I Am Scout (16 page)

Chapter 7

Mockingbird
Takes Off

In Spring 1960, Nelle presented Truman with 150 pages of typed notes organized by topic, including the Landscape, the Crime, Other Members of the Clutter Family, and so on. Truman, feeling expansive as he rested in Spain after several months of working, was in the mood to make one of his gossipy pronouncements, for it was immensely satisfying to him that his student—which is how he regarded Nelle—had written a publishable novel in which he was an important character. He loved the idea. To his society friends, film producer David O. Selznick and his wife, Jennifer Jones, Truman wrote, “On July
11
th [
1960
], Lippincott is publishing a delightful book: TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD by Harper Lee. Get it. It's going to be a great success. In it, I am the character called ‘Dill'—the author being a childhood friend.”
1

Truman, who liked to say he was “as big as a shotgun and just as noisy,” was eager to broadcast that he was a character in a new novel, but his prediction that
To Kill a Mockingbird
would be popular was hardly a guess. During March and April, well before the book reached bookstores, responses from early readers had outstripped all Nelle's expectations. “I sort of hoped that maybe someone would like it enough to give me encouragement. Public encouragement. I hoped for a little.”
2
So far, early signs promised far more than that: the Literary Guild had chosen
To Kill a Mockingbird
as one of its selections, and Reader's Digest for one of its Condensed Books.

In Monroeville, the news of a local girl making good led to an exuberant item in the
Monroe Journal
: “Everybody, but everybody, is looking forward to publication … of Nell [
sic
] Harper Lee's book,
To Kill a Mockingbird
.… It's wonderful. The characters are so well defined, it's crammed and jammed with chuckles, and then there are some scenes that will really choke you up.”
3
Ernestine's Gift Shop, on the town square, scored a coup when the owner announced that Nelle would be holding a book-signing there just as soon as she was back in town.

Within a few weeks after the release of
To Kill a Mockingbird,
in July
1960
, the novel hit both the
New York Times
and the
Chicago Tribune
lists of top
10
bestsellers. Reviewers for major publications found themselves enchanted by it.

“[I]t is pleasing to recommend a book that shows what a novelist can do with familiar situations,” wrote Herbert Mitgang in the
New York Times.
“Here is a storyteller justifying the novel as a form that transcends time and place.” Frank Lyell, in another
New York Times
piece, breathed a sigh of relief that “Maycomb has its share of eccentrics and evil-doers, but Miss Lee has not tried to satisfy the current lust for morbid, grotesque tales of Southern depravity.” The
New York World Telegram
predicted “a bright future beckoning” the author, and the
Tennessee Commercial Appeal
announced the addition of “another new writer to the growing galaxy of Southern novelists.” The
Washington Post
began its review by praising the novel's power to carry a moral theme: “A hundred pounds of sermons on tolerance, or an equal measure of invective deploring the lack of it, will weigh far less in the scale of enlightenment than a mere
18
ounces of new fiction bearing the title
To Kill a Mockingbird
.”
4

Such praise brought Nelle unbroken, dizzying joy. Positive reviews meant that she had talent; she had been right to leave Alabama
10
years earlier and go to New York with the dreamy notion of becoming an author; right to seek out the publishing world; right to quit a low-paying job so she could write full time. And she had proved that she could withstand the rigors of first drafts, criticism, and rewriting without becoming discouraged.

What was happening was that the book had not been dealt a “quick and merciful death,” as Nelle had imagined. In fact, it seemed to have tapped into the important concerns of the era—the growing national interest in civil rights for blacks, the appeal of a life set in simpler times, and the need on the part of Americans to see themselves as justice-loving in the face of Soviet-style communism.
To Kill a Mockingbird
struck a chord with readers.

But the novel's blastoff in the realm of bestsellerdom was not solely the result of penning the right book at the right time. There was another novel published about the South that summer: Leon Odell Griffith's
Seed in the Wind,
about racial tensions in a small southern town. Dismissed as a “dismal book, full of hackneyed situations and characters,” it proposed that integration was punishment for the white man's sins against Negro women.
5
It dropped from sight like a stone, showing that a plotline revolving around race, justice, and civil rights was hardly enough to draw readers, even given the tenor of the times.

*   *   *

Nelle received a torrent of requests for interviews and book-signings. Sacks of fan mail arrived at Lippincott, her publisher. Truman wrote to friends, “Poor thing—she is nearly demented: says she gave up trying to answer her ‘fan mail' when she recieved [
sic
]
62
letters in one day. I wish she could relax and enjoy it more: in this profession it's a long walk between drinks.”
6

Most of the letters lauded the book, but a few were angry. “In this day of mass rape of white women who are not morons, why is it that you young Jewish authors seek to whitewash the situation?” complained a reader. Nelle was tempted to reply, “Dear Sir or Madam, somebody is using your name to write dirty letters. You should notify the F.B.I.” And she planned to sign it, “Harper Levy.”
7

One day, to escape the attention for a few hours, she used the excuse that Tay Hohoff was mad about cats to bring her an abandoned kitten with six toes on its forefeet. Nelle had found the kitten in the basement of her building, cuddled up to the furnace. She named it Shadrach, after the biblical character who endured Nebuchadnezzar's fiery furnace. After delivering it safely to the Hohoff sanctuary, a “beehive of books” scented with the aromas of tobacco and perfume, Nelle sank into a big comfortable chair and muttered, despite the early morning hour, “I
need
a drink. I'm supposed to be at an interview right now.”
8
After she left, Tay and her husband had a good laugh about how their young friend was finding out that literary success was not always what it was cracked up to be.

