Roy Newquist and Harper Lee , NPR Interview (1964)

Author: Roy Newquist and Harper Lee

Newquist, Roy, interviewer. "Counterpoint: Harper Lee." Interview with Harper Lee. Ephraim Sales Collection of Tapes and Transcripts of Interviews by Roy Newquist, circa 1963-1967, UCLA Library Special Collections, [between 1963 and 1967?]. https://digital.library.ucla.edu/catalog/ark:/21198/zz002hczj1

Harper Lee: I was born in a little town called Monroeville, Alabama, April 28, 1926, I went to school.
I went to the University of Alabama, and that's about it. As far as education goes, there was one peculiarity, I think, my education has happened resisting all efforts of this government to educate me, I went to law school.

This was Harper Lee, and I'm Roy Nookless, your host on Counterpoint, a show designed to bring you the working philosophy of the world's greatest writers. In a moment we'll return to Miss Lee to discuss the writing of To Kill a Mockingbird, her own view of the South, and her attitude toward writing in general.

Roy Nookless: The summer of 1960 was made memorable by the release of a novel titled To Kill a Mockingbird. It racked up a record sale on hardcover and softcover, and it was a gentle, compassionate work which became a great motion picture. Miss Lee, with a very first novel, became one of our leading novelists.

Roy Nookless: What was your reaction to the success of To Kill a Mockingbird? I often wondered how an author who wrote, but became an immediate smash, well, critically inspired field work and fame, would react.

Harper Lee: Well, my reaction to it was not one of the surprises, it was one of sheer numbness. It was one of the things, hit over the head, it knocked me out cold. I never expected that the book would sell in the first place. I was hoping for a quick and merciful death at the hands of the reviewers, but I was hoping that maybe somebody might like it well enough to give me some encouragement about it, some public encouragement.

Roy Nookless: Did you got, I think, all the encouragement in one writer?

Harper Lee: Yes, for a lifetime.

Roy Nookless: What have you been working on since To Kill a Mockingbird appeared?

Harper Lee: I'm working on another novel, like To Kill a Mockingbird. It goes very slowly. I'm a slow worker, I think a steady worker.

Roy Nookless You know, so many writers don't like to write. I think that's what you complain. They hate to write. They must, they do it under the compulsion that makes any artist what he is, but they really don't enjoy sitting down and trying to turn a thought into a reasonable servant.

Harper Lee: But I do, I like to write, and sometimes I'm afraid that I like it too much because when I get into work, I don't want to leave it. And as a result, I'll go for days and days and days without leaving a house, a house where I am. I'll just go out long enough to get the papers and get some food and that'll be it. It's strange.

Roy Nookless: To Kill a Mockingbird was made into what I thought was an unusually fine motion picture of much of the integrity of the book. How did you feel about it?

Harper Lee: I felt the same way, Roy. As a matter of fact, I have nothing but gratitude to the people who made the film. It was a most unusual experience. I think even, of course, I have no judgement. And the only film I had ever seen being made was To Kill a Mockingbird, but there was an aura of feeling on the set without looking at them filming a little of it. But there was a feeling of such kindness. It seemed to me to be such respect for the material that they were working with. Of course, I was delighted, I was touched, I was happy, I was exceedingly grateful. But it seemed to permeate everyone who had anything to do with the film, from the director, from Greg Peck, from the producer, down to the man who designed the sets, to the peripheral characters and the actors who were playing the smaller part.

Roy Nookless: One question I want to ask concerns the South as a whole. Why is it that such a disproportionate share of a fine fiction, a verbal sensitive fiction, springs from writers who were born and married in the South?

Harper Lee: Right first of all, you have to consider who serving us are. We are a mixture of Celtic. We run high to Celtic influence. We are mostly Irish, Scottish, English, Welsh. We grew up in an agricultural society, mainly. The tradition of the South is not urban, it is not industrial or wasn't, at least our heritage is not such. I think we are a region of storytellers naturally. Just by our tribal instincts, just from our tribal instincts, we did not have the pleasures of the theatre, of the dance, of motion pictures when they came along. We simply entertain each other by talking. It is quite a thing if you have never gone or if you have never known a southern small town. The people there are not particularly sophisticated, of course, are not worldly wise in any way, but they tell you a story every time you see one. We are oral types. We talk. And another thing that I have noticed about people at home, as opposed to say people in small town New England, we have rather more humour about us. Our whole society is geared to talk rather than to, I mean, we work hard, of course, but we do it in a different way. We work in order not to work. Any time spent on business is more or less time wasted, but you have to do it in order to be able to hunt and see.
No, but I think that this heritage of our birth of all our ethnic backgrounds and the absence of so much to do in the sense of to go somewhere else, see something. We can't go and see a play. We can't go to a big league baseball game when we want to. We have had to entertain ourselves for years. That was my childhood. If I went to a film once a month, that was pretty wonderful for me and for all children like me.
We had to use our own devices for our play, for our entertainment. We didn't have much money, nobody had any money. We didn't have many toys to play with. Nothing was done for us. So the result was that we lived in our imagination most of the time. We devised things. We were readers. And then we would transfer everything that we had seen on the printed page to the backyard in half-forms of drama. Did you ever play Tarzan when you were a child? Did you ever go to the jungle or refight the Battle of Gettysburg in some form of fashion? We did. Did you ever live in a tree house? Did you ever find a whole world in the branches of a china baritory? But I think that that kind of life naturally produces more writers than say living on 82nd Street in New York City. In small town life and in rural life, one knows one's neighbors. Not only does one know everything about one's neighbor, one knows everything about that neighbor's life from the time he came to the country even. People are predictable to each other, simply by family characteristics. Our life is slower there. We have more chance to look around and observe what we see. We're not in such a hurry that we can't do anything except go to the office and come home and have a drink and settle down and collapse the evening.

Roy Nookless: My final question concerns what leads to all of an ambition as a writer.

Harper Lee: Back a road is supposed to plantation life that kind of thing. There is something universal in it. There's something decent to be said for it and there's something to lament when it goes and it's going. It's passing. In other words, all I want to be is a Jane Austen of South Alabama.

This was an interview with Harper Lee, recorded in New York. And I'm Roy Nukquist, your host on Counterpoint. A show designed to bring you the working philosophies of the world's major writers.

DMU Timestamp: October 17, 2024 20:24