Context Matters

---

---

I have enjoyed reading as long as I can remember.

My mother encouraged it, first by reading stories to my brother and me, then by urging us to read on our own as we developed that skill. As I say, it has been a lifelong passion for me, and two of my favorite books are Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" and Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird." I have read them both several times.

I can't remember now, but I believe I read both books for the first time in school. I know they were required reading when I was in high school, but I can't remember if that was the first time I ever read them. It may not have been, but I know it was the first time for many of my classmates.

Unfortunately, those books — and others — are no longer required reading in Duluth, Minn., schools because they contain the N–word. This is not new. It has happened before.

What is new, I suppose, is that Duluth won't be taking these books off the shelves entirely. The schools just won't require the students to read them.

Thus I assume there will be no book burnings in Duluth.

I understand the reasoning behind this move — but I believe it is faulty and dangerous.

School districts feel they are showing sensitivity by not requiring students to read words they may find offensive.

But I think they are doing more harm than good.

You can't protect people from things that are offensive. The world is a messy place. And if kids are anything like they were when I was in high school, it's too late to protect them. They've been exposed to far worse than the N–word already.

Besides, you have to keep in mind the context in which the offensive word was used.

Twain wrote about 19th–century America. My grandparents were born in 19th–century America, and they used that word as an adjective, no different for them than describing the color of someone's hair. When I read "Huckleberry Finn" — and I have read it several times and plan to do so again soon — I can see and hear my grandparents.

Twenty–first–century readers see a racial slur, a noun, when they see the word nigger, and that is consistent with their times and conditioning. But people of the 19th century frequently used it as an adjective, a modifier — which was consistent with their times and conditioning.

And I'm certain they would have been appalled if anyone had suggested that they were racists. The N–word was simply a word that was in common use in the world in which they grew up.

I grew up in a different world. And in hindsight, by modern standards, perhaps my grandparents were racists.

But if they were, they were products of the world in which they were raised. I believe it is wrong to hold people from a different time to modern standards — and isn't that what school districts are doing when they take this kind of step?

As for Harper Lee's book — she wrote about the American South in the '30s. She told an important story that couldn't be told without that word. The people who used it in the book were, without a doubt, racists, but the book taught a valuable lesson and is regarded as perhaps the finest example of 20th–century American literature. If you scrub it clean of the N–word, you rob it of its impact.

I believe writers use words for specific purposes. In this case, the N–word provided insight into the reality of times and places the reader would never see. But I think it also was used by these writers — and others — to make readers feel a little uncomfortable. Before any significant change of any kind can come, people must feel uncomfortable.

I have heard of at least one publisher that has published an alternative version of "Huckleberry Finn" in which the N–word was replaced by the word slave. But if the issue is racism, that substitution is meaningless. Anyone can be a slave. Historically, it is not a condition that has been defined by race.

So let's stop tap dancing around the real issue. Let's have a long overdue conversation about race in this country. Let's be blunt and talk about the things that we have avoided talking about. Let's face facts, however unpleasant those facts may be. I'm not an advocate of rewriting history — and I am certainly not in favor of rewriting Twain (as if anyone could).

I love history for many reasons, but one of the most important is summed up in the words of philosopher George Santayana: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

Twain and Lee and similar writers help us remember our messy past so we don't have to make the same mistakes.

Deconstructive Criticism

---

---

Niles (David Hyde Pierce): Oh my God. It is T.H. Houghton. We're a stone's throw away from one of the giants of American literature.

Roz (Peri Gilpin): Not the way you throw.

---

I guess the character of reclusive writer T.H. Houghton (played by Robert Prosky) in the episode of Frasier that aired on this night in 1996 was kind of a cross between J.D. Salinger and Harper Lee. Like Lee (at the time), Houghton had published only one book — albeit an influential one that was a pillar of English lit classes everywhere — but Lee wasn't the recluse that Salinger was. Houghton combined the quirkiest of both.

Anyway, Frasier (Kelsey Grammer) and Niles (David Hyde Pierce) had stopped at the cafe for some coffee before taking their father (John Mahoney) to buy new clothes. While sipping coffee outdoors, they spotted T.H. Houghton nearby.

And they began trying to meet him.

Their father, however, was the one who succeeded in getting to know the reclusive writer — without really trying. Frasier and Niles left him at a sports bar to watch the Mariners ("He's just dead weight," Niles told Frasier before they ran off on their quest), and it turned out Houghton was there, too. The boys didn't see him — he was probably in the bathroom because he walked into the room a minute or two after they left, sat down next to Martin and began watching the game with him.

