthy companion to Mockingbird. Contrary to what you may have read it does not paint Atticus as a racist villain but as a believable “the world is more than two colors” product of his time and ultimately as an old man who knows the world is changing and knows that it needs to but doesn’t like the way it’s going about it.
I’ve mentioned before, but, when I worked at the U of Alabama a tall old lady used to come into Government Documents sometimes. She kept to herself mostly, looking at old documents and newspapers and sometimes asking for items from the basement, but she was always very sweet and polite and always had a bowl haircut and jeans and a wool cardigan.
One of my co-workers finally whispered to me “That’s Harper Lee!”, but until then I didn’t recognize her. Though I’m a fan I left her alone, as did most other library staff who recognized her.
But, alas, word got out, and the professors and the deans and the captains and the kings descended, laying slaughtered elk at her feet and begging her to bless their Blackberries and touch their barren gonads and what not.
Well, not quite, but they did fawn over her and make a huge to-do (wasn’t just fan-stuff: they wanted her papers so bad they salivated at the sight of her, and of course she was majorly useful in fund raising).
She was very gracious to them all. And that was the last time I ever saw her in the library.
Would love to know what she was researching.
(Think I’ll change my Facebook photo to a picture of my mother in which she looks just like Scout.)
TKAM was a book I had to read in high school, and like most such assignments I knew I’d hate it. I started reading on the weekend and barely got out of the chair until I was finished. One my top 10 list of favorite novels.
The film is perfect, kind of a Reader’s Digest Condensed version of the book. It captures the feel of the book without really changing a thing.
The scene where the trial is over and Atticus is leaving, while those in the gallery wait for him, is one of the best scenes if film. If you’ve never seen it I can’t do it justice. You either have to read it or see the film.
I must have read TKAM a dozen times between the ages of 12 and 14. It is one of the books that has meant the most to me in my life. A flawed book, a product of its time, certainly. But there is a thread of gold in that book that shines through on every page.
I still maintain that TKaM is the greatest work in the history of American literature.
And while the movie is fairly faithful to the book, it also cuts a lot out. So if you like the movie, there’s more where that came from.
For a long time I assumed she died before I was even born. She seemed to be from such a distant era.
We read To Kill A Mockingbird in High School, but I lived in rural 1980s New Zealand so the themes did not resonate with me. I really didn’t get it.
Anyway, as someone said here when it happened, I wish they hadn’t released that second book; it ruined her mystique.