Atticus Finch: Racist

[ennison]

TKaM is I believe widely read in schools so it should be obvious to many who read it in that context that the characterisation is very well done. There are no modern "saints" in the book. Politically Atticus is a Conservative - read even just the words giving his opinions on education. Would he have been a supporter of someone like T W Higginson? Nae chance. Would he have voted for the likes of Bryan? Naw - his type didn't do that. The characterisation is one of the best done parts of the novel. Whether that chimes with the first draft I couldn't say. As I understood it Lee spent a lot of time on rewriting it and to doubt that she did that is a modern jealousy. That said I think it is a big wide-ranging text. I like it for a lot of reasons. I didn't read it until I was in my early twenties and I was struck by its portrait of a community and its humour.

[Eiseabhal]

But who, Ennison, would there have been like TWH in the USA in the thirties? (If there was such a person in the USA today some right winger would shoot him) I see what you mean by the conservative views in the novel. Conservative perhaps to us Scots. But remember radicals can be racists or looneys or unpleasant and conservatives can be quite stable and sometimes pleasant to others. Unless you are of the John S Mill mind as regards conservative intellect? You cannot say that the views expressed by Lee in that novel are unintelligent. Would you agree that the character of Miss Maudie is probably the main mouthpiece for Lee's views on social issues?

[ennison]

Well I used these famous Americans as examples of well-known radicals. My intention was to suggest that although TKaM is radical in terms of 1960 race relations in the USA the central character is pretty conservative in several other ways. I admire the book. I wasn't really thinking about JS Mills but now that you bring him up I probably do share his opinions on that. I take your point about radicals but then people are only politically radical on individual issues. There is no such thing as a radical personality. Unless the inmates of some asylums might be radical in that way! I don't use the word in the modern post-hippy slang manner.

I would never say or even suggest that Lee was unintelligent. TKaM is a novel of ideas. Some are profound. Some challenging. It may be that the modern tendency to identify racism as the evil above all other evils has led to misreading a of the earlier text. But it is probably not a very good text brought out for a quick cash fix.

[Ecurb]

Here's a link to Adam Gopnik's review in the New Yorker I just received:

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...t-home-alabama

By the way, here's the current New Yorker's brilliant cover of Donald Trump belly-whopping into a pool of candidates:

http://www.businessinsider.com/new-y...d-trump-2015-7

[AuntShecky]

This so-called "second" novel of Harper Lee is actually her first, in effect a first draft of the novel that became To Kill a Mockingbird. Since the publication of and publicity for this "watchman" book have surfaced, people around the country apparently have a sense of disappointment and disillusion, if not betrayal. Many have expressed their outrage without having read the book.

Neither have I read the "new" book yet, but I am reluctant to call out Harper Lee for depicting the society of the time exactly as was, bigoted warts and all. When an editor (or someone) convinced Miss Lee to rewrite the novel casting Atticus Finch as a kind of civil rights champion, the subsequent novel became what's called an "icon," held up as an example of how to change society. To Kill a Mockingbird became a way for well-meaning middle class white people to feel good about themselves, not to mention how high school teachers across the country held up the novel as a kind of literary chalice with Atticus as a model of rectitude (that is, back when actual novels were part of the curriculum until they were replaced by short reading passages as preparation for Common Core tests.)

I still believe that To Kill a Mockingbird is a good book, but in terms of lighting a fire for social change, I'm skeptical. Like Mississippi Burning and The Help, there is something not completely kosher in propping up a white person as a "savior" of black people; it seems condescending at best and at its very worst seems as if it's clutching the last (?) remnants of structural racism: that progress won't happen unless white people step in. Underneath it there's an assumption that black people can't succeed on their own which is totally, undeniably wrong.

If you're looking at literature and movies to solve social problems, no doubt they can be a force to win hearts and minds. Even so, there are other books far more powerful -- Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison--books with the voices and hearts of black people themselves. But even when a film or a novel can influence social attitudes, it is a by-product, not the raison d'etre.

One more thing that sticks in my craw: again and again we come back to the essential question: what is literature "for"? It is right to expect good literature is be good, to have "meaning," but it is essentially wrong
to ask art and literature to sing for its supper, no matter how nourishing the meal may be.

[Ecurb]

The anti-bigotry theme of "To Kill a Mockingbird" always appeared to me to be, "Poor White Trash are even worse than black people". After all, the black people in Maycomb participated in white, middle class society and traditions, while the PWTs did not. Calpurnia (the kids' nanny) even had a classical name, just like Atticus, and demanded that Scout learn middle class manners.

I found it strange that the novel was held up to be anti-bigotry, when it clearly reinforced such stereotypes. (I haven't read "Watchmen" either. Also, I like "Mockingbird" despite what I wrote above.)

[Scheherazade]

All said and done, it is #1 both on amazon.com and amazon.co.uk

All the kids must be reading it!

[sandy14]

Buying a book is one thing, actually reading it is quite another.

Hundred of copies of the Booker Prize winner sells every year, and I doubt that even half of them are read.

[Munshie]

tonywalt

I saw the Mockingbird film although I never read the book. I am fully aware how many liberal minded White people received the book, but as the member of a much discriminated against racial minority (in the UK) and a politcal activist on matters of racial equality, I am also aware of how many people of colour/African-Americans perceived the book. I'm sure the new book (Watchman) will upset some people but I agree with you, it is probably more realistic and less idealised about 'race'.

[Munshie]

Ecurb

You're probably right to suspect the anti-bigotry credentials of Mockingbird. As a former political activist on issues of racial equality in UK, I find it interesting that racism is reduced to mere prejudice.

[Eiseabhal]

Remember the lawyer, who was more concerned with the trial as a matter of justice than a social struggle, was not successful in TKaM. Any progress in social matters was seen as a "baby step" - and that was actually said by a character other than the protagonist.(As was remarked on above) . Yes the word "trash" is used in the novel. For those who are hyper-sensitive that could be an irritant. Although it is often read in some schools it is not a children's book. Coming out at the time it did in the USA I have no doubt it contributed to the "climate of opinion" in what I would regard as a positive way.

[Methinks]

Attiticus being racist is intolerable. I am all for authorial intent to a degree, but when a book has become a national classic, as Mockingbird was and is, and informed multiple generations through a simple human story, with characters now indelibly iconic, I see no reason for what is essentially an early, different era first draft of that novel to be published, unedited, decades later. Except thoughtless profit, of course.

[Gutted]

I still believe that To Kill a Mockingbird is a good book, but in terms of lighting a fire for social change, I'm skeptical. Like Mississippi Burning and The Help, there is something not completely kosher in propping up a white person as a "savior" of black people; it seems condescending at best and at its very worst seems as if it's clutching the last (?) remnants of structural racism: that progress won't happen unless white people step in. Underneath it there's an assumption that black people can't succeed on their own which is totally, undeniably wrong.

If institutionalized racism was a barrier to success, then how could black people have succeeded on their own, under those conditions, without help from sympathetic people from the ruling class? Such as, I don't know, white people, maybe?

[prendrelemick]

Wasn't Atticus Finch based on Harper Lee's own father? Which doesn't help the debate at all, but makes the second book seem a bit jucier.

[Eiseabhal]

I take your point about some of the ideas in the novel being radical Ennison - for it's era. I also see it as a very traditional "conservative" novel too. I suppose an American with a social conscience could still be both radical and conservative in those days. Look at the clown with the toupee nowadays as an example of American conservatism! Didn't his mother come from your island Ennison? By the way I hope you're off the grog, I'm booking my accommodation for the Northern Meeting tomorrow