# Harper Lee writes article for Oprah. **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 27, 2006, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harper-lee-writes-article-for-oprah/362308 "2006-06-27T03:24:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Kalhoun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/3bc359/32.png) [@Kalhoun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kalhoun)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2006, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harper-lee-writes-article-for-oprah/362308/21 "2006-06-27T13:46:42Z")
Well, I have to agree with her to a degree. People used to read for entertainment purposes primarily. There weren’t movie theaters, televisions, video games, computers, telephones to occupy their free time and cultivate their imaginations. Books were everyman’s escape. “Kids today” are entertained via a multitude of electronic sources. I know many adults who read only informational materials; they simply cannot be entertained by a book. I also know lots of people, young and old, who don’t read at all. It IS sad. ---
**Author:** ![Askia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/96bed5/32.png) [@Askia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askia)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2006, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harper-lee-writes-article-for-oprah/362308/22 "2006-06-27T13:54:46Z")
> [@Ogre](#): > > Quite. However, you come in with thinly veiled insults, don’t be surprised if you get them right back in the teeth. Bless your heart. ---
**Author:** ![Gangster\_Octopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a8b319/32.png) [@Gangster\_Octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gangster_Octopus)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2006, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harper-lee-writes-article-for-oprah/362308/23 "2006-06-27T14:52:49Z")
OK, so Harper Lee wrote “To Kill a Mockingbird” and what else has she done? I am not being flip, I seriously don’t know. (Oh, I know she knew Truman Capote) ---
**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2006, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harper-lee-writes-article-for-oprah/362308/24 "2006-06-27T14:54:37Z")
> [@Kalhoun](#): > > Well, I have to agree with her to a degree. People used to read for entertainment purposes primarily. There weren’t movie theaters, televisions, video games, computers, telephones to occupy their free time and cultivate their imaginations. Books were everyman’s escape. “Kids today” are entertained via a multitude of electronic sources. I know many adults who read only informational materials; they simply cannot be entertained by a book. I also know lots of people, young and old, who don’t read at all. It IS sad. Yeah, but people worked a _lot_ more. I am not sure there was all that much time for reading in the life of “everyman” prior to the turn of the century. ---
**Author:** ![Askia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/96bed5/32.png) [@Askia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askia)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2006, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harper-lee-writes-article-for-oprah/362308/25 "2006-06-27T15:28:14Z")
> [@Manda JO](#): > > Yeah, but people worked a _lot_ more. I am not sure there was all that much time for reading in the life of “everyman” prior to the turn of the century. The era Harper Lee referred to was her Southern childhood during the Depression in the 1930s, not the turn of the century. People not only treasured books because of the scarcity of other entertainment and diversions, but because books, pulps, newspapers, magazines and comics were the only affordable, portable, home-based mass entertainment mediums. ---
**Author:** ![Lissa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/85f322/32.png) [@Lissa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lissa)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2006, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harper-lee-writes-article-for-oprah/362308/26 "2006-06-27T15:41:38Z")
> [@Gangster Octopus](#): > > OK, so Harper Lee wrote “To Kill a Mockingbird” and what else has she done? I am not being flip, I seriously don’t know. (Oh, I know she knew Truman Capote) I personally like the conspiracy theory that Capote really wrote TKAM, regardless if it’s true or not. ---
**Author:** ![DxZero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@DxZero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DxZero)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2006, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harper-lee-writes-article-for-oprah/362308/27 "2006-06-27T15:46:29Z")
> [@Lissa](#): > > I personally like the conspiracy theory that Capote really wrote TKAM, regardless if it’s true or not. I kind of like that theory too(being the conspiracy theorist that I am), except Capote would have had to change his writing and pacing style completely. I like to think of those things as being similar to fingerprints. Everyone’s is different. ---
**Author:** ![Askia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/96bed5/32.png) [@Askia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askia)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2006, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harper-lee-writes-article-for-oprah/362308/28 "2006-06-27T15:47:25Z")
> [@Gangster Octopus](#): > > OK, so Harper Lee wrote “To Kill a Mockingbird” and what else has she done? I am not being flip, I seriously don’t know. (Oh, I know she knew Truman Capote) She immortalized Truman Capote as Scout and Jem’s childhood companion Dill and, as an adult, worked with Capote compiling the information he needed to write _In Cold Blood_ and acting as his beard as a cover for his homosexuality. Like Ralph Ellison and a handful of other American authors, her entire literary reputation lies on basically one award-winning book. Her first novel was an immediate and seminal best-seller and won the freaking Pulitzer. She’d started at least two other novels and never completed them. I suspect that once she dies, (again, like Ralph Ellison’s _Juneteenth_, Franz Kafka’s works and most of the works of poet Emily Dickinson) her incomplete works will be published posthumously. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2006, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harper-lee-writes-article-for-oprah/362308/29 "2006-06-27T16:15:12Z")
