Okay, things are getting somewhat heated in this thread so I’d just like to take a moment to remind you all that the Internet is serious business.
That being said, I didn’t even know that Harper Lee was still alive. o_o;
This is nonsense. I, for one, read plenty of works online that are not either purely technical nor purely news-and-entertainment (as if there were ever a difference in the mainstream media) nor purely message board posts. I have, for example, read a good deal of George Orwell’s essays (all that I can find) online, in addition to other works in the public domain offered from Project Gutenberg sites both in America and abroad (mainly Australia).
You can make the claim that nobody reads literature online, but it would be factually wrong.
To paraphrase Will Rogers, all I know is what I read on the Internet.
So if you don’t want people to misinterpret you, Ogre, write different words. All I’m getting from the ones you used here is that you haven’t learned anything from your experiences.
And of course Lee is cranky. Hell, I’m a generation younger and I’m cranky. And with good reason, from everything I read here. 
I said precisely what I meant, and have not changed my stance at all. Reading/comprehension is a two way street, bud.
Right…so why should she feel that the minds of today are more empty than those of her day?
Damn straight.
I’m 34 and cranky as all hell, so that part I understand.
It has always been the case that many people didn’t read.
I’d like to see some actual evidence that people today read less than they used to. As long as it’s purely anecdotal, I don’t believe it.
Plus, keep in mind that reading is what we are doing here. Right now. As you read my post. If you want to make a distinction between reading that “matters” and reading that “does not matter”, that is a much larger debate and not, I think, one that we will ever resolve. Just keep in mind that there is nothing magical about books.
There is no “more” in that statement. She says minds are empty today. She makes no comment that minds were not empty in the past. She IMPLIES it, but I haven’t read the full text of the letter for context either…it may be there, it may not be.
“I, for one” is the operative phrase here. You are not the norm in the U.S. I already said “some” people do use the computer in place of a book or periodical to accomplish their leisure reading. It is not SOP by any stretch of the imagination.
Books, on the whole, represent the leisure reading (novels, specifically) that is generally not accessed on line. Of course the internet provides a form of leisure reading, but the art form of the novel is generally accessed in the form of a portable book. I want to reiterate that I’m talking about the art of the novel and not other forms of leisure reading. It’s a completely different experience and benefit. And I believe our society has traded this benefit for the quick-fix entertainment that is inherent in electronic media. If you don’t fall into this category (and I believe most Dopers don’t), good for you. But I think a lot of people in the modern world are missing out on the mental and emotional exercise that comes with curling up with a good novel.
When does “O” hit the stands? Also, do they have a free on-line version? The only time I ever read it is at the dentist’s office, and actually, I like this magazine quite a bit. I may even buy one if I can’t get the article for free.
Mrs. Pete happened to bring this magazine home yesterday, and remembering this thread I picked it up. I was pretty non-plussed by Harper Lee’s letter. Ok, she reads a lot and has since she was a kid. Whatever.
What irritated me was that a notoriously reclusive literary figure chooses to unburden herself to Oprah. OPRAH.
What’s next? Thomas Pynchon gives TV Guide an exclusive interview? A heartfelt, soul-searching interview with J.D. Salinger in People? Sheesh!
They may be friends? Oprah knows a lot of people. And Harper Lee strikes me as someone who would only be doing this as a favor to a friend seeing as she’s been living a quiet life all these years. I dunno…could be.
I don’t have a cite, but it has always been my understanding that the Victorians thought that if you didn’t use your brain, you “lost it”. Long poems were memorized, complicated long division was done in your head etc. Novels were chopped up and published serially in magazines and newspapers-mostly to sell these products, but also there was a demand for it. Maybe it’s all urban legend, but I thought that people would walk miles to see a play or hear a concert back then. Not everyone, but to do so was seen as a way of bettering yourself and it was admired and tolerated, if not encouraged.
I know Lee is not Victorian–but IMO, that attitude lingered for some time–even into rural Depression era South (I say this because my mother was raised in rural, depressed Southern culture). Time was when people aspired to not only be entertained by books, but to learn from them–not neccessarily factual content, but moral and cultural values as well. Look at the scorn heaped on the novel as a literary device when it first became popular–people were up in arms because novels weren’t seen as edifying. Reading novels would lead to loose behavior, especially in females. Sermons were published, as were speeches–and these were read and discussed.
