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Favorite book is back in spotlight
It was nice to learn from reading the Asheville paper on Sunday that my all-time favorite book is the one chosen for all of Western North Carolina this winter through “The Big Read,” the latest community read-together initiative directed by “Together We Read.”
The idea behind “The Big Read” is to get everyone in a community on the same page – or at least in the same book – through a series of community programs and discussions all centered around an American classic.
Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” certainly fills that bill. I know from my enjoyment of it through the years that it’s a book that succeeds on a variety of levels.
I first read it back in 1962, two years after it was published and just prior to the release of the movie, which starred Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch and Mary Badham as his tomboy daughter Scout, who serves as both the book and movie’s narrator.
At age 11, I was not a discriminating reader – I read anything and everything I could get my hands on. “To Kill a Mockingbird” fell into my lap courtesy of my friend Marcia, who was 10 months older and much more up on current best-sellers and upcoming movies.
When I read the book that first time, its more subtle charms failed to reveal themselves. That was likely because I raced through its pages on a quest to find out why Jem’s arm got broken, what Tom Robinson had done, whether Boo Radley would ever come out and if Scout would ever escape from the influence of her overbearing Aunt Alexandra.
And, that said, I loved the book. We all got together and rode the bus downtown (I grew up in suburban Atlanta) to see the movie, and we loved it, too. Peck’s performance as Atticus was dead on, and so were those of the children who brought Scout, her brother Jem and their friend Dill to life.
The movie was just like the novel, we all agreed.
When I returned to those familiar pages a few years later, however, I was surprised to realize we were only partially correct. While the movie is true to the book down to the fact that much of Atticus’ famous courtroom dialogue is taken verbatim from Lee’s pages, the book includes so much more, as Rob Neufeld of the Asheville Citizen-Times pointed out in his Jan. 7 story about “The Big Read.”
Many auxiliary characters had to be cut from the movie, and most of Lee’s wonderful descriptions of small-town life in 1930s-Alabama are not included.
A high school reading of the book revealed a lot going on under the surface of the story I had gobbled up the summer before seventh grade. But it was not until I read the book a third time that I began to understand it all. By that time I had lived in Western North Carolina for a dozen or so years, and I began to see “Mockingbird’s” characters in a new way.
The book could take me back to my father’s rural Georgia roots. I actually had an aunt who lived in Alabama and another who thought I should be sitting indoors embroidering instead of playing softball with my brothers and their friends.
Re-reading the story of Aunt Alexandra’s persistent efforts to turn Scout into a “young lady” gave me a new appreciation for my Aunt Nancy, who did not have a daughter of her own and was baffled by a generation of girls who had their sights set higher than finishing a cross-stitch sampler and finding a husband. Reading the book as an adult helped me see that Aunt Alexandra cared deeply for Scout and was doing the best she could.
And, with Martin Luther King Jr. Day approaching, the book’s central theme of racial discrimination resonates. The story of Atticus Finch’s courage in doing the right thing despite opposition from most everyone provides a lesson for us all – one about fairness and decency.
The book closes with a sleepy Scout explaining that she had heard every word Atticus read of a story called “The Gray Ghost” and how it was about a boy people misunderstood and didn’t like. While I can’t quote it exactly, it goes something like this:
“But Atticus, when they finally saw him, he was real nice,” Scout says.
“Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them,” her father replies.
The schedule in Sunday’s paper indicates Jackson County’s only “Big Read” event will be at Western Carolina University as part of the March 26-30 Spring Literary Festival.
More information on “To Kill a Mockingbird” and the reading initiative is available online at Citizen-Times.com/booksblog.
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