**Ogre** , just for curiosity’s sake: how old are you? ---
**Author:** ![Ogre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ecb155/32.png) [@Ogre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ogre)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2006, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harper-lee-writes-article-for-oprah/362308/30 "2006-06-27T16:25:15Z")
1. Why? ---
**Author:** ![Ogre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ecb155/32.png) [@Ogre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ogre)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2006, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harper-lee-writes-article-for-oprah/362308/31 "2006-06-27T16:28:18Z")
> [@Askia](#): > > Bless your heart. Yawn. You most definitely _don’t_ have the touch for that particular subtle insult. ---
**Author:** ![Kalhoun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/3bc359/32.png) [@Kalhoun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kalhoun)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2006, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harper-lee-writes-article-for-oprah/362308/32 "2006-06-27T16:30:26Z")
> [@Askia](#): > > She immortalized Truman Capote as Scout and Jem’s childhood companion Dill and, as an adult, worked with Capote compiling the information he needed to write _In Cold Blood_ and acting as his beard as a cover for his homosexuality. > > Like Ralph Ellison and a handful of other American authors, her entire literary reputation lies on basically one award-winning book. Her first novel was an immediate and seminal best-seller and won the freaking Pulitzer. She’d started at least two other novels and never completed them. I suspect that once she dies, (again, like Ralph Ellison’s _Juneteenth_, Franz Kafka’s works and most of the works of poet Emily Dickinson) her incomplete works will be published posthumously. I know this happens periodically, but exactly how do you publish an unfinished book? Does someone ghost it in? Do you edit it to the point where it is no longer what the author had intended? How is this done? ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Borgia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/larry_borgia/32/156_2.png) [@Larry\_Borgia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Borgia)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2006, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harper-lee-writes-article-for-oprah/362308/33 "2006-06-27T16:33:07Z")
> [@Gangster Octopus](#): > > OK, so Harper Lee wrote “To Kill a Mockingbird” and what else has she done? I am not being flip, I seriously don’t know. (Oh, I know she knew Truman Capote) As Jonathan Yardley said about Fred Exley, “There’s no shame in being a one book author.” As for the OP, what’s the point of being an old person if you can’t denounce those goddam kids? [sub]Shouldn’t this be in the pit?[/sub] ---
**Author:** ![Askia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/96bed5/32.png) [@Askia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askia)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2006, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harper-lee-writes-article-for-oprah/362308/34 "2006-06-27T17:03:21Z")
> [@Ogre](#): > > Yawn. You most definitely _don’t_ have the touch for that particular subtle insult. Son – when you can’t tell the difference between earnestness and facetiousness, the fault lies with your inexperience and upbringing, not my deftness or skill. ---
**Author:** ![Ogre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ecb155/32.png) [@Ogre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ogre)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2006, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harper-lee-writes-article-for-oprah/362308/35 "2006-06-27T17:04:33Z")
Well, it was only supposed to be a mild vent directed toward on of my favorite authors who said something ignorant and insulting. But it appears that there are some folks here that are shocked (shocked!) that I’d have the temerity to call her on something tht is obviously untrue. So maybe I should have put it in the Pit. Dunno. ---
**Author:** ![Interrobang](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/interrobang/32/17463_2.png) [@Interrobang](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Interrobang)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2006, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harper-lee-writes-article-for-oprah/362308/36 "2006-06-27T17:13:28Z")
> [@Kalhoun](#): > > I know many adults who read only informational materials; they simply cannot be entertained by a book. I also know lots of people, young and old, who don’t read at all. It IS sad. Speaking as someone who reads lots of books, I have to ask in all seriousness, why is that _sad_, instead of just different? I love reading, I want my daughter to read for fun, but if people are watching television or seeing movies or otherwise being entertained narrative art that’s about as good as the books they could be reading, what’s the big deal? ---
**Author:** ![Askia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/96bed5/32.png) [@Askia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askia)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2006, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harper-lee-writes-article-for-oprah/362308/37 "2006-06-27T17:25:02Z")
> [@Kalhoun](#): > > I know this happens periodically, but exactly how do you publish an unfinished book? Does someone ghost it in? Do you edit it to the point where it is no longer what the author had intended? How is this done? It’s done in all kinds of ways, basically. Unless you have legally and explicitedly prevented your heirs from doing so, your inheritors have the right to do whatever they want with the works you leave behind: donate them to academia, sell them outright for undisclosed sums, destroy them, edit them, authorize sequels – whatever. So someone may opt to ghostwrite and illustrate, say, Hal Foster’s _Prince Valiant_. Or Charles Schulz’s children can draft papers preventing Universal Press Syndicate from ever having anyone continue _Peanuts_ after their dad’s death. Or the executors of an author’s estate can give permission for editors to commission another writer to go over notes and provide an ending to an incomplete story, as was done with _Juneteenth._ Or an author’s family member can pitch a story idea to an editor, and then step up to complete a story idea or write a sequel for a book (or series) their departed started (as when Robert O’Brian’s daughter wrote the sequel to _Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH_.) ---
