Lee writes about the unremitting surveillance of Maycomb - of the reality that no act ultimately goes unobserved.
My urban neighbors took great pains to avoid even a molecule of anyone else’s business.) (When I first moved to New York and lived in an apartment, I wondered if this last paradox would replicate itself within the diorama of my building. There was the fiercely held conviction that one must mind one’s own business coupled with the exasperating practice of everyone minding everyone else’s business 100 percent of the time. There was the importance placed on mundane local landmarks: a certain tree, a specific fence, the house on the corner. Much else in “Mockingbird” was recognizable from small-town living: the temptation to invent boogeymen the excessive reliance on euphemism the kneejerk ostracizing of those perceived as outsiders, with vandalism a common mode of reinforcement.
In my town, which had a population of approximately 1,000, the nominative shorthand took a more neutrally descriptive form: There was Barefoot Dave, who preferred to go shoeless on his rambles, and Treehouse Todd, who lived in a treehouse, and Tepee Dan - you can guess where he lived. Only in a place of minimal citizenry can surnames carry such determinative weight. No explanation is needed for their recklessness other than, as Scout puts it, that they were “Haverfords, in Maycomb County a name synonymous with jackass.” That’s on, and it’s precisely where I remember my attention perking up as a teenager. Take the grim joke about a pair of Atticus’s clients, the Haverfords, who ignored their lawyer’s advice to take a plea deal and wound up hanging.
You wouldn’t think the Great Depression-era fictional Southern town of Maycomb, Ala., would have much in common with the nonfictional Northern California small town where I grew up and read “Mockingbird” in the 1990s - and yet! These apprehensions were present as I worked through the pages a second time, but they were overridden by the instant resurrection of exactly what I’d liked about the book the first time, which is Lee’s depiction of life in a small town. I cannot fathom the complexities of teaching it to elementary school students in 2021, especially after reading online accounts from teachers on both the “pro” and “against” sides. In my defense … well, I have no defense.) As an adult, I can perceive why the novel might hold enduring appeal for many and enduring repulsion to perhaps just as many.
Dubose is a morphine addict,” Atticus states in the book. Dubose - the cranky neighborhood villain - was a morphine addict. Inexcusable lapses in reading comprehension also surfaced, such as the fact that I hadn’t realized Mrs. And yes, there was a huge amount I’d missed on my first time through, ranging from major themes (the prevalence of child abuse) to minor details (unfamiliar words, like “flivver”). Two decades had passed since I’d absorbed Harper Lee’s 1960 novel. When you revisit in adulthood a book that you last read in childhood, you will likely experience two broad categories of observation: “Oh yeah, I remember this part,” and “Whoa, I never noticed that part.” That’s what I expected when I picked up “To Kill a Mockingbird,” which was voted the best book of the past 125 years by readers in a recent New York Times poll. Our critic reconsiders “To Kill a Mockingbird”
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