Summer Reading

 "You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view -- until you climb into his skin and walk around in it." ~ from Harper Lee's TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

It's July 11th. 

Author Harper Lee (whose first name was Nelle) won a Pulitzer Prize for her novel, TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. I urge you to get off social media for a while this summer and read a good book. A book I enthusiastically recommend is TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. It was published on this day in 1960. 

My paperback copy is a bit worn, I'm proud to admit, because I've read it a few times. I re-read it in the last couple of years and I was stunned at how current it felt. There is a definite strong thread of Black Lives Matter in the novel, especially in the scene in which we learn that innocent, disabled and unjustly jailed Tom Robinson has been murdered. He was the Black man defended by lawyer Atticus Finch. He was accused making a sexual advance on a white woman. Tom has only one good arm. The other is shorter. It was mutilated when he was working as a child laborer down South.

An all-white, all male jury found him guilty. When Tom is in the prison exercise yard, he's so overcome with the obvious racism of his sentence that he runs to climb the fence and escape. He tries to climb it with his one good arm. Guards shoot the disabled Black men 17 times in the back.

Reportedly, Harper Lee was inspired to write the novel after the horrible racist murder of young Emmett Till, a visiting teen accused of whistling at a white woman down South. The white men who kidnapped, mutilated and murdered him after the woman made the accusation were put on trial and found not guilty by the all-white, all male jury. The men later admitted that they did indeed kill young Till. This became a national news story in the 1950s. a story and crime that is still talked about today.

When a social media discussion about a classic film adaptation starts, some person will inevitably chime in with "The book was different." Well, in Hollywood, that's long been the case since movies learned how to talk. It's more a rarity for a move adaptation to be faithful to its literacy source. Examples of movies that showed such faithfulness are PORTRAIT OF JENNIE (1948), THE ACCIDENTAL TOURIST (1988), BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN (2005)...and 1962's TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD starring Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch.

That is a must-see movie. It's still relevant. The movie got Peck the Oscar for Best Actor and the film was an Oscar nominee for Best Picture.

I also recommend the under-seen, under-publicized and very smart 2006 film, INFAMOUS. This drama should have brought Sandra Bullock her first Oscar nomination. In a supporting role, she plays Harper Lee, the best friend and confidante to Truman Capote, when Lee struggles to write a new novel following the enormous success of TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. She accompanies and advises Truman as he travels to research what will become his masterpiece book, IN COLD BLOOD, the account of a real-life crime. Two convicts killed a Kansas family. INFAMOUS is an excellent story about fact vs fiction, truth vs self-deception and how one can become a prisoner of fame. Toby Jones is remarkable as Truman Capote. INFAMOUS also features Sigourney Weaver, Isabella Rossellini, Jeff Daniels, Gwyneth Paltrow and, as one of the killers, Daniel Craig.

Capote's IN COLD BLOOD was also adapted into a 1960s film that received Oscar nominations.

Have a good summer. Read a good book. Utilize your local library.