So I recently, for work, reread for the second time (so read for the third time) in my life, To Kill a Mockingbird. I think, by far, my favorite thing about that book is that it has been a different book every single time I've read it.
The first time, I was maybe 13 years old, in 7th grade, and it was largely a book about some kids who were afraid of their neighbor and eventually weren't scared of him because he saved them. That's what I remembered.
In 10th grade, it was on the class list again (I'm thinking this was shortly after they started trying to design state standards...bleah!) and the entire class protested: "But Mrs. Burtoft, we read this in 7th grade with Mrs. Martin! We already read it, we don't need to read it again!" and I remember Mrs. Burtoft's then infuriating answer, "You may have read it but you didn't understand it." So, I read it again, and realized (quietly to myself, as I had been unsuccessfully trying to dispel my goody-goody/suck-up image for 4 years) that I didn't understand the book in 7th grade, at least not fully. That read produced a story about racism, a glimpse of the soon-to-change South, before the civil rights movement but with a glimmer of it's eventuality.
This last time, I volunteered to lead a 50th anniversary book discussion group at work. As a 24-year-old former English and Education major, a graduate of a bachelor's program and "college life" itself (sort of), somewhat more experienced at life than my former, teen-aged selves, I approached the book once again. I read a book with a series of vignettes about citizens of the depression's small-town South; a piece mostly character-driven rather than plot-driven (though the plot certainly helped shape and flesh out a lot of the characters). I saw excellent characterization and believable, rich description of what the children -- Scout, Jem, and Dill -- were seeing and experiencing, from their perspective. I saw allusions to and integration of more history than I remember. I saw subtleties in relationships, I saw strengths and weaknesses of individuals and humanity. And, humor! a lot of it!
In articles I read after the fact in preparation for the discussion, in one of the rare interviews Harper Lee gave, she told interviewer Roy Newquist:
"I would like to leave some record of the kind of life that existed in a very small world. I hope to do this in several novels to chronicle something that seems to be very quickly going down the drain. This is small-town middle-class southern life as opposed to the Gothic, as opposed to Tobacco Road, as opposed to plantation life.
As you know, the South is still made up of thousands of tiny towns. There is a very definite social pattern in these towns that fascinates me. I think it is a rich social pattern. I would simply like to put down all I know about this because I believe that there is something universal in this little world, something decent to be said for it, and something to lament in its passing.
In other words all I want to be is the Jane Austen of south Alabama." ~Harper Lee 1964
As we all know, To Kill a Mockingbird is the only novel Lee ever published. Her aversion to interviews have given her the stigma, for better or worse, of the reclusive artist. With the classic's bestseller success by word-of-mouth alone (in a world before Twitter and Facebook and other social networking marketing-necessary implements of today), it's placement in high schools across the country, and the fact that it, 50 years later, still sells almost a million copies every year, maybe Lee achieved her goal to preserve the world in which she and Scout grew up in with one novel.
As I said near the beginning, this book has been a completely different experience with each crack of the first page all the way to the end. I love the fact that I had read it twice before, basically knew what was going to happen, but it still gripped me. That, I believe, is the mark of a true classic.
Formalities
I got some information and details and quotes from these places:
Harper Lee's interview with Roy Newquist originally published in his book Counterpoint in 1964.
Information in the publicity of the book (or lack thereof) from this article by Publisher's Weekly:
http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/columns-and-blogs/soapbox/article/43637-the-no-publicity-bestseller.html
