Harper Lee has died
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/08/10/the-courthouse-...
Brilliant characterization--Scout, Jem, Dill, Atticus, Calpurnia, Boo Radley, the Ewells, Tom Robinson...
The setting...the Deep South, small town flavor, racial tensions...
This novel has it all...the Great American Novel, personified...
Sad news...great writer...
the tl;dr is:
The lawyer isn't really that good a role model. He gets a black man off of a rape charge mostly by attacking the alleged victim's character. He can't bring himself to hate a white man that wants to lynch that same black man, or indeed even Hitler. In the end he conspires with the sheriff to obstruct justice when a nice middle class white man kills a poor white man.
In this way he reflect the actual time and place, where people who could in some respects be seen as liberal and generous, like the governer at that time, weren't actually doing anything to achieve true equality (whether black/white, male/female, rich/poor) and when racial matters came to a head they got swept aside as the core issue was never dealt with from within and had a solution forced on them from outside.
I get the feeling the author was trying to be a little contrarian, but still brings up lots of interesting details and examples, particularly with hindsight from the present.
I think that overstates the article's position. The article mentions several things the governor did to works towards equality:
> He worked to extend the vote to disenfranchised blacks. He wanted to equalize salaries between white and black schoolteachers. He routinely commuted the death sentences of blacks convicted in what he believed were less than fair trials. He made no attempt to segregate the crowd at his inaugural address. “Ya’ll come,” he would say to one and all, making a proud and lonely stand for racial justice.
No, he tries to get a black man off of a rape charge, but he fails. And, it is worth noting, the black man was (almost certainly) actually innocent, the alleged victim was actually the aggressor, and the black man is ultimately killed by a vigilante.
A second and fascinating point deals with the trial in the book. I always read it as Atticus patiently but relentlessly exposing the obvious truth, which was that Bob Ewell beat up Mayella for daring to touch a black man. The article makes the case for a different interpretation, and offers historical support for it by citing scholars who have explored many historical cases of black-on-white rape.
I don't fully subscribe to every last conclusion of the article, but it did shift my thinking and expand my perspective about the book dramatically.
His criticism imagines a better hero, one who would righteously proclaim truth. But this is also unfair. Had A.F. done this, he would have lost his stature and surely everything he held precious. This is impossible for most, and it would be unrealistic to write the story in that way.
In my view, the work stands strong, as it has weathered many assaults, this latest included. Other favorites of mine have toppled.
However you approach her second novel, it's worth the read to understand her outlook on life in the South.
And the critique of Atticus Finch I don't even take as some kind of heavy-handed moral judgment. The article's byline isn't "Atticus Finch was a bad person," it's "Atticus Finch and the limits of Southern liberalism." A person trying to stand up for the right in this way can do some good (And Jim Folsom did some good). But an accommodating, non-confrontational approach like Atticus will have its limits.
I also don't feel that the article's conclusion implies that people should be 100% uncompromising in their principles all the time. Pragmatically speaking, that's unlikely to maximize the amount of justice in the world.
to which I reply
> Pirates are evil? The Marines are righteous? These terms have always changed throughout the course of history! Kids who have never seen peace and kids who have never seen war have different values! Those who stand at the top determine what's wrong and what's right! This very place is neutral ground! Justice will prevail, you say? But of course it will! Whoever wins this war becomes justice! [0]
By appealing to "justice", Malcolm Gladwell is making a deontological appeal. But as a consequentialist, I don't find it very convincing. Additionally, the critique reminds me of the Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics: "Atticus did good, but not optimally good. Therefore, he was worse than Hitler."
Furthermore, I disagree that Atticus's impact on society was limited by his approach. Rather, his impact was inherently limited by the culture. I.e. I suspect that a lot of people imagine "if I had lived in the antebellum south, I'd have been more vocal than MLK jr". But realistically, there's only so much a single person can do to effect change. Almost by definition, the status quo has inertia. So given the circumstances, the "hearts and minds" approach may have very well been the most effective strategy. More than one history teacher has told me that we have to interpret people's behavior within the context of their own time period. This entails that it's misleading to judge the behavior of people from other cultures by modern standards.
