A bad novel on the way to a good one

This is an interesting document, and a pretty bad novel. I don’t know why anyone thought it would be otherwise. In 1960, Harper Lee published To Kill a Mockingbird. It was an important statement, as well as a very good novel. Just as it took the southerner Lyndon B. Johnson to make the most significant civil rights concessions, so literary culture needed a novel written by a woman from the south saying all the right things about race in the firmest way possible. The book was compelling, and immediately made its way into classrooms worldwide, where it has stayed.

Subsequently, Harper Lee made it very clear that she would not be publishing another novel — neither writing one, nor producing one written earlier. She has not been a recluse, but she has not wanted to venture into print again. I think the experience of fame must have destroyed the sort of writer Lee really is — the quietly observing novelist of small-town life.