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Harper Lee's Mockingbird Still Sings

© Thomas James Martin

The inimitable Groucho Marx once said that he would never join a club that would allow him to be a member. I suppose that I tend to apply that dictum in my own way to art, especially literature.

I simply do not wish to read a story that I probably could have written myself. It is not that I am boring; at least I hope not. It is just that in my reading I want to experience something that is beyond the woof and warp of my little patch of ego, that little self with which I identify so much and defend so valiantly.

Thus, I appreciate those works of art that are unique unto themselves, where the artist has gone beyond the soapbox of self and has looked deeply into the depths of her/his experience, and has faced not only the angels of the heights but also stared down into the demons in the depths. Sometimes a magic happens with such artists; they almost mysteriously seem to enter that inspirational state where art and life fuse, where their metaphors unerringly shadow their themes, and in the case of fiction where the characters achieve such development that they seem almost free enough to dream.

I can only imagine that Harper Lee must have been in that state of consciousness when she wrote To Kill a Mockingbird, that novel that continues to enthrall so many, that is so famously popular while being so absolutely excellent, its wonder and humanity discovered by generation after generation of readers. I certainly experienced "deja view all over again" after having read the novel and having seen the now classic movie years ago.

To me, To Kill a Mockingbird is one of those books; you know the type, Constant Reader, the ones that come along every now and then that catch our collective imagination and stir us so deeply because they mirror the abiding joy and sadness of the human condition with such precision. Huckleberry Finn and The Catcher in the Rye come to mind, like Harper Lee's classic novel, works of a singular creative vision and depth of experience.

Harper & Row first published To Kill a Mockingbird in 1961. Auspicious indeed was the timing of the publication of this novel dealing with racial intolerance and bigotry, appearing as it did just as the Civil Rights Movement had started in the United States. HarperCollins reissued the book in 1995 and then in 2002 published a striking paperback edition for its Perennial Classics line.