Why To kill a mockingbird matters : what Harper Lee's book and America's iconic film mean to us today

First Title Value for Searching:

Personal Author:

Santopietro, Tom

Edition:

First edition.

Physical Description:

305 pages ; 22 cm.

Subject Term:

American fiction -- Film adaptations

Publication Info:

New York : St. Martin's Press, 2018.

Subject:

American fiction -- Film adaptations

Lee, Harper. To kill a mockingbird

To kill a mockingbird (Motion picture : 1962)

American fiction -- Film and video adaptations

SAILS ISBN:

9781250163752

Available:

Library	Shelf Number	Shelf Location	Status
Searching... Foxboro - Boyden Library	813.54 SANTOPIETRO	NONFICTION	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Norfolk Public Library	813.54 SANT	NONFICTION	Searching... Unknown

Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird is a classic work of American literature. When the book was made into a film in 1962 with Gregory Peck as the stalwart southern lawyer, Atticus Finch, the story of Scout, Jim, Dill and Boo Radley entered the American consciousness as well as the American fight for civil rights in a way that few other films have. Tom Santopietro's new book, Why To Kill a Mockingbird Matters, takes a 360 degree look at the Mockingbird phenomenon. He traces the writing of the book and the creation of the film from the earliest casting sessions to the choice of director and the three Oscars it won for Best Actor, Best Screenplay Based on an Existing Work, and Best Art Direction. He looks at the impact of the Pulitzer prize, investigates claims that Lee's book is actually racist, and explores the bombshell that was exploded when Go Set a Watchman, the first version of Mockingbird, was published. There may be no better time in America to look at the significance of Harper Lee's book, the film, and all that came after. Tom Santopietro, an author well-known for his writing about American popular culture, shows readers why To Kill a Mockingbird matters today more than it ever did before.

Reviews (4)

Publisher's Weekly Review

The cultural impact of Harper Lee's novel To Kill a Mockingbird, published in 1960, and its film adaptation two years later, is the subject of this clear-eyed appraisal of their enduring relevance. Paying meticulous attention to detail, Santopietro (The Sound of Music Story) crafts a compressed history of the book and film, beginning with Lee's childhood in Monroeville, Ala., the inspiration for the novel's town of Maycomb, and ending with the publication of Go Set a Watchman, the novel's original and vastly different first draft, in 2015. Along the way he dispenses little-known facts culled from interviews and other secondary sources, such as the leading men initially considered to play Atticus Finch-Bing Crosby, Rock Hudson, and Spencer Tracy, among them-before the role landed with Gregory Peck for a career-defining performance. Santopietro shrewdly refers to the novel as "the right book in the right place at the right time" to resonate with a growing civil rights movement, and in later chapters relates its theme to recent racially charged incidents, including the violence that convulsed Charlottesville, Va., in August 2017. Readers not familiar with the stories behind the novel and film will find much to relish. Agent: Malaga Baldi, Baldi Agency. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Kirkus Review

A detailed account of a classic novel's context, transformation, and acclaim.Translated into 40 languages, with sales of some 40 million copies since its publication in 1960, Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird has become famous worldwide. Adapted on film, it earned its star, Gregory Peck, an Oscar for his portrayal of Atticus Finch, a role that defined him for the rest of his career. In an affectionate homage, media journalist and Broadway show manager Santopietro (The Sound of Music Story: How a Beguiling Young Novice, A Handsome Austrian Captain, and Ten Singing von Trapp Children Inspired the Most Beloved Film of All Time, 2015, etc.) asserts that Lee's novel still sends a relevant message to 21st-century readers. "By wrapping a nostalgic look back at childhood around a clear-eyed gaze at how racism diminishes and damages an entire community," he maintains, Lee offers a way to perceive "America's racial history with a fresh set of eyes." Most of Santopietro's book, though, does not elaborate any more deeply on why Lee's novel matters, or to whom. He covers ground that Joseph Crespino examined in his recently published Atticus Finch: Lee's youth in Alabama; her relationship with her father, a lawyer and model for Atticus; her friendship with Truman Capote; the prolonged writing and revising of the novel, which became an immediate bestseller; and her subsequent writing career, which ended in the long-awaited publication of Go Set a Watchman. To this biographical overview, Santopietro adds a close look at the movie's creation: with Alan Pakula as producer, Robert Mulligan as director, and Horton Foote as screenwriter; and with Gregory Peck (rather than Lee's ardent hope of Spencer Tracy) to play Atticus. The author details casting decisions, especially the search for the perfect girl to play Scout; and the work of designing costumes and constructing sets on the Universal backlot to bring Lee's Alabama town to life. He conveys, as well, critics' reception of the movie and summarizes the major figures' post-Mockingbird careers.For Mockingbird and Harper Lee devotees. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

