A great loss (Page 2 of 7)

In England, my English Literature teacher had to teach the curriculum as set by the great socialist circus on high. It was all determined by the exam questions at the end of the school  process. The students had to learn the subject matter from which the questions would be drawn.

I know that my teacher was frustrated about having to tow the line. In the after-school book club he could go off-piste and introduced us to some wonderful literature.

I recall once, getting caught reading 'Brighton Rock' by Graham Greene in class. I had the paperback open inside of the covers of a bigger book, one we were supposed to be reading for the lesson. I was engrossed and didn't notice the teacher walking between the desks, so I got caught. He seemed more pleased than angry, and took the confiscated contraband novel to his desk at the front, where he settled down to read it, whilst I had to get back to the mind numbing dirge that is 'The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, or maybe it was 'To Kill a Mockingbird,' I can't remember.

Wet noodle time, Dill. You do see your error, don't you ?

I didn't think the Hawthorne story was that bad, though I admit I didn't have to read it for class.
I was introduced to LoTR by a student in front of me who was reading it during our English class.  I suspect the teacher was pleased enough to see a jock reading Good Stuff for pleasure that he overlooked it.

Likewise.

I certainly don't love it because it's politically correct to love it. I have a brain, thank you. I love it because it's a good story. 

Is this a conversation about whether or not To Kill a Mockingbird is "great literature," or whether or not we love it? Dill, you're listing lots of reasons why you don't love it (fairly enough.) I've been responding in kind with entirely subjective reasons why I do. If you were asking in your original question if it's great literature, that's hard to say because I still don't exactly know what great literature is.

One of the things that makes (me) love a work is my suspicion of its impact. I'm not saying that's universal greatness according to everybody. It's greatness according to me. Which is what I thought we were talking about -- all of our personal views on why WE love To Kill a Mockingbird.

I think it's a little close-minded and sweeping to suggest that everyone in the world who loves To Kill a Mockingbird loves it because it's politically correct to love it. Maybe some people do, but I work in a bookstore, chap, and the book flies off the shelves, still. Not by people auto-buying it because they should. These are mothers inspiring their children to read it. These are people who love the book because it is a friend. People whose eyes twinkle as they tug it up -- not because of some political agenda, but because the people in the story are friends.

I love the sink-in quality, I love Atticus both before and after Watchman, I love Scout. I love the fact that it's one of my mother's favorite books, so we share it. She was very young when she read it for the first time. When I read it, I feel that I've gone back in time to her generation, and that I'm there beside her, reading it along with her back in her childhood. When I read it, I can feel a ghostly sense of my childhood self reading it -- the sense that a smaller me read the words and thought even as I am thinking again. I love it for that reason.

I'm not sure this sort of personal affiliation with a novel is actually debatable? Absolutely, literary components are -- like theme, tone, writing style. But that's not what I'm talking about. I'm not reading it looking for all of that. It may have all of that? It certainly has theme, and if it's forced, thank goodness for that, because somebody needed to say it.

Great literature for me is made up of all sorts of things personal to my own tastes and passions. To Kill a Mockingbird fulfills whatever it is for me that simply clicks when I read. If I had more time, I could probably pull out passages that inspired me (the scene on the porch) for one -- but goodness, it's the characters, the simplicity of the coming of age tale, the grittiness of Scout's personality, her skepticism of her father which is surprised by his character, the line, "Stand up, Scout, your father's passing."  It's the way it's all a symphony, sort of, which comes together in the line about the mockingbird. It's Jem, who reminds me of my brother. It's the fact that every time I read it again, it is the same, and it all starts over, and it's all so -- I don't know, alive. It's the next door neighbor who stands in her ashes and decides to go on. It's the snowman on a winter morning. It's the books Atticus reads Scout. It's the way she has to apologize for learning to read too quickly, and how I feel like grinning with her as she does it because that's silly. It's the Cunninghams. It's the court scenes. It's Mayella. It's Tom. It's all of it.

