Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it. In rainy weather the streets turned to red slop; grass grew on the sidewalks, the courthouse sagged in the square. Somehow, it was hotter then: a black dog suffered on a summer’s day; bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square. Men’s stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o’clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum.
People moved slowly then. They ambled across the square, shuffled in and out of the stores around it, took their time about everything. A day was twenty-four hours long but seemed longer. There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with, nothing to see outside the boundaries of Maycomb County. But it was a time of vague optimism for some of the people: Maycomb County had recently been told that it had nothing to fear but fear itself.
We lived on the main residential street in town—Atticus, Jem and I, plus Calpurnia our cook. Jem and I found our father satisfactory: he played with us, read to us, and treated us with courteous detachment....
"To Kill a Mockingbird" is coming to Broadway for the first time, and though I don't always love Aaron Sorkin's work, I'm optimistic. Thinking about this production, I'm reminded of the possibly mean-spirited Roxane Gay piece in the Times from this past summer; it seems to me Ms. Gay missed so much.
I don't love the courtroom plot in TKAM; it's one of the less-interesting parts of this novel (only because Lee handles it in a hackneyed way). That said, the courtroom material helps Lee to elaborate on a theme. It seems to me that the main thing that concerns Lee is the gap between speech and thought--the mysteries of human behavior. That's what she returns to, again and again and again. It's especially notable when you're writing about a child--because, of course, a child is always making inferences (and often getting the basics wrong).
Like "A High Wind in Jamaica," TKAM has a smart kid at its center--a kid realizing that human behavior is frequently irrational or at odds with the objective truth. So, for example, Scout's heart is broken; she sees that Tom is innocent, and that it's likely most people recognize his innocence. She sees that he is convicted, nonetheless. Scout sees that a certain "bad guy" has emphatically *not* fallen on his knife, and that, nevertheless, his death is labeled a case of "fell-on-the-knife." (Frontier justice. This makes me think of the current NYC production of "Oklahoma!")
Scout studies her brother. He is meant to be playing with her--but, at times, he wanders off and becomes quiet. ("In the middle of the game, sometimes, he would sigh and go off and play by himself.") Scout intuitively understands that this strange behavior is a form of mourning; sadness has overtaken Jem, such that he can't explain himself.
One of my favorite parts concerns a scene in class. Scout has a new teacher, and she is book-smart, but she does not understand certain socioeconomic facts about Maycomb. She wonders why a particular kid will not go home at lunchtime. It's painfully clear to all the students that this kid does not go home because there isn't any food; it's also clear that the truth can't be articulated, because of the kid's pride. Why can't the obtuse book-reading teacher infer what is going on? Scout--a smart kid, but a kid nonetheless--seems really baffled by her teacher's fumbling and exasperation. I love this moment of mutual incomprehension, and I love Scout's struggle to understand that the pool of knowledge she has is not necessarily available to everyone around her. The writing just seems to pin childhood to the wall--in a unique way.
I'm struck, too, by the blunt, childlike assessment of Atticus: "I found our father satisfactory. He read to us, played with us, and treated us with courteous detachment...." Of course a child would view a father as an object, an item to be deemed "satisfactory" or "unsatisfactory." And of course the criterion for judging would be something so simple, so brass-tacks, as: "Does he read to us?" The lack of sentimentality, the black-and-white clarity of the reasoning, the conviction: This seems like Childhood Writ Large.
I also enjoy the way Lee toggles back and forth between Scout's childhood voice and her adult voice. "Courteous detachment": Who would think to assign that phrase to a father? And the ladies "like teacakes," the "sagging courthouse": Lee was a poet. And I'm a fan of the sense of hyperbole, the way childhood looks extremely dramatic, Wonderland-ish, in hindsight: "Somehow it was hotter then...."
Roxane Gay doesn't mention any of this behavioral insight or shrewd phrase-making in her review. She does talk about a line about "the Battle of Hastings," which--sure--is a fine example of Lee's humor. As Sorkin's debut approaches, I'm hopeful, and at the same time, I continue to wish Gay could have read Lee a bit more closely over the summer. Long live Scout Finch.