(but thanks for sharing the article. It changed the way I think about "to kill a mockingbird" also.)
If Gladwell's point is that people are interpreting TKAM incorrectly, then I suppose I agree, but that's not what I'm getting out of this essay. What I'm getting is the distinct feeling that Gladwell wants to criticize Lee for pushing some sort of agenda... which is, well, bizarre.
I suppose what bothers me most particularly is the appeal to legal expertise in the analysis. I think this is missing the point completely, and I fail to see how that can be a criticism of anything but the author. We learn that Lee isn't a legal expert, but this isn't a book about law per se. Rather, it's a book about society, so the moral and ethical contradictions in Finch's character constitute a feature, not a bug, and the legal narrative drives the story -- nothing more.
Yes, this is exactly the point I was trying to make, so it seems as though we're in agreement. It also seems as though I may have read too fast or too far into Gladwell's editorial.
Color me satisfied :)
Orwell didn’t think that Dickens should have written different novels; he loved Dickens. But he understood that Dickens bore the ideological marks of his time and place. His class did not see the English social order as tyrannical, worthy of being overthrown. Dickens thought that large contradictions could be tamed through small moments of justice. He believed in the power of changing hearts, and that’s what you believe in, Orwell says, if you “do not wish to endanger the status quo.”
(But then, Gladwell wrote a book called _The World is Flat_ in 2000, and it was about free trade, not fundamentalism; he's not exactly someone who I look to as a paragon of good judgement either.)
It just makes sense. If you want to convince people, you don't want to antagonize them.
There are limits, of course. Some people are just so completely racist, homophobe, antisemitic, whatever, one can't reach them, certainly not charm them into becoming more decent.
But for most other people, the friendly approach is far more promising than the confrontational one. This goes for smaller issues, as well, and is well worth keeping in mind in day-to-day interactions with others.
I wholeheartedly disagree. In fact, the only way you can change systemic problems is to convince the minds and hearts of people to change.
You cannot simply make new laws and expect everything to go smoothly if few people have changed their minds or hearts. How will you enforce the new laws?
And furthermore, he wasted a whole lot of his time and mine trying to reveal the disparity between the novel Harper Lee wrote and the one she should have written. Why?
Also I don't think it's meant as a criticism of the novel at all. It just means the novel is deeper than a simple morality play.
On your first point, I don't think the law needs to wait on everyone to change their minds and hearts. But enough lawmakers and voters have to change their minds and hearts for the systemic problems to go away.
On the second point, you're probably right. But something about the way he says it seems critical of fictional character behaviors.
Excellently put! All sides of the political spectrum should learn from this, if not to get along with the, to them, despicable other side, than to beat them. Case in point: Until we stop calling Trump backers idiots, racists, etc. (http://thedailybanter.com/2015/09/a-new-gop-poll-proves-trum...) we will be plagued by the likes of him.
One of these approaches persuaded people to come around to correct views. The other approach produced intellectual trench warfare and our current political gridlock. And Gladwell likes the second, not the first.
Does he have any idea what happens when you use force of arms to compel people to assent on the surface to beliefs they don't hold? The example of the Soviet Union should warn him that this is a bad idea. In particular, look at the Baltic states, which didn't really have a sense of national identity or distinction from Russia before Soviet rule, but are now fanatically nationalist and anti-Russian.
More to the point -- because they're culturally much more similar to the American South -- he should look at Ireland, Wales, and Scotland. Ireland shook off the Saxon yoke after its "Eight Hundred Years of Oppression", which did nothing to make the Irish into Englishmen; Scotland is close to recovering its freedom, reversing the verdict of the 1707 Acts of Union; Welsh nationalism is growing, and we'll probably see Welsh independence in our lifetimes -- even though Wales has been ruled by England since 1277.
The longer the American South is coerced instead of persuaded -- even if they're coerced to do the right thing -- the more they'll react like the other Celts over the water. (Especially the Lowland Scots, who are the people that most contemporary Southerners descend from. Donald Trump, for example, is a textbook Lowlander -- although admittedly he's not Southern.) I wonder what payoff the futures markets offer for Confederate secession in 200 years?