The thought was that a person should be trying to better him or herself, through exposure to Culture and Art via Literature. Sure there were plenty of people reading pulp and comics (and some of those comics would read like Shakespeare compared to some of the shite out there today)–but Literature was valued and respected.
I can’t speak for Ms Lee, but IMO I think that is what she is trying to get at. It seems to me that any fool with a self help idea or a strange set of circumstances in their life can get published. It is hard to find decent, literate fiction sometimes. Perhaps Ms Lee was just deploring the dumbing down of the novel as well as most reading today. Check out a newspaper–journalists tend to write in sentence fragments, more so now than they did even 20 years ago.
Cranky old coot? Maybe–I haven’t read the rest of the letter. But to me, Ms Lee has a point. Frankly, just because you can read doesn’t make you literate. To me, it’s more about wanting to open your mind to new ideas that an author poses, to enter into worlds strange to you and learn about them, and yourself. To me, there is reading and there is reading. YMMV.
Can you think of any single person today who has done more to encourage people to read good books? A few authors whose books have been on her book club list: Toni Morrison, John Steinbeck, Maya Angelou, Isabel Allende, Joyce Carol Oates, Jonathan Franzen, Alan Paton, Carson McCullers, Leo Tolstoy, Pearl S. Buck, William Faulkner, Elie Wiesel.
Hundreds of thousands of copies of those books are sold as soon as they are discussed on her television show. I never thought I’d walk through the book section of Sam’s Club and find Anna Karenina, but thanks to Oprah it was there.
Very well-put. This is pretty much what I’ve been trying (rather clumsily) to say. There are certain things about people and life and the human condition that cannot be learned through a list of facts. When an artist is able to assemble an idea in a thought-provoking and artistic way, it is truly a beautiful thing. It can enrich your life in a way facts or straight reporting cannot.
I usually don’t post, but I wanted to thank Ogre for starting a great post as well as the other posters for contributing. There are so many issues this post addresses such as, literacy in America, the contributions of Harper Lee to literacy, why people read, whether people who were brought up after the 1950s are capable of understanding a pre-informational age society, whether Lee could have written a more thoughful piece given her self-imposed seclusion, etc. I could easily write several pages in response, but I will try to keep it brief.
To Kill a Mockingbird (“TKM”) is one of my favorite books (along with A Prayer for Owen Meany, which I read because of the Straight Dope, so thanks to those out there who mentioned it in other threads). I haven’t read TKM since junior high in 1988/89, where it was required reading in Alabama. The book was significant to me because it addressed social issues that the school system and my family did not want to talk about. I could relate to Scout. Like Scout, I was a girl growing up in Alabama who was missing a parental figure (my father). Atticus Finch answered questions that my mother did not know how to answer.
Unlike Scout, who grew up in an affluent, albeit rural, lifestyle, none of my family members went college. My mom and her siblings, except for her twin who had polio, graduated from high school. To my knowledge, the generations before her did not graduate high school. My grandmother worked in the cotton mill before she married my granddad. He worked in the steel industry. Why do I bring this up? Although my family was poor and living in Alabama, they read. I think children would read more if their parents read more and if schools focused on comprehension.
I am not a big fan of the Accelerated Reader program that a lot of schools are using now. How can you enjoy reading if you are expected to spout out meaningless facts? For example, “What kind of car did Gatsby drive?” He drove a Rolls Royce, but I missed that question because I had never seen one (okay, I had seen one in a commercial about excise tax. My mom drove a Pinto. I didn’t know anything about fancy cars, so I answered the questioned “he drove the car that is mentioned in the excise tax commercial”).
Teachers need to find ways to make books relevant to children. If all they do is have children answer questions from a computer program, then children may not understand why the fact was important. For example, the teacher could have talked about the significance of driving a Rolls Royce during the Great Depression. Think about all the great book discussions are on the dope. Think of all the fan fiction that is out there. There is more to reading than reciting answers to trivial questions.
Oh, for those who may not know, there is a new book out called Mockingbird : A Portrait of Harper Lee, written by Charles J. Shields. It’s an unauthorized biography. I haven’t read it yet (I’m on the reserve list at the library), but according to the review in the *The Tennessean *, the book addressed the issue of whether Truman Capote wrote the book. Shields does not doubt that Lee wrote Mockingbird. In fact, he believes that Lee contributed more to In Cold Blood than Capote would like to admit—especially in regard to characterization.
Just saw this interview with 74-year-old John Updike in the June 5, 2006 Time magazine:
You know, it may be crazy, but I’m beginning to think there might be something to this!