You can't possibly know why people like the book. I'd absolutely pick it off the shelf based on the story description. This is the sort of book I'd have under my text book when I was supposed to be studying. This is the sort of book I pull to when I'm sick or sad and want a friend to keep me reading and sweep me away.

Not by me. Not for a second. It has voice, it has soul, it has grit.

I notice I've left a hole in my argument.

Conventions of the age.  Literary style, as we know it, was still in diapers.

NOBODY has risen to my wet-noodle challenge.

Spot and correct the error, or be liable for "fifty lashes with a wet noodle."

Ripped to bits? Not so sure about that. As part of the “Shred Thread” perhaps, but most on here are too concerned with reciprocation and such that it entails to rep even the ones which deserve it, let alone TKAM even if posted by one of us.

Passages that blow you away? I must admit I can’t show you those passages in TKAM, but then I can’t show them to you from any other work I’ve ever read either. I’ve never seen/read a single passage whether sentence, para, or greater length that blew me away merely from the presented words. Stories, to include their component passages, draw me in with hooks, emotion, puzzlement, humor, etc. but not because they blow my mind per se. Individual passages draw me in or keep me going because of how they relate to what will come or has already been divulged. Excerpts don’t blow my mind, but allow the imagination to consider the overall context which may spring from their placement at the beginning, end, or somewhere in-between. A passage of a story to me is like a single tree in a forest; it may stand out for some reason, but it alone can’t provide the awe of an entire forest. Only walking through the forest tree by tree captures what the forest really is and all those individual trees combine to make something greater than the sum of its parts with no particular one bringing that eureka moment of “ahh, so this is what a forest is.” The forest is what blows me away.

Great literature? I’m not sure what or who determines what constitutes great literature.  Is it sales, the number of people who read it, critical acclaim, longevity, educational …? I have no idea. At least one survey a few years back lists TKAM as the greatest novel of all time: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2138827 … -Time.html
Does that make it great literature or mean anything other than those who were surveyed liked it a lot? Probably not. But then it would mean nothing for any other work so anointed either. I suppose it all comes down to the individual reader and that might also come down to their age and mindset at the time it is read as Memphis has shared. I can certainly understand how one’s opinion of a book can change over time as we do not remain sealed in a vacuum between readings. I think particularly for folks like TNBW members, we get in the habit of looking at how it might be done differently/better as we read. We no longer read purely for enjoyment even when that is our goal. Our ingrained biases on writing sneak out and taint whatever we read. That might be especially true for a subsequent reading.

When all is said and done, our take on TKAM is filtered through our own experience. If one is forced to read it (or any book) then it will likely have an effect on how it is perceived. I was fortunate not to have been in that category so was spared the possible negative impact. Though no individual passage blew me away so to speak, I thoroughly enjoyed the reading and was a little perturbed when I had to stop for other matters on occasion – that should count for something at least since I am not as voracious a reader as probably most on this site. Take care. Vern

I do not claim to know why people like the book. I am quoting a bookstore fact upon why the Novel sells so many copies.

The parents and guardians of students, or students themselves, or schools, colleges, universities and learning facilities are required to purchase the novel because it forms coursework assigned within an English Literature syllabus that is dictated by a curriculum.

I myself have bought three copies of the book because of that very reason (and not by personal choice).

So yes, I do absolutely know for a fact why the vast majority of copies of ‘To Kill a Mocking Bird’ are sold.  They are not bought by people who necessarily love (or even like the book); it is a required purchase to facilitate the educative process; like gym-shorts, a protractor, Dora-The-Explorer lunchbox or school-tie.

These are just facts and not to be confused with subjective sentimentality.

That's confidence!! 

Ah!

It all makes so much more sense when you explain it, Dill.

That seems a waste. I'd recommend multi-tasking.