They hit it off, talking about old TV shows and swapping war stories after the baseball game ended.

Meanwhile, after their fruitless search came to an end, Frasier and Niles returned to the sports bar — only to find their father sitting at a table with T.H. Houghton. But the writer didn't stay long; in fact, he left the bar as they were coming in, and the boys were left to wonder anew how they could finagle a meeting with him.

Later, after Niles and Frasier had been to an art exhibit, they returned to Frasier's apartment and crossed paths with their father and Houghton on their way out for dinner. Houghton had been there all afternoon. Another near miss.

Perhaps they could all spend some time together after the two returned from dinner, Niles suggested hopefully.

"I doubt it," Frasier replied. "They'll probably run into J.D. Salinger and Salman Rushdie and go out for margaritas."

The next day, Houghton was set to pick up Martin so they could go to a Mariners doubleheader. As Martin explained to the boys, Houghton was only in town for a few days to drop off his new book with his publisher.

Niles and Frasier nearly had strokes. A new Houghton book! In hindsight, their reaction reminds me a great deal of the reaction to Harper Lee's new book a year ago.

They didn't get to spend time with Houghton, but he went off without his satchel, which contained his manuscript, and Niles and Frasier took it out and read it while Houghton and their father were at the doubleheader.

But they didn't manage to return the manuscript to the satchel before being caught red–handed.

At first, Houghton was indignant about the invasion of his privacy. But soon curiosity got the best of him and he asked Niles and Frasier for their opinions. "Somebody had to read it first," he observed.

What happened next surprised everyone.

---

---

Niles and Frasier mentioned the similarities between Houghton's book and Dante's "Divine Comedy."

Houghton concluded that he had lifted the entire structure from Dante, and he interpreted that to mean that he nothing original left to say. "I was a fool to think I had a second book in me," he said before throwing the manuscript off Frasier's balcony.

Then he thanked Niles and Frasier and told them that if the book had been published, his reputation would have been destroyed. This way, he was left with a shred of dignity, and he marched with head held high — and a sheet from the manuscript stuck to the bottom of one of his shoes — out of the apartment.

I always liked this episode because, as a writer, I know that writing is not the kind of occupation for someone who is thin–skinned. Writers will always encounter criticism, no matter how good they are. They have to accept it as a fact of the life they have chosen. In a way, I guess, it is like being a politician. Even our greatest presidents had their critics.

In this episode, the shoe was kind of on the other foot. Frasier was a thin–skinned sort, too. In an episode in the previous season, he got all bent out of shape because one member of a 12–person focus group didn't like him. This time someone else was dealing with negative thoughts.

Well, that's life. No matter how funny or smart or good–looking you are, there will always be those who don't like you or what you do — or something. Always.

R.I.P., Harper Lee, I Wish I Had Known You

---

---

"You see, more than a simple matter of putting down words, writing is a process of self–discipline you must learn before you can call yourself a writer."

Harper Lee, 1964 interview with Roy Newquist, Counterpoints

---

There haven't been many famous people I have really wanted to meet — and, in my career as a journalist and journalism professor, I have met some famous people. Most I have met in the course of my work — and probably wouldn't have wanted to meet otherwise.

If I had to compile a list of the famous people I did want to meet, I guess it shouldn't come as a surprise that they are (or were) writers all. Even if they were famous for doing something else, they wrote about whatever it was that they did.

I would have liked to meet Mark Twain or H.L. Mencken.

You know those conversations people often want to start, the ones in which you're asked to identify the four — or six or eight or however many — people from throughout recorded history you would want to have over for dinner? Many people would probably say Jesus or Mahatma Gandhi, but I would start my list with Twain and Mencken. I know they would have something clever to say, and the conversation — whatever it was about — would be lively.

I guess it would depend on the kind of dinner conversation I wanted to have, though. If I wanted it to be theological, Jesus and Gandhi would be obvious choices, but I have a feeling that would be a rather somber conversation.

But taking dinner out of the equation, nearly all the famous people I would want to meet, as I say, would be writers — and not necessarily the obvious ones, either, like Shakespeare.

I'm a journalist, and I have always wanted to meet Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. In fact, I have achieved half of that goal. When I was teaching journalism at the University of Oklahoma, Bernstein came and delivered a lecture one evening. I attended — with my hardback copy of "The Final Days" — and introduced myself to him when his lecture was done. I even got him to autograph the book.