Finch isn't a Facebook-era observer who has just heard the story and the emotions are fresh. He's the victim's lawyer, who has been working hard on the case for months, all the time knowing that the jury would almost certainly declare for guilt. He leaves the court a tired, defeated man who tried hard to make it otherwise.
The author of the article declares that he should have been trembling with rage - perhaps the author should spend time in an actual courtroom observing how lawyers behave, rather than the ones on TV. The first time I saw an actual trial in progress, I was shocked - it was so boring. The lawyers didn't wander around the courtroom; lean over jurors to talk to them one-to-one; point accusatory fingers at the current witness...
Anyway, while the article is interesting, all through the article I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. Finch is defending his client in the best ways he knows how, using tactics he think are most likely to work. He's not half-arsing the job, but working his best. But the article never drops the other shoe; never actually articulates what Finch should have done in the novel's context to make him the hero the article takes great pains to point out that he's not. As best as I can see, if Finch had've visibly shown he was miffed at the verdict, that would have been enough to turn him from "racial apologist" to "civil rights hero".
The disingenuity of the article is summed up at the end. Quoting the sheriff saying that he's not going to go public with the cause of Ewell's death, because Radley is a shy man who generally wants to be left alone, the author instead translates this as literally "the sheriff is stopping Radley from getting FREE CAKE!". Regardless of whether or not you agree with the actions of the sheriff, this is an atrociously bad reading of what was happening.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/10/books/harper-lee-and-truma...
And that Dill was partially based on her childhod friendship with Capote.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harper_Lee#Early_life
This seems to be well established now in pop culture and art, but I was completely unaware when I first heard.
The fact the world has such inspired people, despite their stressful surroundings was a blessing to us all in the form of great art.
Goodbye, Harper.
That is one of my favorite quotes of all times, specifically taking into account the setting of the book.
“Bran thought about it. 'Can a man still be brave if he's afraid?' 'That is the only time a man can be brave,' his father told him.”
It's almost insulting even bringing up a quote from ASOIAF.
Humans loves a narrative...
Great storytellers often succeed financially when writers of interpretive fiction--literature--barely scrape by...
Each type of author has a place...some readers want entertainment...other readers prefer entertainment coupled with edification...
I think the best novels provide both...Harper Lee did just that...
Are there any, may lesser known, fantasy that is more literary?
See Fantasy Classics at Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/318.Fantasy_Classics
Can start most anywhere with him, but I'd recommend Tigana, Lions of al'Rassan, or Under Heaven as great starting points.
Ishiguro's The Buried Giant from last year asks to be described as Literary Fiction with a fantasy setting.
But chasing down "If you liked Gene Wolfe you might like.." recommendations online would probably be fruitful.
As for "literature-y" fantasy, I'd agree with others here to look at magical realism, e.g. "One Hundred Years of Solitude." But my opinion is probably crap -- some of my fantasy favorites are Tolkien's "Silmarillion" and "Lost Tales," which probably don't qualify as "great literature," but show some amazingly thorough and vivid world-building.
Huge fan of China Mieville, but that's closer to "new weird" than "fantasy". Mieville's books are complex and gripping.
I'd also recommend Ishiguro's The Buried Giant, very close to literary fiction.
It steps a little outside of the bounds of what we think of as "fantasy", but the magical realism genre has a lot of amazing pieces, and the genre is based around fantastical elements. My favorite example of this is "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel García Márquez. "Invisible Cities" by Italo Calvino is another good one.
edit: Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell is up there http://www.amazon.com/Jonathan-Strange-Mr-Norrell-Novel/dp/0...
I find J G Keely's judgement aligned to my own: http://starsbeetlesandfools.blogspot.com/2012/06/suggested-r...
Shamans dance around a fire, play-actors get on stage, Film directors use CGI , actors, puppets, sets, and so on.
A writer writes. A good writer uses all of the tricks available to them that their language provides and is capable of doing so in a consistent manner to create their own written voice.
'To Kill a Mockingbird' was both well-written and a good story; the social impact it created reflects that.
I've read plenty of works that are either exclusively well-written, or exclusively a good story. It's not rare.