New York Review of Books Review

"TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD" is a book for which a great many people harbor reverence and nostalgia. I am not one of those people. Jean Louise "Scout" Finch, the narrator of Harper Lee's coming-of-age novel set in the Depression-era South, tells the story of how her lawyer father, Atticus, defended Tom Robinson, a black man who has been falsely accused of raping a white woman in the fictional Alabama town of May- comb. By the end of the novel, Robinson has been murdered while trying to escape prison. Scout has lost her innocence; for the first time, she truly understands the racial dynamics of her environment. I don't find "To Kill a Mockingbird" to be particularly engaging. There are moments throughout the narrative that are exquisitely drawn, and I appreciate Lee's dry wit and intelligence. On the novel's first page, she writes, "Being Southerners, it was a source of shame to some members of the family that we had no recorded ancestors on either side of the Battle of Hastings." That one line says so much about the Finch family, the South and its ongoing relationship to the past. Scout is a memorable character, but such depth rarely extends to the others. Atticus is written as the platonic ideal of a father and crusader for justice. The black characters - Robinson and the family's housekeeper, Calpurnia - are mostly there as figures onto which the white people around them can project various thoughts and feelings. They are narrative devices, not fully realized human beings. The "n word" is used liberally throughout and there are some breathtaking instances of both casual and outright racism. The book is a "product of its time," sure, so let me just say that said time and the people who lived in it were plain terrible. As for the story, I can take it or leave it. Perhaps I am ambivalent because I am black. I am not the target audience. I don't need to read about a young white girl understanding the perniciousness of racism to actually understand the perniciousness of racism. I have ample firsthand experience. Which brings us to "Why 'To Kill a Mockingbird' Matters," by Tom Santopietro, whose title makes the bold claim that Lee's classic has endured over the past 58 years because it offers a message that stands the test of time. The book's continued popularity, and the success of the author's only other published work, "Go Set a Watchman," certainly support this claim. Santopietro's book, however, does not. The title is misleading. I expected this text to offer a complex and sustained argument about the merits of the novel itself. Instead, much of the book is given over to a biography of Nelle Harper Lee and an extremely detailed history of the making of the 1962 movie. Some light literary analysis is thrown in for good measure. Never does this book take chances or make a persuasive argument for why "To Kill a Mockingbird" matters to anyone but white people who inexplicably still do not understand the ills of racism, and seemingly need this book to show them the light. Santopietro has certainly done his homework, and he applies the rigor of his knowledge admirably. I came away from the book knowing a great deal more about Harper Lee. He writes lovingly of her hometown, Monroeville, Ala., and her upbringing, convincingly identifying the connective tissue between Lee's life and the most significant elements of her novel. The context in which she wrote and sold it is just as finely detailed, as is the book's critical reception upon release. I enjoyed his insights into Lee's painstaking process of composition and revision - the time and commitment it took. One of the most striking revelations was the ferocity of Lee's ambition: She was very invested in the success of both her book and the movie. Most of Santopietro's work is given over to that movie - so much so that I began to wonder if this book was intended to be a cultural history of the adaptation alone. Santopietro has previously written books about other beloved film adaptations, including "The Sound of Music" and "The Godfather"; here, he details everything from the producers, the screenwriter, the cast and the set decorators to how the film was received by the critics, the public and Lee herself. He is passionate about Gregory Peck as just the right kind of leading man to step into the role of Atticus, and shares a great deal about the process of selecting the child actors to play Scout; her brother, Jem; and their friend Dill. Santopietro goes so far as to elaborate on the lives of everyone involved in the film for years after its release. All of this material is vaguely interesting, but the author fails to explain how it supports his argument that "To Kill a Mockingbird" matters. On top of that, the book's structure is strange. There are all kinds of digressions in each chapter, some of which feel more like information dumps than components of a cohesive narrative. Nor is there a clear progression between them: The 11th chapter is about the merits of the movie as an adaptation, and the 13th is about Harper Lee's private nature, but the 12th asks the question: "Is 'To Kill a Mockingbird' Racist?" (My answer to that question is yes.) These organizational choices - and the one or two jarring Stephen Sondheim quotations he cites - are bewildering. As much as I admire the exhaustive research, not a lot of care seems to have been put into how it is conveyed. Not until the last few chapters does Santopietro finally try to make a definitive case for the importance of this seminal American novel. He offers statistics about the book's commercial success: "Translated into 40 languages, the novel sells approximately 750,000 copies every year," he writes. "In total, some 40 million copies have been sold worldwide since 1960, and at the time of Harper Lee's death in 2016, her annual royalties remained in excess of three million dollars." Few other books have sold so robustly for so long. "Mockingbird" is also required reading "in over 70 percent of American high schools." These numbers are impressive indeed, but ubiquity and quality are not the same thing (and neither one is necessarily the same thing as importance). Santopietro also notes that we're still living in a world where ethnic prejudice abounds, not just toward black people but Mexicans, Syrian refugees and others. The author is not ignorant of the racial Zeitgeist, but it is odd that he thinks Lee's novel speaks to it adequately. He boldly claims, " 'Mockingbird' succeeds in a basic task of literature: the expansion of worldviews by means of exposure to differing communities and cultures." In that it tells the story of a wrongfully accused incarcerated black man, he is correct, but it is important to question just what kind of exposure the text offers. Given the shallowness of the black characters - how they are vehicles for Scout's story instead of their own - we as readers should raise the bar higher than mere "exposure." Santopietro saves his keenest observation for the final pages of "Why 'To Kill a Mockingbird' Matters," in which he acknowledges the power of nostalgia: "The continued heartfelt response to 'Mockingbird' now seems inextricably tied up in Harper Lee's ability to underscore a sense of community sorely lacking today." He goes on to discuss how people spend too much time in isolation with their electronic devices, as neighborhoods, communities and communication disintegrate. He acknowledges how much the culture has changed since the book's publication in 1960, but laments the proliferation of "dark and damaged characters"on television and in film. What he conveys most powerfully is a yearning for a simpler time - a uniquely white yearning, because it is white people to whom history has been kindest. It is white people who seem to long for the safety of cloistered communities where everyone knows one another, where people know their place and are assured of what their lives may hold. Clearly, Santopietro identifies more with Scout, Jem and Dill than with, say, Boo Radley, the town recluse who probably wouldn't yearn for that simpler time when the townspeople regarded him with open distance and mistrust. And then the author illustrates why it is hard to take this book seriously: "The United States found in 'To Kill a Mockingbird' was unquestionably a more racist, oppressive America, deaf to the desires and hopes of women, homosexuals, minorities and nearly anyone who did not fit the prevailing definition of 'normal.' " This statement is technically true, but it overlooks the serious racial tensions our nation still faces. Santopietro does make brief mentions of President Trump and his lack of leadership during the Charlottesville riots, as well as of the responses (or lack thereof) of black people to "Mockingbird," but these asides feel tacked on and unexplored. The groundwork for "Why 'To Kilia Mockingbird' Matters" is astute, but the intellectual analyses are not, and the book suffers for it. ROXANE GAY is the author, most recently, of "Hunger," and the editor of "Not That Bad."

