Some friends said that after the death of her sister Alice, who handled Harper’s affairs, lawyer Carter had manipulated Lee to approve publication. White House spokesman Josh Earnest said, “Lee had a way of telling stories that does have an influence and resonates with so many Americans”. Theroux calls it an iconic novel that will continue to be treasured for generations to come.
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“To Kill a Mockingbird”, which was released Fifty-five years ago, has become the most read novel in American classrooms. “It will stand up like Little Women it will always be used to talk about how race issues had been handled and should be handled”. Lee, the elusive author of best-seller “To Kill a Mockingbird”, died Friday, Feb. 19, according to her publisher Harper Collins.
The town this summer had a celebration for the release of “Go Set a Watchman” – Lee’s initial draft of the story that would become “Mockingbird” – even though many residents had ambivalent feelings about its release. “When I was talking to a group of English honors students at Auburn High School and I asked what the novel is about, a boy raised his hand and said it’s about being Mormon in Auburn, Alabama because I’m the other, I’m the Boo Radley”. Then again, as he prepares the children for the trial of Tom Robinson, which is bound to be ugly, he tells Scout: “I couldn’t go to church and worship God if I didn’t try to help the man….”
Kentucky senator Rand Paul and Senator Richard Shelby from Lee’s home state of Alabama, both Republicans, praised her as a great author. Afterward, her casket was taken by silver hearse to an adjacent cemetery where her parents, A.C. Lee and Frances Finch Lee, and sister, Alice Lee, are buried. The present isn’t comfortable any more, and Atticus’s beloved line – “Gentlemen if there’s one slogan in this world I believe, it is this: equal rights for all, special privileges for none” – a thing of the past. Mr Bush, who awarded Lee a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2007, said she had been a voice for tolerance.
“She was an Alabama treasure”. It’s sold 40 million copies to date and is based on Lee’s life growing up in small town Alabama.
In 1959 she accompanied Capote to Holcombe, Kansas, to work on In Cold Blood, the chilling account of the murders of a farming family. “She changed the world with To Kill A Mockingbird”. Bush said during a statement that he and his wife, Laura Bush, a former librarian, mourned Lee.
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“Now, 75 years later in an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, iPods, and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books”, she wrote.
