At Home in Hespeler

If you are an author an hoping your next time is Pulitzer material, put that manuscript back in the drawer and hold off a year: 2015 now has a favourite. To Kill a Mockingbird author Harper Lee has announced the release of her second book, fifty-five years after her first.

Go Set a Watchman was actually written before To Kill a Mockingbird. The novel features the main character from Mockingbird, Scout, twenty years later and living in New York. According to Lee:

My editor, who was taken by the flashbacks to Scout’s childhood, persuaded me to write a novel from the point of view of the young Scout.

A copy of the thought lost manuscript recently was discovered. So the sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird, in which adult Scout returns to Maycomb Alabama from New York, was written before To Kill a Mockingbird, and now, released fifty-five years later.

Like I say, put away those Pulitzer ambitions for a year, at least until we’ve had a chance to read Go Set a Watchman, which is due for release July 14th.

Books Go Set a Watchman, Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

Back when Dinosaurs roamed the earth, and Led Zeppelin was a going entity, a young fellow went off to school to learn the three R’s. By the time he got to high school, he was bored and disliked much of school. Reading, he thought, was uncool.

Is That Gun Licensed?

Years later, a full fledged reader, he went back to the high school curriculum, and re-read the books he could remember disliking.  A more awful list of books it would be hard to find. Lord of the Fly’s, An Edible Woman, the truly, utterly God awful Catcher in the Rye. There was one saving grace in that high school curriculum I was forced to read through: To Kill a Mockingbird.

Harper Lee’s only book about a Depression era family in Alabama, Mockingbird tackles such difficult issues as racism, rape, poverty, alcoholism. It is a novel of great depth, subtle humour and charm. It is possible to suggest that few better books have ever been written. So naturally, it ought to be banned.

Anyone who suggests this book ought to be banned because of it’s liberal use of a racial epithet that is not spoken in even impolite company these days, displays an ignorance that’s hard to fathom in the modern world. Key to the many themes throughout To Kill A Mockingbird is the accurate use of language from the Southern US in the thirties. The level of ignorance required to demand Mockingbird be banned based on a single word is hard to fathom. That some parent somewhere in Toronto displays that ignorance is not surprising, that The Toronto District School Board entertains such complaints goes a long way in explaining what is going wrong with our education system.

Memo to the TDSB: it’s a sin to kill To Kill a Mockingbird.

Jacobian Piece of Impertinence, pimply minions of bureaucracy Atticus Finch, TDSB, To Kill a Mockingbird, Toronto District School Board