In September
1960
, with the book selling in the tens of thousands every week, Nelle retreated to Alabama for a book-signing at Capitol News and Book Company in Montgomery. Seated at a table next to a vase of white carnations, with a fresh-cut corsage pinned to her dress, she was the center of attention. Less a literary event than a combination celebration and reunion, the book-signing was an occasion where people “crowded into the bookstore because they saw her picture in the paper, wondered if she were kin to so and so, heard that her book was good, knew her at the University of Alabama, knew someone who used to know her somewhere or had read the book and enjoyed it and came to say so.”
9

Nearby was her father,
81
-year-old Mr. Lee, looking very old as he watched quietly. His wife had been dead for almost a decade. (A. C. Lee himself would die in two years, still working at the firm of Barnett, Bugg & Lee.) His suit vests, once buttoned tightly over a healthy paunch, now hung loose. The knuckles of his right hand turned white when he pressed hard on the crook of his cane to rise from a chair and shake someone's hand.

But Nelle was grateful that her father had lived to witness this triumph. A perceptive newspaper reporter had remarked that
To Kill a Mockingbird
“is written out of Harper Lee's love for the South and Monroeville, but it is also the story of a father's love for his children, and the love they gave in return.”
10
This came nearest to her true reason for writing the novel: it was a tribute to her father. The book's hero, the courageous but humble attorney Atticus Finch, was a portrait of A. C. Lee done in generous, loving strokes.

After a month's respite in Monroeville, Nelle returned to New York, hoping in vain that she could meet the demands the book was creating. But then, seeing there was no end in sight, she rushed off instead to the vacation house in rural Connecticut owned by her agents Annie Laurie and Maurice Crain. Truman, hearing of the effects of celebrity overtaking his friend, noted, “poor darling, she seems to be having some sort of happy nervous-breakdown.”
11

In December
1960
, reviewers' year-end round-ups of the big books of the year ranked Harper Lee's first-ever novel with John Updike's
Rabbit, Run,
John O'Hara's
Sermons and Soda-Water,
James Michener's
Hawaii,
William Shirer's
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
, Allen Drury's
Advise and Consent,
Joy Adamson's
Born Free
, John Hersey's
The Child Buyer,
and John Knowles's
A Separate Peace.

*   *   *

For someone like Nelle, who preferred solitude over parties, observing instead of participating, the onrush of instant celebrity resulting from
To Kill a Mockingbird
imposed a tremendous strain she hadn't expected. Somehow, in the space of a very short time, she had gone from having a private self that she could control to a public persona that she could not. Unlike Truman, for instance, who said, “I always knew that I wanted to be a writer and that I wanted to be rich and famous,” Nelle didn't regard herself as an important person, and the attention being paid to her almost seemed to be happening to someone else.
12
(A revealing moment about her self-perception occurred during an interview with
Newsweek
in the lounge of New York's Algonquin Hotel. Catching sight of Irish playwright Brendan Behan walking by, she confessed, “I've always wanted to meet an author.”)
13

Just as long as the intense attention stayed primarily on the book, she could cope with it. Usually, her quick, folksy wit stood her in good stead during interviews. She was the first to poke fun at her heavy Alabama accent (“If I hear a consonant, I look around”).
14
She deflected seriousness by claiming to be a Whig and believing “in Catholic emancipation and repeal of the Corn Laws,” centuries-old issues in British politics.
15
Even her appearance was not off-limits, within reason; she admitted to being a little heavier than she would like to be (according to a friend, she put herself on a
1
,
000
-calorie-a-day diet of “unpalatable goop”).
16

Periodically, she headed for Maurice and Annie Laurie's home for a rest, or her hometown. And of the two, Monroeville offered the safest harbor. Most reporters and interviewers, after studying maps of Alabama, where two-lane roads meandered like blue and black threads, opted to telephone the Lee residence instead. When the phone rang, often it was Alice who negotiated with the press. (Nelle was too much of a soft touch, in her opinion.)
17
The young author was grateful for her sister's determination that strangers not be allowed to interrupt the family's peace. The world and its demands could wait on the Lees' doorstep. Inside, Nelle liked to curl up with a book. Alice wouldn't even permit a television in the house to disturb the quiet.

When asked for more information about herself, Nelle responded coyly. At Huntingdon College, librarian Leo R. Roberts tried to compile facts about the former student for Nelle's admirers, who were clamoring to know more about the author. Roberts, probably a little frustrated by the scant information about Nelle in Huntingdon's archives, finally wrote to her in January
1961
requesting a summary of her background.

“I'm afraid a biographical sketch of me will be sketchy indeed; with the exception of M'bird, nothing of any particular interest to anyone has happened to me in my thirty-four years,” she replied. After supplying a few details about her family, she deadpanned, “I was exposed to seventeen years of formal education in Monroeville schools, Huntingdon College, and the University of Alabama. If I ever learned anything, I've forgotten it.”
18

*   *   *

The evening after Nelle replied to Roberts at Huntingdon, Annie Laurie called from New York to say she had sold the movie rights to
To Kill a Mockingbird
.

The novel's skyrocketing sales had caught the attention of Hollywood almost immediately, and Annie Laurie, as Nelle's agent for dramatic rights, had been reviewing proposals from filmmakers.

Most offers were from small outfits and partnerships. Major studios passed on the book because
To Kill a Mockingbird
lacked the tried-and-true ingredients that attracted most movie audiences: shoot-'em-up action, a love story, danger, or a clear-cut “bad guy.” In addition, the press had likened
To Kill a Mockingbird
's young narrator, Scout, to preadolescent Frankie in Carson McCullers's
The Member of the Wedding,
and the film version of that novel had flopped. (The surface similarities of the two novels were not lost on McCullers, either, who commented acidly about Nelle to a cousin, “Well, honey, one thing we know is that she's been poaching on my literary preserves.”)
19