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Comment by mhartl | Hacker News Reader

I'm pretty sure the most common reaction to this will be "Wait—Harper Lee is alive?"

Harper Lee is a very private person, almost never gives interviews and hasn't written any other books, so yeah very understandable reaction. I really love to kill a mockingbird, still remember being assigned to read it in 7th grade. The teacher actually started by reading the first part of the book to us in class and i was hooked, went home and actually read ahead(quite a big deal for a bored 7th grader that barely did enough to get by when he had his IRC friends waiting). I think thats a huge reason for me being an avid reader today.

I really hope this Pinkus guy gets what he deserves. People that take advantage of the elderly are right near child molesters on the scumbag scale, and forcing some one that obviously values their privacy to have to make a public spectacle of themselves like this should be a crime in its own right.

> I really love to kill a mockingbird, ...

What a wonderful example sentence for why quotes are needed in grammar.

I guess this is the English language equivalent of an SQL injection.

Book titles are not a quotation and therefore generally aren't put in quotation marks. Instead they are written in title case and underlined or italicised.

Sure, but titles of short stories, like "I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream", or songs, like "Hey Jude", are often rendered in quotation marks.

Don't be a jerk.

Seconded its bloody obvious what the meaning is from context

Mine was "He's a she?"

I knew Harper Lee was alive from listening to the excellent audiobook On Writing, authored and narrated by Stephen King. He stated his astonishment that To Kill a Mockingbird was the only novel she ever wrote, but in a manner that never conveyed her gender (that I recall, anyway).

I even read the book years before without realizing that the author was a woman. It's the only assigned reading I have ever had that I couldn't put down.

If I'm not mistaken (and I'm having trouble finding a reference, so I might be), part of the reason that she chose to publish as Harper Lee (as opposed to including her full name, Nelle) was to make her name more androgynous. Basically the same concept as Jews changing their names in Hollywood, but because of sexism instead of antisemitism.

Also see: J. K. Rowling

That she was content with one novel infuriated Truman Capote, who desperately wished to write again but found himself unable.

I never quite liked the lynch mob scene. I don't completely disagree that a mob can be talked down that way, but it seemed too sudden. Then, a couple of years ago, I saw a study published about men and women and aggression. Individually, men acted more aggressively than women (in some competitive game they made up). But in an faceless mob, the women were twice as aggressive as the men. As soon as the women were singled out again, they went back to "normal." This made that scene more intelligible, since to Harper Lee, being called out of a mob by name would have the effect shown in the book.

It's easy to understand why you have that reaction when you realize that Lee is Boo Radley.

+1 funny.

The author is the protagonist, who is female. I'm astonished at how many commenters expected an author whose only book is told by a female first person protagonist to be male.

In real life, Boo Radley is, of course, Truman Capote.

Actually, it's Dill that's supposed to be Truman Capote.

I thought Truman Capote wrote the book and gave it to Harper Lee to publish under her own name.

In any case, incredible book, although it was a little disappointing in that it failed to live up to its title. I never did learn how to kill a mockingbird in that book.

Eh? The title is "To Kill a Mockingbird", and not "How To Kill a Mockingbird".

The title derives from this line in the story (paraphrasing from memory here): "Kill all the bluejays you want, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird."

Edit: On second reading, you were probably joking. Oh well.

The original title was 2,000 Mockingbirds. It was changed to 2.0k Mockingbird because the country was in the throes of a full conversion to the Metric System in 1960.

They're parroting an observation from a special about the book; it's a bit misleading taken out of context. The original observation was making a comment about Harper Lee's reclusive and private nature, not suggesting that Lee modeled Boo Radley directly on herself...though I'm sure many of the characters in the book contain bits of the author.

Watch "Hey, Boo: Harper Lee & To Kill A Mockingbird" I think you'll at least agree that Dill is Truman Capote.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/harper-lee-...

Probably because the book was set in 1930's.

seconded, and ashamed... :(

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