The initial thing that occurs to me is that so far, 3 out of 3, these novels have sucked me in pretty quickly. Oddly enough it isn't for the reason that modern "writing experts" proclaim. I've read enough issues of Writer's Digest to know that the single most important thing to hook a reader is an exciting first sentence. Even the first word has to grab the reader, the first paragraph, the first chapter all has to be perfectly tuned to grip the reader by the throat and throw them into the rest of your novel. It's perplexing to me, in a sort of round about way, that so many classics don't sink their hooks in you from the beginning.
"Call me Ishmael."
"It is a truth universally acknowledged that..."
"When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow."
It doesn't exactly create the sense of "Wait, WHAT? I have to read more!" that all of my writing teachers in college demanded of me. I guess I'm in good company because in my writing I won't force a "perfect hook" first sentence. I'll usually get you by the end of the first chapter though, and that's what these classics have been very good at.
To Kill a Mockingbird takes place in the sleepy little town of Mayberry...sorry, I mean Maycomb. Honestly it may as well be Mayberry it's so delightfully small and idyllic in a retro fashion.
Harper Lee supports her setting with such appropriate usages of language and anecdotes that even my mental reading voice is using a southern drawl. It's so pitch perfect that you don't for a moment question that this town exists nor that it is Ms. Lee's actual experience. One of my favorite things about going back east to visit my relatives in West Virginia is because of language. In fact it is where I first discovered just how delighted I could be by language.
I often relate the story of a time when we visited my Grandaddy and Granny one year. Often the menfolk and womenfolk would separate to talk about things. I was mostly raised by my mother, because my father was in the military and I was homeschooled for a good half of my "learnin'" years, and as such when the separation of the group along gender lines occurred I often hung back with my mother. This allowed me to be privy to all of the good gossip and cooking tips, the later of which set a part of the course for my life.
One year, however, I realized that at some point I had "grown up". I was told, not invited - told, by my father that I was to join the menfolk out on the patio. It was my dad, grandaddy, my crazy uncle Gary, and myself sitting out on the plastic patio furniture on plastic covered cushions. There was an awkward pause as everyone kind of settled in and searched for something to talk about.
Now, talking in the south is not like talking in most places. It's almost a leisure sport. One person, usually the eldest, begins the cycle.
"Went down to the Kroger the other day and got a watermelon they had on special (pronounced spay-shoo) for 99 cents a pound," my grandaddy started it off.
"99 cents a pound?" everyone took a turn saying.
"Yeah. Pretty good for 99 cents a pound," he responded.
The conversation takes another turn towards a secondary topic. A few sentences are said on another topic and then there's another pause before the first topic is folded back into the mix.
"99 cents a pound. Man. I can't imagine it was all that good for 99 cents a pound," my uncle would declare.
"Yeah. Yeah, it was pretty good," Grandaddy reassured.
"And you said you got it on special down at the Kroger?"
"Yeah. 99 cents a pound on special."
A third topic is then brought up, The second topic is then revisited followed by the first.
"Well, I better get on down to the Kroger later to get me some of that watermelon. 99 cents a pound?"
"Yeah, on special. 99 cents a pound. I got it at the Kroger over on that corner down there, but I expect they've got the sale anywhere."
It goes on from there, topic after topic folding back in on themselves til the end of time if you let them, I'm sure. Discovering this delighted me, and now when I'm around groups of people I pay attention to what they are saying it, how they are relating and so on. It delights me to see how these little "conversation fractals work out. Harper Lee's conversations are amazing to watch, from stories about the county's colorful past to Scout's conversations/conflicts with the big city trained teacher.
These stories and word choices give the whole thing an authenticity that can't be fabricated.
"...but they were Haverfords, in Maycomb County a name synonymous with jackass. The Haverfords ahd dispatched Maycomb's leading blacksmith in a misunderstanding arising from the alleged wrongful detention of a mare, were imprudent enough to do it in the presence of three witnesses, and insisted that the son-of-a-bitch-had-it-coming-to-him was a good enough defense for anybody."
Her description of Maycomb is nearly poetry for someone like me,
"Somehow it was hotter then: a black dog suffered on a summer's day; bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering shad of the live oaks on the square. Men's stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o'clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum."
Talk about some great writing. It evokes a similar mood and poetry as Ray Bradbury in Something Wicked This Way Comes, which is one of the few books I regard highly enough to read every year.
The Radley place is introduced as the creepy house down the street that everyone is familiar with as a child. "Radley pecans would kill you. A baseball hit into the Radley yard was a lost ball and no questions asked." I particularly love Dill's fascination with it. "In spite of our warnings and explanations it drew him as the moon draws water, but drew him no nearer than the light-pole on the corner, a safe distance from the Radley gate."
I was surprised at how quickly the scissor stabbing incident is mentioned. There is a lot of this that I couldn't remember here in the first third. Which means I performed an amazing display for the teacher. If that was during my homeschooling years...Mom...I'm sorry.