Having everyone die in the end is bonus points for 'great writing'.
- Imagine yourself writing down the story of The Shawshank Redemption (hey, this approach worked for Terry Brooks!). How much do you think people would like it? More or less than the version Stephen King wrote?
- Imagine yourself writing the same story -- in Mongolian. It's the same story, written down.
- Tolkien's The Silmarillion has several excellent stories in it, which people will be happy to hear you tell them about after you go through the laborious effort of reading it. It's not a coincidence that the material of The Silmarillion wasn't written for publication.
- http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003X9775Q is an example of a fantasy novel with a fairly vanilla plot and some of the worst writing I've ever experienced.
- Pushing Daisies http://www.amazon.com/Pushing-Daisies-Season-Lee-Pace/dp/B00... is a comedic soap opera with superb writing and no particular plot.
- Imagine two people giving a lecture on the same topic. One of them is entertaining, one isn't. The first one had better writing for the same content.
- Imagine yourself playing Beethoven's fifth symphony as a one-man band. The music is widely acknowledged to be a great work. It turns out that the delivery matters. In the analogy, the music is the story, and the manner in which you actually produce it is the writing.
In literally terms, certain authors are simply better than others. But this does not invalidate the idea that some people might find more popular authors to have a bigger impact to them.
ASOIAF has flaws, but so does TKAMB. Atticus could be argued to be quite a one dimensional character (not counting the sequel, which comes out of nowhere and is widely regarded to NOT be well written).
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/08/10/the-courthouse-...
He wasn't one-dimensional, he was very complex and real.
What next? You'll tell me that Dante Alighieri's 'Divine Comedy' isn't objectively better than Dan Brown's 'The Da Vinci Code'? Or that 'The Grapes of Wrath' isn't objectively better than 'Fifty Shades of Grey'?
I don't buy your bullshit relativism.
One of these is an engrossing tale that gets richer on every read-through. The other has a character named Scout.
I believe TKAMB is worth advocating for, and even reflecting that worth in our institutions, for example by making one required reading instead of the other. But I can also imagine individual circumstances where ASOIAF is a more important and worthwhile experience for someone.
(Edit: Typo)
There's no easy way of answering that on this kind of medium (an Internet forum). I took two graduate seminars and wrote several papers on it :) But as a primer, I strongly suggest reading Hume's 'Of the standard of taste': http://www.econlib.org/library/LFBooks/Hume/hmMPL23.html
In that essay, he attempts to provide some clear-cut criteria for an objective judgment of art, food, and literature.
(Note that there ARE people that are relativists and they have a somewhat compelling argument. That's perfectly fine. I just don't buy it and I think they're wrong.)
You allude this this when you say "GRRM can't hold a candle to the profound impact Harper Lee has had on American culture as a whole". Obviously your own criteria includes how this work affected America. How objective can this be if it may be assessed entirely differently by a Chinese, Russian or African person, where it may have had little or no discernible influence on their culture?
Leaving that aside, the passages in comparison are actually saying different things. Regardless of who wrote them, 3minus1 should be free to prefer that slightly different definition of courage. The source is irrelevant.
Your arrogance of somehow equating your subjectivity with objectivity is concerning.
How do you define something being objectively better? Popular opinion? Does collective subjective opinion make something objective? Very obviously not.
Many people living probably enjoyed the Da Vinci Code more than Divine Comedy. The former likely is more relatable for a lot of people. That's the funny thing about creative subjective work -- it doesn't have a singular dimension by which to judge. Since judgment of a work is multi-dimensional, one has to determine the criteria by which to judge its total quality on some objective basis. Even if the criteria itself were 100% objective in some way, the method by which the results are compiled together is certainly not.
As I suggested in my other comment, as I primer, I strongly suggest reading Hume's 'Of the Standard of Taste' and bringing forward some talking points instead of pretending like you're making some kind of profound argument. In other words, what you're saying isn't new. It's also very simplistic, naïve, and (I believe) probably wrong.
You're the only one here who hasn't produced an argument. In all of your other comments you refuse to explain for reasons that your ideas are too complicated. That's the very definition of snobbery. Refute my points instead of emptily pointing out I'm wrong.
