Quote of the Day (Rick Bragg, on “To Kill a Mockingbird”)

“I began reading Harper Lee’s novel in the skimpy shade of a pine outside my grandmother’s house, fat beagles pressing against me, begging for attention, ignored. At dark, I kept reading, first on the couch, a bologna sandwich in one hand, then in my bed, by the light of a 60-watt bulb hanging from the ceiling on an orange drop cord. When my mother came in from her job as a maid and unplugged my chandelier, I replayed the story in my head until it was crowded out by dreams. I woke the next morning, smelling biscuits, and reached for the book again.”—Rick Bragg on To Kill a Mockingbird, in “The Book That Changed My Life,” Reader’s Digest, May 2010

Here’s’ what I really love about this quote:

* what it conveys about a book’s transformative effect, the way it can sweep you out of your grimy reality onto a mental magic carpet ride;

* its reminder of the extraordinarily vivid, bone-deep prose style of Bragg, whose All Over But the Shoutin’ gives such a powerful sense of his Deep South—and the importance of storytelling and family history there—that it should be required reading for aspiring memoirists; and

* the impact made on hundreds of thousands of readers worldwide by Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, which made its debut a half-century ago.

Over the last several years, this account of a rape trial in the pre-civil-rights-era South—with a lawyer-hero based on the author’s father--has appeared on several “greatest novels of the 20th century” polls, placing #4 on the Radcliffe Institute’s list of the century’s top novels, #2 on the Brodart poll of the 100 greatest novels of all time as voted by librarians, and #1 in a poll of 2,000 readers conducted by the online retailer Play.com.

Well, you could have practically heard the snorting of critics—who, after the initially favorable but not enthusiastic reviews, paid the book comparatively little mind--each time one of these surveys was released. Truth be told, I’m not sure I’d place the book quite so high on mine. But I’m also certain that the snobbery behind all this criticism is not justified in any way.

You can take the long, long list of other Pulitzer Prize winners for Fiction over the years and apply a simple test: How much of it do you remember? In many cases, I bet you’ll have real trouble recalling characters or incidents. (Even William Faulkner’s posthumous The Reivers doesn’t pass the test.)

Not so with To Kill a Mockingbird, and not merely because of the movie, which gave Gregory Peck the signature role of his career, not to mention his first and only competitive Oscar after four unsuccessful tries.

(The story goes that, when Ms. Lee caught sight of the actor decked out in a Panama hat and three-piece white linen suit, she began crying and said, “My God, he’s got a little pot belly just like my Daddy!” “That’s no pot belly, Harper,” said Peck, “that’s great acting.” It’s easy to imagine Peck saying this wryly, rather than unself-consciously, like the epically pompous Orson Welles.)

In December 1991, Beth Austin wrote a piece in The Washington Monthly, “Pretty Worthless: Whatever Happened to Making Movies That Make a Difference?”, which points out about Robert Mulligan’s sterling movie something that applies equally well to the novel: “Because of its apparent conflict between career and family, To Kill a Mockingbird sends a message that today's movies, with their emphasis on quality time, sincere relationships, and parent-child bonding, never approach: A vital part of loving your children--of loving anyone--is living a life they will admire, which can mean risking yourself and even your loved ones to do the right thing.” In other words, Finch’s courage is of the most uncomfortable kind imaginable.

The trial of the African-American Tom Robinson for raping a white woman is, of course, the riveting heart of the book. But another part of the novel has also stuck in my memory, 35 years after I read it as a high-school freshman: the story of the sickly elderly neighbor, Mrs. Dubose, who, for a long time, seems to be only a crochety old woman who makes Atticus’ son read to her for two hours every afternoon for a month for breaking the blossoms of her camellia bush.

After her death, Atticus explains that Mrs. Dubose is one of the bravest people he knows, for having struggled, in her last days, to free herself from a terrible morphine addiction. It taught me how little we know growing up about the people in our lives, and of the many surprising things that exist in their hearts that we might otherwise never know.