HARPER
LEE WAS MY WRITING TEACHER
Fifty years ago, Harper Lee led me into
her bewitching world and taught me most of what I know.
As a compulsive reader from childhood,
I recognized Lee’s magic the minute I finished “To Kill a Mockingbird.” I was then
a young, optimistic mother, struggling to become a published author. With five
boys and a girl bouncing off our walls, writing at home was impossible.
Instead, I escaped into the nearby
hills above our half acre in Tustin.
On a road that led nowhere, I parked and sat with my Smith-Corona on my lap and
Harper Lee’s book open on the seat beside me.
I simply had to find out what
made her prose so compelling. What was she doing that I’d so far never discovered? How,
with both of us using the same language, did she transport me to another world,
while my writing seemed only slightly more riveting than “Fun With Dick and
Jane?”
It quickly became obvious that we were
both trying to create something that other people would view instantly . . .
let’s say, a brick wall. Which was when I grasped that in her case the reader
saw only the bricks. But the magic actually lay in the mortar--the small bits
that held the bricks together, the bits that few people noticed.
Making my task nearly impossible was
the fact that I kept getting swept away into her story. It took a stubborn
German psyche to analyze her technique, because it was essentially invisible.
And thus, from Day One I assumed she’d been both smart and lucky--visited by
some kind of inner manna from heaven.
Still, I tried. And I learned things
that never came to light elsewhere. I discovered a seldom-discussed trick for
displaying character . . . when I realized it was Atticus’ neighbor, Miss
Maudie, who described for his children the deeper character of Atticus—more
than the reader could grasp from what he said, did, or thought. So now I teach my
students that this fourth element is a novelist’s godsend.
I figured out that you can write a book
largely from a child’s viewpoint, yet include significant portions from an adult
perspective—so yes, it’s a child’s story—but never confined to a childish mind.
With study I found the small bits of
action that accompany dialogue, but actually reveal personality: “Mr. Tate’s
voice was quiet, but his boots were planted so solidly on the porch floorboards
it seemed that they grew there.”
During my “study years” (which have
never quite ended), I realized that the best memoirs usually read like novels—whereas
the best novels quite often read like memoirs. Thus, I teach both in one class.
After years of assuming the novel more
or less fell into Harper Lee’s lap with minimal effort—because she was so
naturally brilliant--I learned otherwise from the book “Scout, Atticus, and
Boo” a fifty-years retrospective. Harper
Lee had, in fact, been subsidized for two years by publisher J.B. Lippincott,
to live in a New York
hotel and polish a manuscript which they thought had promise. Her editor said,
“Go back and re-write it from the child’s viewpoint.” Lee later disclosed that
those two years had been among the most intense and difficult of her life.
So there was no manna from heaven after
all. Like most superb authors, it turns out she worked like a demon to achieve
her unforgettable prose. It seems a great book can start out mundane but become
immortal as the result of a thousand small upgrades. Which is why I couldn’t
read, “Go Set a Watchman.” I never
wanted to be disappointed by the manuscript that “almost was.”
If I can now claim to be a decent
writer, most of the credit goes to Harper Lee.
************
My latest memoir, "The Tail on my Mother's Kite," available, autographed, on
Maralys.com. Or you can find it on Amazon.
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