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Monday, March 19, 2007
SINGING MY HEART OUT!
“Remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.” That was the only time I ever heard Atticus say it was a sin to do something, and I asked Miss Maudie about it. “Your father’s right,” she said. “Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy … but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.” Quote from the book To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
In my life, I have seen many people who have obsessions. I remember when I was a kid, crazed girls screaming over The Beatles, which I found silly. Teenagers, my daughters age, are going absolutely ballistic these days over the musical group, My Chemical Romance. I have seen grown men dress in women’s lingerie attending day after day the film The Rocky Horror Picture Show when I was first starting work as a hairdresser. Year after year I have viewed at each new release of a Star Wars movie teens, and adults dressing as Luke Skywalker to Darth Vader. I guess we all have secret fan clubs for something or someone. My not-so-secret obsession has always been about authors and their books. My all-time favorite? To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee of course.
I do not know when I first read the book. I saw the film first and instantly found myself in the character of Scout. I related so well to the youngest Finch, I became an instant fan of the film. Every spring my mother, sisters, and I would watch the movie piled on our green nubbly divan as the story unfolded on our old black and white Curtis Mathis television. I still get chills when Dill, Jem and Scout all dare each other to go up on to Boo Radley’s porch. We did not have any next door neighbors like the Radley’s. Still, as we moved a lot, we had someone or something that scared the bejesus out of us in our neighborhood. My sisters and honed in on those eccentric characters like flies to honey.
I read this book usually once a year in the spring and it’s that time. As I reread the pages, I am amazed at what new revelations unfold for me at each reading. I highly recommend everybody do the same in this country. The book to me, no matter how many literary analysis’s are done, is just the story that Harper Lee fictionalized of her experiences growing up in Monroeville, Alabama. Do I think she was trying to teach us of social injustice and all the other many tangents that some academia who has studied her work for their doctoral thesis explain in minute detail? Maybe subconsciously, I just happen to think she just told us one of the greatest stories ever told period.
I have collected snippets of information on Harper Lee, the book, and film for years. Not to study and critique her underlying subliminal messages, but as kind of like the scrapbook that my mother kept when she was a teenager of her favorite Hollywood stars. I collect these newspaper clipping and stories just because I loved her written words. Because of course, I did finally discover the book, probably at the Eureka Carnegie Library of my youth back in Kansas when an astute teacher recommended I go there after they overheard me blathering on about the film. When I became an adult and found you could buy books. Lo and behold not just check them out at the library, that was one of the first books I purchased for my ever growing library. My treasures, I think I have about 6 copies of To Kill a Mockingbird, each a different printing, different cover, and some commemerating an anniversary edition. I have those books stacked on my bedside table to keep them close and for easy reach for reading. So when I heard that not one but two movies were coming out on Truman Capote and Harper Lee, I could hardly wait in anticipation of their story unfolding on film.
Capote debuted first and won Philip Seymour Hoffman an Oscar. Then came the film Infamous which if an actor has ever come as close to portraying a character better than Toby Jones as Truman Capote, I’m not sure who it would be. He was Truman Capote. And I thought Phillip Seymour Hoffman had him nailed. Sandra Bullock, before I watched the film, I thought was sorely miscast but I was wrong. She was incredible and it changed my opinion of her as an actress. Her quietness and accent delighted me. Both films were great and that is something I don’t say very often. Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird sets the standard to me for great film. Capote and Infamous in turn follow suit. That must be a first or am I biased as concerning the subject matter. I probably am.
I will continue returning to my reading of To Kill a Mockingbird just as I do every year, much like the birds returning back north in the spring. Yes, I’m singing, singing it’s praises to high heaven. Won’t you join me in reading To Kill a Mockingbird? To me it would be a sin if you didn’t.
Tiara wearing and Book sharing,
Kathy L. Patrick
Founder of the Pulpwood Queens Book Clubs
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