Prejudice, and Harper Lee's and Robert Mulligan's To Kill a Mockingbird

Over the holidays I chanced upon the DVD of To Kill a Mockingbird, and although I'd seen the movie before and read the book two or three times, as it's always been a favorite of mine I decided to buy it. At the time I didn't realize that the main theme of the narrative – the obscenity of prejudice – would prove to be so topical this week, when two Englishmen were finally found guilty of a horrific racially motivated murder commited almost two decades previously.

We have fictional, smalltown Maycomb (loosely modeled on Monroeville), Alabama in the Jim Crow era of the early 1930s, and real Eltham, suburb of bigtown London, UK, in the early 1990s. Ostensibly, there are huge differences in time, general culture, etc, and yet I don't see much difference between the poison of Bob Ewell and the poison of Gary Dobson and David Norris.

Disturbingly, Norris, who lived in a £300,000 mansion and whose family had never been short of money in his sixteen years, had rarely left south-east London, and had never been north of the River Thames. Insularity breeds contempt.

To return to Mockingbird, there is of course a parallel narrative that feeds into that of Tom Robinson's toward the end, and just as Robinson is the outsider in the powerful white world of the South, Boo Radley with, to quote Sheriff Heck Tate, 'his shy ways' is very much the white outsider in a more extroverted world he can't fit into.

To Kill a Mockingbird is one of the great novels of 20th century American literature, and the movie – strongly endorsed by Lee – also has a power which, as director Robert Mulligan suggests, it would not have been possible to display in a world fed on MTV, in which many people would be easily bored by the long scenes.

Mulligan made that remark during the Director's Commentary, a special feature on the DVD where he and producer Alan J. Pakula discuss the actors and the events in the film. What I hadn't considered before is that the movie (which in spite of a number of small differences is largely very faithful to the book) is a real oddity as the book is essentially uncinematic, and apart from the courtroom scene the major events take place offstage and we learn of them (the killing of the black Tom Robinson, the killing of of the crazed racist Ewell) secondhand.

Pakula would go on to direct his own films, and a preoccupation with technology is apparent in virtually all of them. This is particularly so with his characters' use of the phone, which is frequently employed as a dramatic device to increase tension, often being the harbinger of important news. But perhaps the Pakula movie that springs to mind most is All the President's Men, with the Watergate tapes which proved so damning to Nixon. Significantly, of course, it was technology in the form of the police bugging of Dobson's flat that helped in bringing (as yet just two of) the murderers of Stephen Lawrence to justice. Technology was a little too primitive in the days when Mockingbird is set, although the insane primitiveness of racial prejudice is still with us.

Mary Dutton: Thorpe (1967)

There are several reasons why I didn't give up on this book: sheer determination, the enticing obscurity of it, and the endearing fact (to me as least) that this is one of those rare animals — an only published novel. It was also something of a discovery, being a Southern book (set in Arkansas, where Dutton was born) of which I was previously unaware.

The single novel element, plus the racial issue and the (eponymous) young female protagonist with a father of great integrity, almost inevitably lead to comparisons with Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird and memories of Scout and Atticus Finch, so it's hardly surprising to read the front page of the dust jacket announcing 'A Story of Innocence and Terror...As memorable as TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD'.

However, although this book is undoubtedly well written, Dutton's novel just doesn't merit any other comparison with Mockingbird: the pace is too slow, the power isn't there, and — crucially — I had (at least until the end) severe problems deciding if race was the main issue, or just family difficulties. It seems to lose its path for a very large number of pages.

The blurb on the rear flap quotes Dutton: 'I think what I was trying to say is that a "little bit" of evil cannot be isolated. It grows and touches, like the rain, both the just and the unjust — those who ignore it and those who are unaware of its existence.' Er, certainly it is clear that racism in the Jim Crow South of the mid-thirties was unavoidable, and that there was much social and often economic pressure for people to at least go through the motions of supporting the Ku Klux Klan. Not too sure about that meteorological analogy though.

On a lighter note, the cow called 'Dammit' is a nice touch, and reminds me of the euphemistically-named dog 'Cough' in Anthony Burgess's Time for a Tiger.