Well, Woodward is still alive so there is still a chance I could meet him and get him to autograph that book, too, but so many of the writers I would have liked to meet — Ernest Hemingway, James Michener, Theodore H. White, J.R.R. Tolkien, Allen Drury — are gone, and I will never get to meet them.

Add one more to the list. Harper Lee died today. She wrote "To Kill a Mockingbird," which earned her the Pulitzer Prize of 1961. She spent the next half–century largely avoiding the spotlight, rarely giving interviews.

When she died, she apparently died quietly — in her sleep. If we could have our druthers, as Li'l Abner used to say, I expect most of us would like to go that way.

That's how my grandfather died. I assume he went quietly. My grandmother wasn't awakened and had no idea anything was wrong until she tried to rouse Grandpa the next morning.

I always wanted to meet Harper Lee. It would have been great to interview her if I could, but I would have been happy just to sit down and have a conversation with her about writing.

I've kept a copy of "To Kill a Mockingbird" on my desk for years. Last summer I purchased and read her second (and, as it turns out, final) book, "Go Set a Watchman." It, too, rests on my desk; I keep them both handy because there are times when I want to refer to them.

---

---

I grew up in a Southern town that, I suspect, was much like the one in which Harper Lee grew up in Alabama — and I found a lot of country wisdom in the pages of her books.

If I substituted some of the names, I probably could have told the story of my hometown in "To Kill a Mockingbird." Not necessarily word for word or event for event but certainly with some relatively minor changes. Perhaps that is why "To Kill a Mockingbird" has always had such a hold on me.

I would have liked to have had a conversation with her about the people and the culture of the South. I'm sure she would have some intriguing insights to share.

'Go Set a Watchman' Tells a Human Story

---

---

"She did not stand alone, but what stood behind her, the most potent moral force in her life, was the love of her father. She never questioned it, never thought about it, never even realized that before she made any decision of importance the reflex,'What would Atticus do?' passed through her unconscious; she never realized what made her dig in her feet and stand firm whenever she did was her father; that whatever was decent and of good report in her character was put there by her father; she did not know that she worshiped him."

Harper Lee, "Go Set a Watchman"

---

It has been said that the moment of both a child's greatest joy and greatest sorrow is the moment when he/she bests a parent at something for the first time — and, in the process, learns the parent is imperfect. I think it also applies to learning something about the parent that wasn't known before.

Perhaps it is when a boy beats his father at arm wrestling or some other physical competition, but, many times, that moment is when the child beats the parent at some kind of game, a game of cards perhaps or a board game. That's what it was with me. My father taught me to play chess when I was little, and he routinely beat me as I was learning the game. I remember the first time I beat him; to this day, I am not certain if I really did beat him or if he permitted me to win. At the time, though, I believed I had won fair and square — and it really did create a tremendous conflict in my young mind.

I was maybe 8 or 9 at the time, and I had always regarded my father as infallible. I know now, of course, and have known for a long time that he isn't, but I didn't know it then. I suppose that is part of being a child and making that transition to maturity — going from believing that your father can do no wrong to understanding that he is a mortal man with strengths and weaknesses like everyone else and that, if you haven't already, the two of you will disagree about some things. That doesn't make him any more or less what he was before — except in your mind.

I was thrilled to have beaten Dad — and profoundly sorry as well — and I think that is the point of Harper Lee's "Go Set a Watchman." Well, it's one of the points. Let me explain.

First of all, I won't assume that you already know the circumstances surrounding this book so I'll try to briefly go over them for you. This was Lee's original book, the one she submitted to her publisher first. The publisher said it would be more effective if she wrote from the children's point of view so Lee wrote a new book set in the 1930s — at the time that the main female character's father, Atticus Finch, was defending in court a black man who was accused of raping a white woman.

If you are familiar with "To Kill a Mockingbird," it won't be hard for you to recognize Lee's style — and reading "Go Set a Watchman" will make it easier for you to see the influence Lee's editor had on the final product of "To Kill a Mockingbird." I can almost see Lee and her editor working together, her editor recommending a word or a phrase that softens or hardens a passage.

Lee created the book, but it was the editor who really polished it. We owe as much to her as we do to Lee for "To Kill a Mockingbird," which has long been regarded a classic of American literature. I know you already know that, but it is the kind of thing that cannot be said too frequently. Its hero, Atticus, has taken on almost mythical qualities. It is for that very reason that "Go Set a Watchman" has evoked such an emotional response.

But "Go Set a Watchman" tells a very human story.

