Harper Lee's Words to Reporter: 'Go Away!'

Here is a little Saturday morning bit of news about the acclaimed literary recluse, Harper Lee.

Lee, of  To Kill A Mockingbird fame, has been in the spotlight perhaps more than she'd like recently.  Last month, her publisher announced that a prequel to her classic titled Go Set a Watchman will publish later this year.  It is narrated by an adult Scout.

The Alleged Book Cover

 The announcement was a surprise to Lee's fans, as she has stated for decades that she doesn't plan to release another novel.

It also has also spurred a resurgent interest in Lee, who appears to decline contact with journalists on principle. But that hasn't kept some from trying. While most attempts to reach out result in crickets, one Alabama reporter finally got a written response from Lee: his crumpled letters, with "Go away!" scrawled across them.

Connor Sheets, a reporter for Al.com wrote: 

I hoped she would confirm that she is in fact lucid and fully in control of the destiny of Go Set a Watchman...I hoped she would help clear up all the questions the world has been waiting to have answered about the circumstances of the book's planned release. [...] It appears that Nelle, as her friends call her, is very much with it, that she is still lucid and that her acerbic, press-averse side is fully intact

To Kill a Mockingbird: Young Adult or Adult Fiction and Does it Matter?

Harper Lee's classic, To Kill a Mockingbird, is an American classic.  It is part of the fabric, the persona of this nation.  When, dear reader, did you first experience Ms. Lee's book?

Harper Lee
Rob Carr (AP Photo)

In Marja Mills’ The Mockingbird Next Door: Life With Harper Lee, the reclusive author of American essential To Kill a Mockingbird talks more freely than she has previously about her life through her friendship with Mills, a journalist from The Chicago Tribune.  The book, however, is unauthorized.  Ms. Lee states:

As long as I am alive, any book purporting to be with my cooperation is a falsehood.

Mills recorded a conversation with Lee who wrote: “She said she felt lucky Mockingbird was published when it was. Much later, and it might have been classified as young adult fiction and never reached the audience, and all the adults, it did.”

Young adult fiction has been a hot topic lately, with the success of John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars reaching a mainstream audience through things like a New Yorker profile and a hit movie adaptation. 

If To Kill a Mockingbird had been released even ten years later, it probably would have been sold as a kids’ book.  If it were released now, there’s a chance it would even be marketed as middle grade. In fact, Scout, the narrator is looking back on her life as a ten-year-old child.