The rear cover tells me that Mary Dutton was born in El Dorado, was living in Borger, Texas at the time of publication, and was a school teacher. I'm not too sure why she published nothing else: as I have a book club edition, and as there are a number of copies of this book for sale online, the suggestion is that it was popular enough. But then, if she took ten years over this, how many would she take to complete the usually difficult second one?

William Lloyd Garrison in Bennington, Vermont: Literary New England #12

'FIFTY FEET WEST OF THIS SPOT

WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON

EDITED

THE JOURNAL OF THE TIMES

OCTOBER 3, 1828 – MARCH 27, 1829[.]

HITHER CAME

BENJAMIN LUNDY DECEMBER 6, 1828

TO ENLIST HIM IN THE CAUSE OF THE SLAVE.

GARRISON DEPARTED HENCE

TO LIFT UP IN BALTIMORE

THE BANNER

OF IMMEDIATE EMANCIPATION'

A detail of the representation of the printing press.

Toward the end of the afternoon we went for a coffee, and saw this mockingbird in the parking lot. The only excuse I have for publishing it here is that I really like it, and that it reminds me of Harper Lee, who reminds me of a number of things.

Monroeville, Alabama: Harper Lee and Truman Capote: Literary Landmarks of the Southern United States, #6

I drive up to the center of this tiny town, right next to the old courthouse – at about 12:00 – although the clocks here say it's 11:00, and I realize that we've crossed from eastern time to central time. Mosquitoes scramble around my legs, and as a result of the havoc they play, later I shall be doomed to wearing long pants and socks from now on, no matter how hot it is.

A young local girl stops her car and says:

'You guys need any help?'

'No thanks, I think we can figure things out'.

'You doin' the town tour?'

'Yeah, if we can work it all out.'

'Awesome! have a great time, y'all!'

I love Americans, I love America, and for a brief time I feel as though I'm on the same planet as others.

The above marker reads:

'The Old Monroe County Courthouse, designed by prominent Southern architect Andrew Bryan, was built between 1903 and 1904 during the tenure of Probate Judge Nicholas Stallworth. One of two buildings of the type designed by Bryan (a sister courthouse in LaGrange, Georgia was destroyed by fire), the architectural style is Romaneque with a Georgian influence [sic.] It was constructed by Louisville, Kentucky contractor M. T. Lewman. The courthouse was the seat of most county offices and the site of court cases until the construction of the new courthouse in 1963. The lasting fame of this building is derived from the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel To Kill a Mockingbird, as well as the motion picture of the same name which features the now-famous courtroom scene. Today this site is on the National Historic register and is a national literary Mecca.'

At the side of the old courthouse is a stone with a marker placed by the Alabama State Bar in 1997. It reads:

'ATTICUS FINCH: LAWYER – HERO

"Lawyers, I suppose, were children once." These words of Charles Lamb are the epigraph to Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, a novel about childhood and about a great and noble lawyer, Atticus Finch. The legal profession has in Atticus Finch, a lawyer-hero who knows how see and how to tell the truth, knowing the price the community, which Atticus loves, will pay for the truth. The legal profession has in Atticus Finch, a lawyer-hero who knows how to use power and advantage for moral purposes, and who is willing to stand alone as the conscience of the community. The legal community has in Atticus Finch, a lawyer-hero who possesses the knowledge and experience of a man, strengthened by the untainted insight of a child.

'Children are the original and universal people of the world; it is only when they are educated into hatreds and depravites that children become the bigots, the cynics, the greedy, and the intolerant, and it is then that "there hath passed away a glory from the earth." Atticus Finch challenges the legal profession to shift the paradigm and make the child the father of the man in dealing with the basic conflicts and struggles that permeate modern existence.

'Symbolically, it is now the legal profession that sits in the jury box as Atticus Finch concludes his argument to the jury: "In the name of God, do your duty."

I have no idea what relation – if any – Lee Motor Co. has to Harper Lee, but the mockingbird symbol, in one way or another, obviously dominates the town.

