The Power(s) of Paratexts in/on My Copy of To Kill Mockingbird
Epigraph: “Lawyers, I suppose, were children once”—Charles Lamb. A delightfully humorous statement by itself, particularly if one has come to know contentious lawyers.
From the “blurb” on the back: “Harper Lee was born in 1926 in Monroeville, Alabama, where she attended Huntingdon College and studied law at the University of Alabama.” Probing this at the Wikipedia page on Lee, one finds among other interesting things relevant to the book that Lee did not finish her law degree.
Scout, the narrator-as-adult-recalling-childhood-episode, “is” 9 years old, in 1935, when the book reaches its conclusion.
The immediately available paratexts collaborate with the text and point to a strong possibility that the work is heavily autobiographical. The autobiographical quality has been noted by others over the years though Lee has made efforts to play it down. Whether true or not, I believe this contributes in part to the affective powers of the work.
Among the interesting tidbits available on the Wikipedia site is a suggestion that the basis for the character Dill was Lee’s childhood friend and neighbor: Truman Capote. Now, no matter what I do/read to change it, Dill will have for me Philip Seymour Hoffman’s face and voice.
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Authors must struggle for a book title and I would suppose that many are written with a working title and hope that somehow some great thought emerges from the manuscript. Harper Lee backs her title with a beautiful sentiment that speaks to the nature of the book:
Man, these are serious folks.
More Favorites Gleaned from TKaM
This reminded me of the years Laurie and I lived in Charleston, South Carolina. My Navy uniforms were starched to the point that I feared the fabric would crack if bent; and, within minutes of putting them on, they looked and felt as though there were NO starch in them at all. It was very hard for anyone to pass inspection while we were there unless they were wearing those plastic bags known as polyester perma-press. Problem was, those things would kill you slowly through bodily suffocation.
Our friend, Shelley, told us then—for me the first time hearing this—that “horses sweat, men perspire, and women glow.” It sounds as though Ms Lee was trying to give us the same impression.
Not so much a favorite moment as a story-wise interesting moment . . . aside from her name, which is not altogether racially ambiguous, our first indication that Calpurnia is black comes almost as an “oh . . . by the way . . .”:
Even here we cannot be entirely certain, but the textual cues are pretty strong. And it speaks volumes about how Scout and Jem have been raised by their father. They appear to be as color-blind as people living in that part of the country at that time can be.
This whole “spitting” thing has a pretty significant presence in the text. One wonders whether in this situation Calpurnia is setting a charm, warding off the “evil eye” of dead, mean ol’ Mr. Radley. Among the Ancient Greeks (and today, too?), that was one function of the act of spitting. And elsewhere in the story, Scout uses spitting in the palm and shaking hands as a means of sealing a deal—one of those lady-like habits of which her aunt wants to cure her.