Nearly everyone from "To Kill a Mockingbird" was there, only it was a couple of decades later. Many things had changed. Jean Louise (also known as Scout) had been living far away, but she was back in her Alabama hometown for a vacation visit and clearly still idolized her father. Her discovery of Citizens Council literature in his home caused a crisis for the adult Jean Louise and the child Scout (who happened to inhabit the same body simultaneously) — who had once believed, the reader learned, that she thought she became pregnant because she French–kissed a boy.

NPR's Maureen Corrigan writes that "Go Set a Watchman" is "kind of a mess" that will "forever change the way we read a masterpiece."

That isn't how I see it.

Half a century ago, Lee wrote a masterpiece, and no one thought we would ever see another book with her name on it. Now we have been given another chance to read something new from her, an opportunity to get caught up with the characters who became like old friends for a generation of readers.

In our supercharged, hyper–politically correct environment, I'm certain there will be some people — probably many people — who will be upset that, in "Go Set a Watchman," Harper Lee's sequel to "To Kill a Mockingbird," Atticus Finch's attitude about blacks appears to have changed.

And I realize that is a difficult thing for some readers to accept. But accept this: These are Harper Lee's characters. She created them — no matter who inspired them or how much real–life truth was included in her books, it is up to her to do with them as she pleases. It is her story. You may disagree, but what is done with them is not your decision to make, just as it is not your decision which colors an artist uses on his canvas or which notes a musician uses in his composition. It is your decision whether to like it or not — but that is all.

Now, personally, I would prefer that people reach that conclusion on the basis of the book's merits, not what they have been told about it by others. But, unfortunately, you can't make people think for themselves.

I have always understood that Atticus was inspired by Lee's own father. In her original book, perhaps she was examining that moment in her life when she realized that her father was not living up to the standard she had set for him in her mind. In "To Kill a Mockingbird," we were permitted to see the life she had lived as a child and the things that had stayed with her. Was it idealized? Probably. Almost certainly. But, while it may not be a perfect reflection of reality, it is necessary if we are to take away a different lesson from Harper Lee's saga of Maycomb, Alabama, than the one we took from only the snapshot of Scout's childhood.

Few modern writers have been better at character development than Lee. Take, for example, her physical description of Scout's aunt: "There was no doubt about it: Alexandra Finch Hancock was imposing from any angle; her behind was no less uncompromising than her front. Jean Louise had often wondered, but never asked, where she got her corsets. They drew up to her bosom to giddy heights, pinched in her waist, flared out her rear, and managed to suggest that Alexandra's had once been an hourglass figure."

That is the kind of description that could have been written about many of the women I knew in the small Arkansas town where I grew up.

She also makes the fictional Alabama town of Maycomb a character. After a brief description of the town's history — and an explanation why the population hadn't changed much in a century and a half — Lee wrote, "What saved it from becoming another grubby little Alabama community was that Maycomb's proportion of professional people ran high: one went to Maycomb to have his teeth pulled, his wagon fixed, his heart listened to, his money deposited, his mules vetted, his soul saved, his mortgage extended." In a few sentences, Lee irrevocably established how vital the town was in the lives of everyone it touched.

Again, that reminds me of the Arkansas town in which I grew up. It had three colleges in it — all small by most college standards — but it gave the town a special status as a producer of college–educated folks. When I was growing up, it was almost assumed that, if someone local went on to college after finishing high school, it would be to one of the three colleges in town. I think it was that way when I graduated from high school. Even though my hometown has grown considerably, it's probably still that way to an extent.

All the time I was reading "Go Set a Watchman," I was reminded of an episode of "M*A*S*H" in which Hawkeye encouraged Radar, who had always looked up to Hawkeye, to go into Seoul to lose his virginity — and Radar was injured by a mine and wound up in the O.R. at the 4077th. Hawkeye, who operated on Radar, felt so guilty for putting him in that position that he got drunk and then got sick. The next day Radar told Hawkeye that he was disappointed in him, and Hawkeye blew up. "I'm not here for you to admire," he shouted at Radar. "I'm here to pull bodies out of a sausage grinder, if possible without going crazy."

Later Col. Potter was talking to Radar about Hawkeye — who had slipped several notches in Radar's eyes — and he pointed out that the 4077th was a rather small compound and the two of them were bound to bump into each other sooner or later. They might start out talking about the weather or the food in the mess tent and, before long, he would realize that Hawkeye was the same guy he'd been when Radar had Hawkeye on a pedestal.

In fact, Col. Potter said, things might be even better — now that they could see things more eye to eye.

The Birth of Atticus Finch

---

---

"I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what."