The marker below, at the side of the demolished childhood home of Truman Capote, reads:

'TRUMAN CAPOTE (1924–1984)
'On this site stood the home of the Faulk family of Monroeville, relatives of the writer Truman Capote. Capote himself lived in this home between 1927 and c. 1933, and for several years spent his summer vacations here. Two of the Faulk sisters operated a highly successful millinery shop located on the town square. The third sister, affectionately known as "Sook", was the inspriation for characters in The Glass Harp, The Thanksgiving Visitor, and A Christmas Memory. The original structure on this site burned to the ground in 1940, and the second home was demolished in 1988. Monroeville remained important to Capote throughout his life, and he returned to the area many times in the year before his death to visit surviving relatives.'

'I won't be here forever, Buddy. Nor will you........the Lord willing, you'll be here after I've gone. And as long as you remember me, then we'll always be together.'

Truman Capote, The Thanksgiving Visitor

Below: the site of Harper Lee's home, next door to Capote's.

Now Monroe County Library, this was LaSalle Hotel previously, where Gregory Peck stayed during the filming of the film To Kill a Mockingbird.

Paducah, Kentucky, and Bobbie Ann Mason's In Country

When Joel Conarroe reviewed Bobbie Ann Mason's first novel In Country (1985) for The New York Times, he described it as 'Shopping Mall Realism', which somehow doesn't quite hit the right button (1). But he was more exact when he said the book is 'light-years away from the young professionals sipping margaritas on Columbus Avenue', because Mason writes about a very different America from the glamorous San Francisco city centre.

Less than two years ago, I'd never heard of Bobbie Ann Mason when I drove through southern Illinois's Shaunee National Forest and over the Ohio River into Paducah, western Kentucky. We visited the quilt museum (2), but in a town with a population of only 26,000 there appeared to be not a tremendous amount more to see. And yet in In Country, in the ironically named small town of Hopewell - perhaps a pseudonym for Mayfield, where Mason was born - a visit to Paducah, its mall and its restaurants, is the highpoint of the week.

Sam Hughes is a late teenager and Conarroe finds her similar to characters in the fiction of Carson McCullers and Harper Lee, although the language is very different:

'The restroom is pink and filthy, with sticky floors. In her stall, Sam reads several phone numbers written in lipstick. A message says, "The mass of the ass plus the angle of the dangle equals the scream of the cream." She wishes she had known that one when she took algebra. She would have written it on an assignment.'

In a world where adolescent sexual witticisms are foregrounded to schooling, Sam's mental outlook seems both limited and limiting: there is an abundance of references to tradenames, TV programmes and commercials, and such singers as Bruce Springsteen, Madonna, and Boy George. As the book progresses, though, Sam's horizons widen, and this is symbolized by her buying a car, which is important to her self-discovery.

In Country is in part a quest novel, and Sam mentally sets out to find her father, who died in Vietnam, and who never saw his daughter. She does this by asking questions of people who knew him, and by reading his semi-literate letters and diary. This is also a protest novel, quietly raging against the horrors of the Vietnam war, and against the callous treatment ex-veterans receive. Sam lives with her Uncle Emmett, who appears to be suffering from the effects of Agent Orange. Soon tiring of her childish boyfriend, she tries to form a relationship with the older veteran Tom, but he is impotent: he is yet another of the walking wounded who carry the ghosts of Vietnam around with them.

The main part of the novel is a long flashback which is sandwiched between a road trip made by Emmett, Sam, and Sam's grandmother - who perhaps bears some resemblance to the grandmother in Flannery O'Connor's 'A Good Man Is Hard to Find' - in Sam's car, to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington.

This is a very powerful and moving coming-of-age story detailing the effects of war, a story of the difficulty people have relating to each other. Oh and, er, let's not forget the frequent references to ham and mother-fuckers (3).

(1) The title refers to a GI expression for Vietnam.

(2) The Museum of the American Quilter's Society.

(3) 'Mother-fuckers' is another GI expression, this time used for the loathed lima beans the soldiers were given to eat.