People moved slowly then. They ambled across the square, shuffled in and out of the stores around it, took their time about everything. A day was twenty-four hours long but seemed longer. There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with, nothing to see outside the boundaries of Maycomb County. But it was a time of vague optimism for some of the people: Maycomb County had recently been told that it had nothing to fear but fear itself.
We lived on the main residential street in town—Atticus, Jem and I, plus Calpurnia our cook. Jem and I found our father satisfactory: he played with us, read to us, and treated us with courteous detachment....
"To Kill a Mockingbird" is coming to Broadway for the first time, and though I don't always love Aaron Sorkin's work, I'm optimistic. Thinking about this production, I'm reminded of the possibly mean-spirited Roxane Gay piece in the Times from this past summer; it seems to me Ms. Gay missed so much.
I don't love the courtroom plot in TKAM; it's one of the less-interesting parts of this novel (only because Lee handles it in a hackneyed way). That said, the courtroom material helps Lee to elaborate on a theme. It seems to me that the main thing that concerns Lee is the gap between speech and thought--the mysteries of human behavior. That's what she returns to, again and again and again. It's especially notable when you're writing about a child--because, of course, a child is always making inferences (and often getting the basics wrong).
Like "A High Wind in Jamaica," TKAM has a smart kid at its center--a kid realizing that human behavior is frequently irrational or at odds with the objective truth. So, for example, Scout's heart is broken; she sees that Tom is innocent, and that it's likely most people recognize his innocence. She sees that he is convicted, nonetheless. Scout sees that a certain "bad guy" has emphatically *not* fallen on his knife, and that, nevertheless, his death is labeled a case of "fell-on-the-knife." (Frontier justice. This makes me think of the current NYC production of "Oklahoma!")
Scout studies her brother. He is meant to be playing with her--but, at times, he wanders off and becomes quiet. ("In the middle of the game, sometimes, he would sigh and go off and play by himself.") Scout intuitively understands that this strange behavior is a form of mourning; sadness has overtaken Jem, such that he can't explain himself.
One of my favorite parts concerns a scene in class. Scout has a new teacher, and she is book-smart, but she does not understand certain socioeconomic facts about Maycomb. She wonders why a particular kid will not go home at lunchtime. It's painfully clear to all the students that this kid does not go home because there isn't any food; it's also clear that the truth can't be articulated, because of the kid's pride. Why can't the obtuse book-reading teacher infer what is going on? Scout--a smart kid, but a kid nonetheless--seems really baffled by her teacher's fumbling and exasperation. I love this moment of mutual incomprehension, and I love Scout's struggle to understand that the pool of knowledge she has is not necessarily available to everyone around her. The writing just seems to pin childhood to the wall--in a unique way.
I'm struck, too, by the blunt, childlike assessment of Atticus: "I found our father satisfactory. He read to us, played with us, and treated us with courteous detachment...." Of course a child would view a father as an object, an item to be deemed "satisfactory" or "unsatisfactory." And of course the criterion for judging would be something so simple, so brass-tacks, as: "Does he read to us?" The lack of sentimentality, the black-and-white clarity of the reasoning, the conviction: This seems like Childhood Writ Large.
I also enjoy the way Lee toggles back and forth between Scout's childhood voice and her adult voice. "Courteous detachment": Who would think to assign that phrase to a father? And the ladies "like teacakes," the "sagging courthouse": Lee was a poet. And I'm a fan of the sense of hyperbole, the way childhood looks extremely dramatic, Wonderland-ish, in hindsight: "Somehow it was hotter then...."
Roxane Gay doesn't mention any of this behavioral insight or shrewd phrase-making in her review. She does talk about a line about "the Battle of Hastings," which--sure--is a fine example of Lee's humor. As Sorkin's debut approaches, I'm hopeful, and at the same time, I continue to wish Gay could have read Lee a bit more closely over the summer. Long live Scout Finch.
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