Similarly, the study of aesthetics is very rich and difficult. It's impossible to distill 2 or 3 bullet points from Hume's paper, much how it's impossible to distill 2 or 3 bullet points from this one: http://www.cs.nmsu.edu/historical-projects/Projects/complete... -- even I know and thoroughly understand both topics.
all that in 2 lines and you don't think it's great writing.
It is snobbish to attempt to subvert the impact that a piece of writing has had on someone because it's not good enough or important enough by some "objective" standard. People should be free to find "meaning" wherever they wish.
Sometimes statements can be powerful because of who said it... but dismissing a quote just because someone has a certain background? I don't like an idea being discredited because of a person's impact of society.
I really appreciated reading both of these quotes. I'm glad they were contributed.
Yes, but it has what, a 35 year head start? I don't think that your assertion being true is relevant to the literary merit of GRRM.
I've read Harper Lee (and a lot of literature in general), GRRM is fantastic. A more apt comparison might be to Dostoevsky, as the concepts Martin wants to explore are less related to our culture and more to do with fundamental issues mankind has wrestled with for much longer.
http://static1.1.sqspcdn.com/static/f/357927/12493914/130695...
I am tempted to think it was satire? I mean, this would not have been very appealing to Nixon's target audience, would it?
Also, this sign has a great rhyme scheme; I almost feel like it needs "Burma Shave" at the bottom.
Now I have an image stuck in my head of a crowd chanting the slogan on that poster... Please, make it stop! ;-)
That book by the "one-book literary wonder" was unforgettable for many things, including the fact that it was one of the first books I read twice. I'd say that that one work that stood strong for decades across generations should probably not be used to diminish the author using terms like "one-book wonder".
This is sad news indeed.
At least in high school English classes you get to read some legitimate literature. In middle school, I remember being subjected to an unending string of aggressively mediocre young-adult historical fiction and science fiction that featured teen-aged girls as protagonists by my all-female English teachers. Hard to summon much enthusiasm for that kind of thing when Arthur Clarke, Heinlein, Frank Herbert, Asimov, Ben Bova, Tom Clancy, Robert Ludlum, Ken Follett, Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Conan Doyle, Tolkien, Robert Jordan and George RR Martin beckon.
edit: I suppose I should add a note indicating that I'm aware of the absence of dragons in LOTR.
(I ask because you're my favorite writer on HN, and am curious as to what things influenced you)
Read the Great Gatsby last year, was shocked at how much I liked it. Will definitely give My Antonia a read.
Has anyone read the newly released book? Thoughts?
http://www.theonion.com/article/harper-lee-announces-third-n...
She wrote it whilst being urged on by several friends and when she took it to her agent was told that she had some good ideas, but it was stronger in some parts than others. She should focus entirely on Scout's youth, and to deal with Atticus' battle with racial tensions in that town.
She went away, produced Mockingbird, the rest is history. You can see the process right there in Watchman.
If you try and read them as a pair, you will get annoyed: anecdotes repeated in both have key facts changed that change their meaning and the characters involved in them.
It's not as polished, tuned or as well paced as Mockingbird. It's a piece of work that pays testament to a talented writer finding her voice, but hasn't quite found it yet.
And for that, it's fine. But don't read it if you aren't interested in the writing process and just want a good story: just re-read Mockingbird instead.
His courage in standing against racial injustice is notable, but the true depth of the character comes from his quiet strength and his unabashed dedication to his family and his fellow man.
He's always there for his children, tucking them in at night and encouraging them to be good to each other and their neighbors. He's always ready to impart wisdom and morality upon them in the most gentle manner.
But still there's that quiet strength, as in the scene when he shoots the rabid dog. Watching the scene through Scout's eyes, a powerful figure comes alive in the person of Atticus for the first time - showing us that a strong man is prepared to stand up both against moral and physical oppression.
As role models go, you could do a lot worse than Atticus Finch.
A timeless storybook about bravery and courage in the face of blatant racism and discrimination. As a society, we should work towards ending racism and discrimination in all spheres and this book will surely play a part towards this goal ...