Scout is so amazing as a character. I totally understand why Dill asks her to marry him. When she grows up I imagine men will be falling all over each other for the chance to marry this vibrant, outspoken, "ballsy" woman. Well, I forget that these are qualities I enjoy in women and not all men do. I particularly loved how when Dill, her childhood fiance, starts paying more attention to Jem instead of her she say "I beat him up to twice to remind him, but it did no good".
Her confrontations with Miss Caroline are hilarious. It's funny to see the mentality of "You need to let teachers be the teachers and parents should have nothing to do with your education" back then. This refrain is heard in modern times in Common Core classrooms. A 6 year old who can read? I say more power to her instead of "hold her back, hold her down and force her to unlearn it." She has a particularly trying first day of school and the rest don't fare much better.
"Indeed, they were an endless Project that slowly evolved into a Unit, in which miles of construction paper and wax crayon were expended by the state of Alabama in its well-meaning but fruitless efforts to teach me Group Dynamics".
I do have a faint memory of the treasures found in the knot hole of the tree near the Radley house. That's such a fabulous little detail. I loved how it takes Scout nearly a half hour to be sure, through different child rituals, that the gum wasn't going to poison her. Child is full of these hilarious little rituals and superstitions. Oh, and summer. Do you remember how important summer was? Oh, this book gives me an ache for those times.
"Summer was our best season; it was sleeping on the back screened porch in cots, or trying to sleep in the treehouse; summer was everything good to eat; it was a thousand colors in a parched landscape.."
*sigh* I know it would horribly affect our GDP, but couldn't we just take a national holiday from work for the months of summer? I crave having three months off to do as I please so very much. Well, I guess it would help if I also had someone to cook my food, do my laundry, and take care of me when I fell out of a tree and into a patch of Devil's Club as well.
Uncle Jack reminds me very clearly of my own "Crazy Uncle" Gary.
"We saw Uncle Jack every Christmas, and every Christmas he yelled across the street for Miss Maudie to come marry him. Miss Maudie would yell back, 'Call a little louder, Jack Finch, and they'll hear you at the post office, I haven't heard you yet!' Jem and I thought this a strange way to ask for a lady's hand in marriage, but then Uncle Jack was rather strange."
I swear I've met Miss Maudie while visiting West Virginia the few times that I did.
"True enough, she had an acid tongue in her head, and she did not go about the neighborhood doing good, as Miss Stephanie Crawford. But while no one with a grain of sense trusted Miss Stephanie, Jem and I had considerable faith in Miss Maudie. She never told on us, had never played cat-and-mouse with us, she was not at all interested in our private lives. She was our friend."
There is so much in her to love that recalls our own childhoods...well, at least mine. I grew up in Alaska and was allowed to run free and wild. I wonder what city folk think of the novel. Personally, I've always had the pleasure to be around blue collars and red necks. To me it has been a pleasure to not grow up "citified", though I live there now. I'm fairly certain that they saw me as citified though I was born and bred a military brat. I never saw a reason to despise them, as I saw some do in public schools. I didn't understand what was so bad about being the son of a "Dock Rat" or "Oilfield Trash" or any epithet they put to traditional red necks. Maybe it was because my own mother grew up on a farm, but I thought they were some of the most interesting and noble jobs out there and I still do. It doesn't take much to get me on my soapbox about how everything we own, and everything we put in our mouths was made possible by someone with a blue collar or a red neck. I'll take a farmer over a big city...anything any day. I could get into a few more facets of that, but then I'd never get back to the story.
Two things left that I want to get to and then I have some cleaning to attend to:
1) Harper Lee really knows how to make things at once both creepy and heartwarming. When scout rolls down the hill, slams into the steps of the Radley house and she hears laughter behind the door; depending on your disposition towards Boo that's creepy or heartwarming. Boo stepping out of the house to put a blanket around Scout's shoulders and then disappearing could be either. She nudges it over into creepy territory constantly but holds that line masterfully.
2) I'm admiring how much of the surrounding story is filtering through. She brings up bits and pieces of conversations that Scout remembers but didn't understand at the time. For instance the only time she ever heard Atticus speak tersely with someone was when she heard him tell his sister he was doing the best they can for them. It is so accurate to what childhood is like. Children are around adults all the time and not necessarily paying attention to a full conversation but they do when their parent starts acting emotionally. My own daughter often stores things away that I've forgotten about and a year or so later she'll say, "Oh, that's what you were talking about!" It's a trick I'm going to need to steal from Ms. Lee. :)
Things get serious near the end of this first third. Atticus takes a case for a colored man and is accused of being a "nigger lover" so much so that Scout is driven to defend his honor. Through an odd series of events Atticus is compelled to shoot a mad dog wandering through the town. I'm pretty sure this is a foreshadowing of something coming that will be more than a bit tragic.
Pax,
W
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