**Author:** ![Sarahfeena](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sarahfeena/32/519_2.png) [@Sarahfeena](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sarahfeena)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2006, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harper-lee-writes-article-for-oprah/362308/38 "2006-06-27T17:26:48Z")
> [@Kalhoun](#): > > I know this happens periodically, but exactly how do you publish an unfinished book? Does someone ghost it in? Do you edit it to the point where it is no longer what the author had intended? How is this done? I think it depends on how finished it is, doesn’t it? Like, if it’s a full manuscript, but it was not edited or considered “finished” by the author, they will just clean it up a little and publish it. On the other hand, if it is really incomplete, for instance, it doesn’t have an ending, they sometimes will have someone put an ending on it. I think one of Hemingway’s books was finished this way by one of his sons, but I can’t think of which book it was. ---
**Author:** ![Ogre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ecb155/32.png) [@Ogre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ogre)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2006, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harper-lee-writes-article-for-oprah/362308/39 "2006-06-27T17:27:06Z")
> [@Askia](#): > > Son – when you can’t tell the difference between earnestness and facetiousness, the fault lies with your inexperience and upbringing, not my deftness or skill. Don’t hide behind false facetiousness. We’re having a discussion here, which you have not addressed in any meaningful way, except to attempt to needle me about my language, my experience, and my upbringing. You have completely avoided actually addressing whether you think she’s right, and why. You have merely provided a few blurbs of unimportant historical factoids relating to her Pulitzer Prize, and have flung a few silly insults my way. So spare me the “I was just funnin’” riff and answer the OP. By the way, this > [@](#): > > The era Harper Lee referred to was her Southern childhood during the Depression in the 1930s, not the turn of the century. People not only treasured books because of the scarcity of other entertainment and diversions, but because books, pulps, newspapers, magazines and comics were the only affordable, portable, home-based mass entertainment mediums. is an good try, and I know 1930’s rural Alabama was no beacon of civilization, but Monroeville has had a public lending library since 1927. She had access to books. Probably quite a lot of them. Kudos to her for making use of the resource. No kudos for her for thinking that intelligence was greater or that people stopped intellectually developing after “her day.” > [@](#): > > Well, I have to agree with her to a degree. People used to read for entertainment purposes primarily. There weren’t movie theaters, televisions, video games, computers, telephones to occupy their free time and cultivate their imaginations. Books were everyman’s escape. “Kids today” are entertained via a multitude of electronic sources. I know many adults who read only informational materials; they simply cannot be entertained by a book. I also know lots of people, young and old, who don’t read at all. It IS sad. In principle, I agree with you, but literacy is much higher today than it was then. I’d bet my last nickel that not only are there more people that read today than did then, but that the percentage of readers in the population is greater today than it was then. Not only that, but now there’s the internet, and most of its content must still be read. ---
**Author:** ![Gangster\_Octopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a8b319/32.png) [@Gangster\_Octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gangster_Octopus)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2006, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harper-lee-writes-article-for-oprah/362308/40 "2006-06-27T17:33:43Z")
> [@Askia](#): > > It’s done in all kinds of ways, basically. Unless you have legally and explicitedly prevented your heirs from doing so, your inheritors have the right to do whatever they want with the works you leave behind: donate them to academia, sell them outright for undisclosed sums, destroy them, edit them, authorize sequels – whatever. So someone may opt to ghostwrite and illustrate, say, Hal Foster’s _Prince Valiant_. Or Charles Schulz’s children can draft papers preventing Universal Press Syndicate from ever having anyone continue _Peanuts_ after their dad’s death. Or the executors of an author’s estate can give permission for editors to commission another writer to go over notes and provide an ending to an incomplete story, as was done with _Juneteenth._ Or an author’s family member can pitch a story idea to an editor, and then step up to complete a story idea or write a sequel for a book (or series) their departed started (as when Robert O’Brian’s daughter wrote the sequel to _Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH_.) Another example is [Poodle Springs](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poodle_Springs), started by Raymond Chandler, starring Philip Marlowe of course, and finished by Robert Parker at the request of the Chandler estate. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harper-lee-writes-article-for-oprah/362308.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harper-lee-writes-article-for-oprah/362308.md?page=3)