I read the first half of this novel a couple years ago. The opening line stood out to me then. It's a strong one.
(I really should finish this book! I remember I preferred it to War & Peace, but I think that may have been about the translation. I read the Pevear & Volokhonsky War & Peace. I read the Constance Garnett Anna Karenina. I think Pevear & Volokhonsky is supposed to be truer to Tolstoy, so shame on me. I found Garnett smoother.)
I have a friend here in America who is scared of penguins. I may have mixed you up with him. He finds them TERRIFYING, ghoulish, shuffling little creatures who look like death itself coming to claim his soul. He sees nothing charming about a visit to the penguin cage and will turn quite pale while the children cluck at the birds to draw them closer.
I find the picture above horrifying. I can understand why you find them completely disgusting!
That said, I think it's poor form to use the do not discuss list to discuss the topic not to be discussed.
Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Atticus, Scout, Tess of the d'Urbervilles,
ha!
... 
... this is related to the point I was so clumsy in making about that other book on the other channel.
Mass market appeal.
I got that. I just wasn't sure if you blamed the mass market appeal on Harper Lee, the readers, or the people who marketed the book. 
corra wrote:Apparently I am
still
corra wrote:invisible.
Heavy is the hand that wears the ass. 
x
groundhog
Memphis Trace wrote:Dill Carver wrote:Galimatias
Great new word for me.
I'll see your galimatias and raise you a glossolalia. It's the genre I specialize in.
Godwottery?
Well this is odd! Apparently I am invisible.
Which means I can say WHATEVER I please.
My gripe this evening is toward amateur authors who produce naff illeist bio synopsis. Trendy and arty? Pretentious and bile inducing! The third person rammed up the arse of the first. I've started a private collection.
Corra is in agreement.
That's why I MUCH prefer this trailer. It's a MUCH better representation of the story.
WHAT IS THAT? "When Rhett Butler meets Scarlett O'Hara," the trailer says. As if he is the protagonist! AND WHERE are all the scenes with Melly? Or with Scarlett standing alone?
"A love affair you'll remember as long as you live, filled (by the way) with all the fire and fury of the times in which it happened." Oh, yes. The whole story is Rhett Butler and Scarlett, and the rest of that stuff -- the war, the human survival, the "I'll never go hungry again" no matter what I have to do, ladyhood being a minor point, after all -- all of that is just a side note in the actual story, which is that RHETT MET SCARLETT AND IT IS A LOVE AFFAIR YOU'LL NEVER FORGET AND HERE ARE ALL THE SCENES WHICH INVOLVE THEM KISSING. WE PICKED THEM OUT SPECIAL FROM ALL THAT OTHER RUBBISH ABOUT SCARLETT.
Here's the icing on that bad cake:
DISLIKE.
CLARK GABLE's name is on the top, and so is his face! I protest. Also, pardon me, but he's hardly even in the novel until the last third. Not that I don't love the character, but let us all keep things in perspective. This cover belongs to Scarlett & Melly.
For example, it is unfair to post something like this within the group:
Dill's fear of penguins.
corra's height
Far From the Madding Crowd (2015) - HA!
The Martian
I just watched that movie two days ago!
I'm well. Hope you're good too.
groundhog
Fickin' unlicky! Thou art a flap-eared knave.
Reading Henry V today, then watching the Laurence Olivier adaptation.
Foot-licker
A good one.
chataclysm
Lady Agnew of Lochnaw by John Singer Sargent, 1892.
"The stars of midnight shall be dear
To her; and she shall lean her ear
In many a secret place
Where rivulets dance their wayward round,
And beauty born of murmuring sound
Shall pass into her face."
- William Wordsworth
"Her heart of compressed ash, which had resisted the most telling blows of daily reality without strain, fell apart with the first waves of nostalgia."
- Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude
Why am I spending so much time and energy discussing a book that I don’t particularly like when I could be in the company of the literature that I love; or heaven forbid, writing something myself?
Putting into words what we dislike about a book is good exercise, I think. I hope it's been a rich discussion for you. It certainly has been for me, up to this point. I think a good novel can hold up to reasoned debate among friends, and that deconstructing it is a fine way to strengthen our own writing and sense of what we want to say within a work of our own literature. When this conversation started, I could offer really no reason why I loved To Kill a Mockingbird beyond the banal "it's cozy." This conversation has changed that, and I thank you for it!