So, are you suggesting that the book is bought by people who don't want it but must buy it because it's on a school list, or that it's bought by people who don't know what they think of it but must buy it because it's for school, or that it's bought by people who hate it but feel they should read it because it's politically correct, or merely that it's MOST DEFINITELY not bought by people who select it because they like the description on the back of the cover, or by those who've had it recommended to them by friends or loved ones, or by those who want a copy to own because they've read it and love it, or those who merely want to buy it because it's such a well-known classic? And have you actually sat upon the shoulders of all these people and interviewed them one by one, or are you just surmising based upon your own reaction to the story, the poll of your house, and the leap and declare mentality which tends to flavor the remarks of those intelligent souls who lay brain aside to speak subjectively?

I know I appreciate being spoken for, and am deeply impressed by your knowledge of the entire publication history of To Kill a Mockingbird. Thanks!

* tugs at her cap and spits to the right *

x

Joking aside, I wish I could join you! I'd love another read of To Kill a Mockingbird. I've never tried reading it with my analysis cap on. I've always read with my brain fully intact, but you are correct that my heart has led the way when reading To Kill a Mockingbird. I think if I were to read it with you, my analysis would center on Scout and Mayella -- the parallel there of the one's ability to speak bluntly, and the other's inability, the one's history with her father, and the other's, the one's sense of self, and the other's, and female the trial happening behind Tom Robinson's.

The idea that the novel is told through the point of view of a white girl and is therefore useless in our own era makes no sense to me. (Referring to the web article, not anything said by you.) I do see (absolutely) the point that such a viewpoint cannot and will not tell the story of racism in America as a whole. I absolutely understand the skepticism on that front: why do we cling to this novel in schools, as if this is the story of American racism? That I get. I actually think we ought to leave this book alone rather than make of it an American Bible and force it on students, butchering its charm with endless questions about theme and such. (I believe I've read that Harper Lee felt the same way.) I don't know what I'd think of the book if someone else had forced me to read it their way. I don't call reading such a book in school "reading with my brain" however; I call that reading with somebody else's.

I agree with Vern's point above that this novel is not about single passage plucked out and declared great writing. You don't sit down at your grandfather's knee and say, "Let's have a story, gramps," and then stop him at the first passage to say, "That's the line! That's the line!" You wait out the tale, and the tale as a whole is the story. It's that way with To Kill a Mockingbird, for me.

I think you are correct that if To Kill a Mockingbird wasn't on school lists, it wouldn't be read as frequently. I'm not sure I agree that it wouldn't be a bestseller, because I think it is quite beloved, but I think a lot of the sales begin these days because the book is on a required school list.

I've seen so many people come into the bookstore since the buzz about Watchman last year. They love the book. Not because of enforced instruction. They love it because of the story. Scout! Atticus! If they are cardboard cut-outs, they are no less beloved, perhaps because in such a potentially ugly world, they offer us something to believe in. I think that's true of 1960s America as well as our own era. I'm not saying anyone needs a man like Atticus to "save" them. I'm saying that he could have chosen to be apathetic, and he chose instead to be strong. I think if the novel has a theme, it is this:

"Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing." - John Stuart Mill

I think that's a message that continues to be meaningful in our own era, and it is all over the Mayella case, and all over the Boo case. For me this isn't a novel about black and white -- it's a novel about humanity and it's gentle potential, and that gentle potential reaches for Boo Radley's hand. That's it, and that's all. Tom Robinson could be black or white. The point is that he exists in an unjust world, and to make it just someone has to be the one to stand up and speak truth. A person isn't exempt from that because he or she is white. This is a colorless notion that could be applied to all manner of oppressions.

But yes, yes, absolutely, the story of racism goes beyond this novel. I think Harper Lee would be first in line to say this. I think this book was a step in a long, long story which continues to be our legacy in America. I agree that to cling to this book as if it is the full tale is to do a great disservice to the issue. I agree that to mangle this novel up in nostalgic liberalism is to miss the point. But I do not agree that the novel is dated (not your phrase, Dill) or past its prime, or that because it is often filtered through schools, it is a bad novel unworthy of its prestige. I think instead that it continues, remarkably, to be treasured, despite that filter. That is a mark of its strength, not its flaws.

Only my thoughts. x