Biblio Beau: Harper Lee

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

24. Harrison, Kim. White Witch, Black Curse. 504 pages. 3.2.09.

Not as entertaining as her previous novels.

25. Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird. 284 pages. 3.10.09.

As part of my reading list this year I have decided to return to some of the classics I read in grade school, and To Kill a Mockingbird was at the top of my list. At this point I'm not quite sure how I feel about the novel - I neither liked it, nor disliked it. The choice of narrator was brilliant on Lee's part, and I greatly appreciated seeing such poignant events through the eyes of children. Lee's writing style itself gives much to be admired, and is a wonderful example of a marriage between creativity and craftsmanship. However, the novel has left me with a feeling of melancholy that is keeping me from joyous praise.

My husband (who has never read the novel) insists that if we ever have a daughter he wants to name her Harper Lee. While the novel itself gave me no reason to reject the idea (as I originally thought it would), I still don't think I can agree. I recognize Lee's rightful place as a literary great, but didn't appreciate the novel enough to spend my life with her namesake.

Favorite Quotes

"To tell people what to read is, as a rule, either useless or harmful; for the appreciation of literature is a question of temperament not of teaching [...]. But to tell people what not to read is a very different matter, and I venture to recommend it as a mission..." - Oscar Wilde, "Letter to the Pall Mall Gazette on the Subject of 'The Best Hundred Books'" (qtd. Wright, Built of Books, 317).

"I wish you joy o'th' worm" - Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, 5.2.270.

"The world must be peopled!" - Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." - Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.

"That a man who has sons brings up chickens for his own table ... whereas daughters are chickens brought up for the tables of other men." - Samuel Richardson, Clarissa (77).

“No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” - Samuel Beckett

And then there is more Oscar Wilde:

"It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it."

"You can never be overdressed or overeducated."

"You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit." - The Picture of Dorian Gray.

"Appearance blinds, whereas words reveal." - Personal Impressions of America

"A poet can survive everything but a misprint." - "The Children of the Poets", The Pall Mall Gazette

"There is no sin except stupidity." - The Critic as Artist

"One should always be a little improbable." - "Phrases and Philosophies for the use of the Young"

"The truth is rarely pure and never simple." - The Importance of Being Earnest

"Even when reading is impossible, the presence of books acquired produces such an ecstasy that the buying of more books than one can read is nothing less than the soul reaching towards infinity... we cherish books even if unread, their mere presence exudes comfort, their ready access, reassurance."
--- A.E. Newton