Happy Birthday Miss Lee

Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat up people's gardens, don't nest in corncribs, they don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.

Today, in 1926, Nelle Harper Lee was born in Monroeville, a tired old town in southern Alabama. When she was 34, Miss Lee published her only book,To Kill a Mockingbird. Quite unexpectedly, the following year it won the Pulitzer Prize.

Although I do not often mention it among my favorites, for me the novel is an important one. In high school I saw the story obliquely, as Scout does. In my third reading, once I began to consider myself an adult, I saw the story differently. As much as anything else, coming to understand Atticus Finch has helped me come to peace with the South.

But as much as I admire To Kill a Mockingbird, I also admire Miss Lee's refusal to capitalize on its success. Like Norman Maclean, it seems she has had only one significant story to tell. And that is a remarkable wisdom: to know when to speak, to know when to remain silent. Many of her more prolific contemporaries would have done well to pay more attention to the little lady from Alabama.