Into the Ordinary World: A summons. A mentor/guide arrives in the form of Atticus's boss: Will Atticus defend Tom Robinson, a black man accused of having raped and beaten a white woman? The boss: "I know you have kids, and this is a good deal of stress." A silent moment in which Atticus weighs these words and entertains the thought of refusing, then that blunt, terse: "I'll take the case." And we're off to Hell. Allies become enemies. (Is that Mr. Cunningham, the friendly poor man, in a KKK outfit? Shiver me timbers!) There are tests, tricks, mini-showdowns. The "rape victim" claims to have been assaulted by a left-handed man--but Tom Robinson's left hand is mangled. The victim claims to have been forcibly kissed, but in fact Tom Robinson says it was he who suffered an unwanted erotic advance. The victim has a father--and aren't all fathers like Atticus? Or is it possible that some fathers would beat their own daughters--fathers with a great deal of self-loathing, shame, prejudice, fathers with strong left hands?
Scout learns some things about irony and subtext. People's seemingly earnest statements are often fictional. A man can be clearly innocent and still an object of small-town punitive hatred, small-town aggression. When your drug-addled bitter neighbor verbally assaults you from her porch, your best bet is to speak sweetly about her flower garden, even if you don't mean a word you say. (We're all in pain, and the nastiest among us are the ones who are suffering the most.) If a friendly acquaintance stabs your assailant, sometimes it's best just to say your assailant fell on his own knife. Little white lies make the world go 'round. Gossip can (falsely) turn a mild-mannered loner into a crazed scissors-wielding would-be-murderer. Don't believe everything you hear.
Recently, the novelist Maile Meloy was speaking about "A High Wind in Jamaica." She was saying how fun it is--in that novel--that the children, the kidnap victims, do not generally realize they're imperiled. There's a sense of dramatic irony, and of de-familiarization: We, the adult readers, can apprehend things about the menacing world that the child characters miss entirely, even though they're the ones inhabiting the menacing world in question. (This idea inspired Meloy's own "Do Not Become Alarmed.") Something similar happens in the early scenes of "To Kill A Mockingbird." Take, for example, Scout's first encounter with Dr. Cunningham. ("Why wouldn't we thank him for bringing us nuts? What do you mean, he's too proud?") Or take an early scene with Calpurnia. (When Dill brags about his father letting him ride all the way to New Orleans--a form of compensating for not actually having a father--Calpurnia simply says, "Is that so?" We in the audience know there's a polite dismissal underneath Calpurnia's words; it's unlikely Scout has the same realization.) Or take Scout's managing of the embittered, drug-addled neighbor. (Scout is so fascinated by Atticus's courtly manipulation of the neighbor, she has to explain, loudly, what is happening while it is happening. It's as if she doesn't understand that her own words are audible. Do you remember that kind of experience from your childhood? We know things that Scout does not know. This sensation is de-stabilizing and intensely pleasurable.)
Haper Lee was in the news recently; she makes the news even after she has died! Some of her letters are newly available. A fun characterization of Truman Capote: "He was a liar. If you talked to him about JFK's assassination, he'd claim he was the one driving the car." An observation about "To Kill A Mockingbird": "I know it's paternalistic. I know it's problematic to have a sturdy white male character hailed as a savior by a chorus of black people. I wonder how readers would react if Atticus were overtly racist." (I'm paraphrasing.) A choice tidbit from Flannery O'Connor, who had very little fondness for "To Kill A Mockingbird": "People seem not to recognize that it's a children's book." Fair enough--and couldn't you read reams and reams of this type of gossip?
I love the early scenes of the movie adaptation of "To Kill A Mockingbird" because of the lacunae, the mysteries. I'm not sure now which bits come from Harper Lee and which come from Horton Foote. (Here's the rare case where a screenwriter has more "cred" than the novelist whose work he is adapting. Foote would go on to author "Tender Mercies," "Dividing the Estate," "The Trip to Bountiful"--unassailable masterworks.) I love when Scout learns that Dill doesn't have a father, and yet the (apparently non-existent) father is still living. "Well, if he's alive, then you have a daddy, don't you?" (A six-year-old child would indeed think in this literal way. And the question goes unanswered; the silence seems to gesture toward phenomena for which there aren't words. Don't you have a hazy recollection of similar mysteries from your own childhood?) I love that Scout assails Jem with a kind of nightly catechism: "Was Mama pretty? Did I love her? Did you love her? Was she nice? How old was I when she died?" Presumably, Scout knows the answers; communication is not often about literal meanings; there's something comforting in the ritual. (I love, too, that Atticus overhears the words--the way secrets flow around corners and through windows within a family. There actually aren't ever any secrets--ever. Nora Ephron said that.)
I was thinking of Foote/Lee after meeting Maile Meloy the other day, and reflecting on the great therapy scene she includes in "Do Not Become Alarmed." There, a traumatized small child insists on literal truths; we understand, while the child does not, that the therapist wants to get at cloudy realms of suffering. ("The international date line caused an entire city to miss a day? I bet you've had days you wished you could miss." "In one language, the concept of geographic status is built into pronouns, so that 'you' actually means 'you-who-are-southwest-of-me.'" We know the therapist wants the kid to start thinking about loss, about how we can't control the behaviors, or locations, of others--and the kid most emphatically will not take the bait.) Anyway, this is a great pleasure of literature--when words mean something other than the stuff they claim to mean. When a story captures this phenomenon, it seems close to life--because, of course, language is slippery, and we're always struggling to make inferences from inadequate material.
And that's all for today. Read Meloy! Seriously! And if you have thirty minutes sitting around, some time with the start of Foote's "Mockingbird" is certainly time well-spent.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWwuXEf1q8I
Comments
Post a Comment