Posted on 05/04/2013 1:41:37 PM PDT by ConservativeStatement
Harper Lee, the author of To Kill A Mockingbird, has sued her literary agent for allegedly duping her into assigning him the copyright on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.
In the lawsuit filed in federal court in Manhattan, Lee says Samuel Pinkus, the son-in-law of Lee's long-time agent, Eugene Winick, took advantage of her failing hearing and eyesight to transfer the rights on the book, which has sold more than 30 million copies worldwide and became an Oscar-winning film.
The 87-year-old says she has no memory of agreeing to relinquish her rights or signing the agreement that cements the purported transfer.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
I remember an episode of “Get Smart” that was a parody of “The Maltese Falcon.” Max was trying to locate the “Tequila Mockingbird.”
Not only that, he both physically and sexually abused Mayella. On the stand Tom Robinson testified that Mayella wanted to kiss a man and “what her pa do to her don’t count.” He wasn’t referring to Bob Ewell giving his daughter a good night kiss.
I think doubts about Harper Lee’s authorship “because she never wrote anything else” are disingenuous at best. Plenty of good writers only have one good novel in them.
What people really mean is she couldn’t possibly have written an American masterpiece because she didn’t evolve out of the East Coast literati; she’s from Alabama. And she went to the University of Alabama. How... quaint. Poor thing must not have been able to get into Harvard.
When she was a struggling writer in New York, she didn’t intern at Doubleday or hang out with Andy Warhol at Studio 54. In short, she didn’t do any of the things successful writers are supposed to do.
Questioning whether Harper Lee wrote what she wrote is all a smokescreen for regional bigotry.
Margaret Mitchell only wrote one book too. But, then again, she got run over by a taxi.
Very interesting, thanks.
Truman Capote?
At least in part I'm sure. Most such animosities, however, are over determined sorts of attitudes. Multiple things can augment and foster that kind of ill will. I imagine there some anti-woman writer prejudice in there as well. Plus, everyone's at least a little envious and resentful in private when literary lightning strikes thee and not me.
How Capote figures in the mix I haven't a clue.
I wonder though, concerning regional bigotry, would she have been received differently if she hailed instead from, say, Oxford, Mississippi?
Thank you for being such a good teacher!
I don’t know why, but we never read TKAM in high school. My daughter read it when she was in 9th or 10th grade. She loves it and had to take her copy away to college with her. Hubby had a college professor who had been a high school teacher in Jackson, MS in 1960 or so. She kept a copy in her desk for students who wanted to read it. The book had been banned from the school. It may have been banned from the entire district. My aunt used the novel in her classes until she retired about ten years ago. She was a Bama grad, too.
Capote didn't write Mockingbird.
I am trying to think of female writers from Mississippi in the 50s and 60s. Eudora Welty? When was she published? She was from Jackson and remained very low key all her life.
Worse, she was from a small town in Alabama -- Monroeville.
Which, if you know that part of Alabama, she depicted the town and its people perfectly.
Unlike most East Coast literati, she knew her subject...and depicted it with love and respect.
“A Confederacy of Dunces” author was a “one hit wonder” too, then he killed himself. (John Kennedy Toole)
At least, I thought it was a great book.
Just as most questioning of the authorship of Shakespeare is based on class bias.
A commoner wrote the most famous works in the English language? Must have been a nobleman behind it! / s
I love the use of birds as motifs.
This book does not need some creep owning the copyright. I shudder to think what Disney will do to destroy it in their drive to join up and destroy what’s good in our culture.
What they try to do with the Wizard of Oz is horrible.
Isn't it odd that literature which tells painful truths, but are ultimately respectful, of a culture or area is often banned -- unofficially, if not officially.
When I went to high school in Oklahoma in the fifties, The Grapes of Wrath was a forbidden book. It wasn't taught, it wasn't in the school libraries. It wasn't even much remarked upon.
Having gained a taste for Steinbeck via Tortilla Flat, though, I undertook The Grapes of Wrath in college...and was blown away. The inner strengths of the Joads taught me much about the character of my forebearers and made me proud of where I hailed from.
With To Kill A Mockingbird<, Grapes remains one of the most significant books of my lifetime.
Eudora, well, southern writers, Flannery O’Connor, Carson McCullers. Harper Lee wrote just this, I think.
The bird motifs are indeed beautiful, as well as how she describes people by describing their homes. It took me a couple of trips through the book to figure that one out. The “play yard of an insane child” will always be one of my favorite parts, which is when Lee describes the Ewell yard.
You might be interested in this.
Sigh. That’s Mel Brooks. Get Smart gets my kids through some otherwise troublesome e down time on school breaks. Well, that and a few other gems.
99: Max, it’s Siegfried and Shtarker!
Siegfried: Well it isn’t Robinson Crusoe and Friday, cookie.
I will check that out.
It’s a wonderful film, as well.
Beautifully narrated.
I think Lee was so tuned in to her times and culture she simply commented on what she saw going on.
Your observations are very interesting.
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