I respect every reason you've offered for disliking the novel. I think we differ in our sense of the author's intent. I want to reread the book for myself, and see if I can unearth a method behind the uncomfortable inconsistencies you've cited within the book (such as the Underwood/Atticus parallel, and the Mayella story as laid aside Scout's story, and Tom Robinson's story.)
My feeling is that these places are part of the truth Lee was hoping would be sensed in the undercurrent. I'd like to see what effect they offer for me personally. But that may take me a few reads! And a bit more experience in literature to unlock what instinct is sensing and cannot, at this point, put into words. If these inconsistencies are not a part of her original purpose, it would certainly effect my sense of the novel.
Anyway, right you are, to dig deep into it, and right you are to leave now that the tone of the conversation has changed.
I was in hospital a few years ago following an operation and from the Red Cross book-share trolley that was wheeled about the ward, I took a lucky-dip and happened upon ‘The Persian Pickle Club’ by Sandra Dallas. I think it is deemed to be within the genre called ‘Women’s Fiction’ and I read it under the influence of medication; but it was good, very good. It made me feel good whilst I was feeling bad. It probably sold about fifty copies to Harper Lee’s six hundred and fifty million but I’d readily give it a score of 8 to Mockingbird's 5.
I've just added The Persian Pickle Club to my to-read list.
Thank you for the quotes you found in TKAM, and the points you've made. I've loved it & feel I walk away from it with some thoughts knocked about and tested in the best way. A proper shred, Dill.
I hope you read something that thrills you to the soul, next. Cheers! x
It's those little things... Atticus always addresses the white folk by either prefixed by their title, i.e. Mrs., Miss, Mr. or their complete name, i.e. Bob Ewell etc. but the Negros are only ever referenced by their first name. It is like there is no respect for them and they are addressed like a pet dog.
YUP. This is one of my mother's favorite novels. I was telling her about your remarks here -- specifically the two passages I've quoted here. Before I could finish, she was nodding her head. That's racism, however polite he is. If he saw Tom Robinson as an equal, he'd address him with similar deference.
Why automatically bring Tom's skin color into it?
Agreed.
I'm seeing the point here. People rally around this book (myself included) as if Atticus is the hero of all heroes, & the issue (if I'm understanding right) isn't that Atticus lacks some heroic qualities, or that the book is necessarily bad. I think Atticus does have some heroic qualities, especially for a man of that time. And I think Harper Lee wrote one story which grew a life of its own. The issue is that if people cannot see Atticus as he sincerely was, what else aren't we seeing deeply? For example. Literature is our opportunity to test our critical thinking, and if we choose not to, we may make the same choice in life.
This is why it's a problem that this book is so often assigned in schools? I wasn't quite following several days ago, but good stuff. I think it could be interesting if teachers interrogate this novel as you have been, Dill. But I sense that the issue is that they are not. I was never taught this book in school, so I have no way to guess whether it's used to feed nostalgia or to feed critical thinking. It (could) offer an opportunity to teach students to read against the grain rather than with it.
Not to say I still don't love the book. I do. I'm loving it more for the deep analysis. I sense purpose in Lee's pen -- nuances I'd missed which, I believe, actually enrich the work.
(Pardon me for being uncritical, but sometimes after hours of school, I can't take a book that requires anything but passive imagination and pleasant feelings. Which is why I do love a cozy story. Sometimes it's just the ticket. To Kill a Mockingbird deserves more!) x
Look out for Braxton Bragg Underwood, the newspaper owner. He openly dislikes black people and yet publicly (vociferously) defends Tom’s right to a fair trial.
I'd forgotten about him!
I seem to be the only one who thinks this duality is skewed morality.
Nope, I agree with you. I'm not, in this thread, defending Atticus, by the way. Though I concede I can't seem to unlike him yet, for reasons I shared offline and which are utterly fallible and personal to me, I agree that he is problematic. I shared the criticism above not to disprove your points, but to offer some context from current criticism which I haven't personally confirmed.
I was reading earlier that Alexandra tries to instill "ladyhood" in Scout while simultaneously violating its rules. This sort of subtle contradiction within the text is (I think) the basis for "thinking" Lee anticipated in readers. Like the parallel of Atticus with Underwood.
I think you're an incredibly deep reader and I appreciate you unearthing this stuff. xx
I haven’t read Watchman yet, but I feel that I need to.
It's interesting to read as a writer, since it was the rejected manuscript, from which she pulled To Kill a Mockingbird.