Library Journal Review

Pop culture writer Santopietro (The Sound of Music Story; The Godfather Effect) has spent several years researching Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird as a novel and as a film adaptation. His argument is that the novel is vital to understanding American culture and that Gregory Peck's portrayal of Atticus Finch in the 1962 film adaptation is equally significant in comprehending the best in human nature. Blending biography with reviews, interviews, and praise as well as criticism, the author asserts that the central themes of both book and movie have not faded with age, that Atticus Finch, with his moral compass, is a hero for all times. -VERDICT Fans of To Kill a Mockingbird, the film and the novel, will enjoy this work.-Pam Kingsbury, Univ. of North Alabama, Florence © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Acknowledgments	p. ix
Introduction	p. 1
1 Monroeville, Alabama	p. 5
2 Manhattan	p. 14
3 Publication	p. 27
4 What Price Hollywood?	p. 44
5 Atticus Finch on Film	p. 50
6 Enter Horton Foote	p. 62
7 Casting the Movie	p. 71
8 From Pulitzer Prize to Hollywood Dream Team	p. 83
9 Maycomb Comes to Life	p. 93
10 On Screens Around the World	p. 117
11 A Straight Shot to the Heart	p. 128
12 Is To Kill a Mockingbird Racist?	p. 148
13 The Legend Grows: Harper Lee's Fifty-Five Years of Silence	p. 156
14 Life After To Kill a Mockingbird	p. 163
15 Go Set a Watchman	p. 198
16 Theme and Variations: Everything Old Is New Again	p. 214
17 At Peace	p. 224
Notes	p. 239
Bibliography	p. 277
Index	p. 293

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