The Real Author of To Kill a Mockingbird

Cross-posted from Project Mockingbird.

When you get right down to it, what is popular is not always right. And what is right is not always popular. - Anonymous



I.

From reading To Kill A Mockingbird, which is my mother's favourite book, this is the lesson I learned above all.

Ms. Lee's book is so smartly written that I find it difficult to believe that Truman Capote could have possibly written it. Lee's style and Capote's style, while similar, were very different. And I can also understand how Ms. Lee found it rather offensive to think she was merely Capote's surrogate and secondary to his shining talent.

But Capote is a classic example of Icarus. He flew too high. Like in the tale of Greek mythology, his waxen wings melted in the sun, the ordeal,and the trial he faced in writing In Cold Blood ultimately ruined him. This was especially evident in the movie Capote. Indeed, looking at his later works, you see a man who was both destroyed by his greatness and whose zealous crusade to unearth the truth left him little more than a chariacture of his former self. After writing his magnum opus, Capote was good for a few half-hearted pieces in magazines, the talk show circuit, and was probably the best known openly homosexual male in the world for many years. But by the end, he was arguably little more than a joke.

As he himself pointed out, "we all know that a fag is just a homosexual gentleman who has just left the room".

As Oscar Wilde said, rather pointedly, "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars".

At what price, greatness?

II.

As the film Twenty-Four Hour Party People, released in the UK back in the mid-90s, when I was last across the pond points out (and I'm paraphrasing), echoing what I have said,

It's like Icarus. It works on two levels. If you get the first one, then that's great. But if you get the second, well, you should probably read more.


III.

Meanwhile, Harper Lee wrote one book, a masterpiece, and is remembered all around the world, but particularly in the American south as a champion of women's rights, civil rights, and for making a stand against all odds. Sometimes the best artists are those who release one masterpiece and step away from the table, take their winnings, collect their chips, and go home.

If one contemplates other artists, there are those who stay too long and tarnish their former greatness by their later mediocrity. The Beatles broke up when they were at their apex of success, thus preserving their legacy of greatness forever. Their solo careers proved that they were a band in the very truest form of the phrase. They were four guys, as John Lennon said, who made it very very big. But they also had enough sense to know when to call it quits and be remembered by the brilliance they as a group accomplished together, not individually the pathetic burning embers of how they used to be.

That is the challenge that faces every artist. Sell out, or stay pure. Stay with your heart, or sell out for riches. And how difficult it is, my children, for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God.

Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God.

IV.


If we want to have an argument about who shot who, or who said this, where, and when and who and how, we can do that.

If we want to split hairs or kill mockingbirds, we can do that, if we so desire.

We can do that.

But if we do.

NOTHING WILL CHANGE.

And we'll be having the same discussion next year, and the next year, and the next year, and the next year.

As I have mentioned before, brothers and sisters, the Kingdom of God is within you. You are your own salvation, but salvation goes beyond what we can prove factually. There is an element of mystery present in our daily lives and those of us who want to be Doubting Thomas will always inquire for the nail marks in the hands or the place where the Roman spear pierced Jesus's side.

We can do that.

But if we do.

NOTHING WILL CHANGE.

There is a world beyond us. I do believe there is a God above. I do believe that there is something beyond who we are.

Everything happens for a reason. Call it Providence, call it what you will. I may have risen from the ashes like the Phoenix, but I know that the people will live on, as Carl Sandburg put it. I know that Atticus Finch in all his many incarnations will live on. There will be good people who cannot be bought and sold like chattle.

But there will always be mockingbirds, too.

Let us cultivate our garden community. Let us strive to think communally for the greater good first, not for selfish whims first.

V.

Als die Nazis die Kommunisten holten,
habe ich geschwiegen;
ich war ja kein Kommunist.

Als sie die Sozialdemokraten einsperrten,
habe ich geschwiegen;
ich war ja kein Sozialdemokrat.

Als sie die Gewerkschafter holten,
habe ich nicht protestiert;
ich war ja kein Gewerkschafter.

Als sie mich holten,
gab es keinen mehr, der protestierte.


When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I wasn't a Jew.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out

Martin Niemöller