Atticus Finch
"To Kill a Mockingbird" (published July 11, 1960)

---

Great books and plays eventually wind up on the big screen.

From ancient scribes to modern writers have come great literary works that have produced brilliant tales, admirable heroes and detestable villains.

Half a century ago today, such a book — Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird" — was published. And, although it told a story to which most people could relate, I have always felt that it had a special significance for people who were raised in the South.

For it told a tale of the prejudice that the American South still struggles to overcome, of a white lawyer who was called upon to defend a black man accused of raping a white woman. It was a story of honesty and integrity, of coming of age amid terrific economic anguish and severe cultural growing pains.

Still a timely message, wouldn't you say?

Lee herself (still alive, by the way, at the age of 84) has said that the movie that was based on her book is "one of the best translations of a book to film ever made."

And I'm inclined to agree with her. So, too, is the American Film Institute.

AFI ranked the movie 25th on its Top 100 list and first among courtroom dramas.

AFI also felt that "To Kill a Mockingbird" was the second–most inspiring film of all time.

And when it comes to heroes, no film hero — not Indiana Jones or James Bond or anyone else — nor any of the actors or actresses who portrayed the great heroes of film history ranked higher than Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch. Not even Gary Cooper, who played heroic characters frequently.

So if Lee was satisfied with the film version of her book, that's good enough for me. Not that I needed her endorsement. I've read the book and I've seen the movie.

I still believe that books are almost always better than movies. That one certainly was. But both the film and the book were remarkable — and certainly worth revisiting a number of times.

The story was semi–autobiographical, but Lee changed the names of the people in her story. It's important to keep in mind that she wasn't telling a fictionalized account of an actual event. Rather, she was taking inspiration from real people and events. Some of the characters were composites of people she knew. Others were inspired by people and events far from her home.

I don't think she created the character of Atticus with Peck in mind. In fact, I think Atticus was inspired by Lee's father, an attorney who unsuccessfully defended two black men accused of murder years before Lee was born.

But today, nearly 50 years since the making of the film, Gregory Peck is Atticus Finch in our collective minds. He was a great actor, and he played many great roles, but it is almost as if he was born to play Atticus Finch.

If Lee's father was anything like Atticus Finch, he must have defended his clients with an eloquence that one normally doesn't expect from Southerners — and that apparently failed to sway the jurors. But I suppose, being a Southerner herself, Lee knew only too well how wrong that stereotype was.

Indeed, the character of Atticus may well have been the first time that people outside the South had entertained the notion that there were any whites in the South who were not racists — at least minimally.

The racism that was presented in the book (and later the movie) was somewhat stereotypical by modern standards. It certainly isn't representative of the South today. But it isn't meant to be. It is a portrait of the South that existed nearly eight decades ago.

But there has been a price to be paid — albeit a ridiculous one — for its realistic depiction. Mark Twain encountered the same thing with his book about Huckleberry Finn in the 19th century.

In their blind pursuit of political correctness, some school districts in the United States and Canada have banned Lee's book for its use of the so–called "N word." Many of those same school districts, I have no doubt, were behind similar moves against the story of Huck Finn, completely ignoring the fact that the "N word" was part of the accepted language of the time.

(That isn't meant as a defense of that word. It is only meant as an explanation for why the word is used as much as it is in both books. It was the word my grandparents used because that was the word people of their generation used to describe the members of a particular racial group. Around the time of my parents' generation, the word of choice seems to have become "Negro."

(By the time I came along, the socially acceptable word was "black" — which is the word I still use today whenever it is necessary. Some of my friends have taken to using the phrase "African–American," which seems a little imprecise to me. We have other hyphenated ethnic groups, of course, but the hyphens in those instances link nationalities, not continents. It would be more precise, in my opinion, to hyphenate American with the nation of origin — but that kind of documentation is hard to come by.

(For that matter, I must confess, "black" never seemed adequate to me, either, because I knew very few people when I was growing up whose skin could truly be said to be black. Most were brown.)

---

"Surely it is plain to the simplest intelligence that 'To Kill a Mockingbird' spells out in words of seldom more than two syllables a code of honor and conduct, Christian in its ethic, that is the heritage of all Southerners. To hear that the novel is 'immoral' has made me count the years between now and 1984, for I have yet to come across a better example of doublethink."

Harper Lee
Letter to the editor in Richmond, Va., 1966

---

Students in school districts where both "Mockingbird" and Twain's tale of Finn's adventures are available should be grateful they have access to these literary gems that paint such a vivid picture to remind us of how far we have come — and how far we still must go.