In conversation last night
With my dear old friend and confidant Mlle Jenny, I recounted how badly I loathed “To kill a Mockingbird”. Jenny expressed some surprise, in that she’d never heard anyone have that opinion of the book; for me, it was a cast of cardboard caricatures of evil white trash and evil white people in general oppressing a poor innocent black man who never did a bad thing in his life. In fact the only “good” white people are the people willing and able to game the system to “Save” the innocent black man, but the evil white men win in the end, and oh isn’t it tragic how much power those evil white people have and shouldn’t those white trash morons be all killed?
maybe it’s just politically incorrect not to love this book, or the movie- in fact we got to this point with my confession how much I despised Gregory Peck- a fine actor, but a commie sonofabitch, and maybe that movie is what cemented my dislike of him.
Am I the only one who feels like this? This story (Among many)is one of the commandments that we were all to be trained to hate ourselves and ignore the transgressions of the “oppressed”, couched in feelgood language and metaphor. It seems to have worked just fine.
21 comments Og | Uncategorized
Guess I should reread it. Thinking about it now, I remembered being intrigued by the Boo Radley subplot, and learning the word “chiferobe” for a vocabulary quiz.
The only comment i had to make on this and Suz beat me to it. WTH is a Chiferobe? Well, I learned what it is and haven’t used it in over 35 years.
Also, I remember the word “Jitney”. Some black woman was on Oprah or some other similar daytime program talking about how she had to get a Jitney to get to the hospital to deliver her latest baby. The host stopped her, “A what…?” She said it agian. “What?” It took three times until she explained that it was a car for hire.
a chifferobe was an article of furniture put in homes that were built prior to the common use of closets-as you must certainly know by now. There is a thriving industry still in place making them, new ones are being made by the thousands every day and used in hotels around the country, it isn’t an anachronism.
…yes but we Midwesterners called it an Armoire or a Wardrobe.
;)
Yes, but most people refer to such things as an armoire, when they ain’t calling them ‘that closet thingie’.
oops, too late.
Armoire and Wardrobes generally do not have drawers. it requires drawers to be a chifferobe.
You have to have lived where the homes are very old to find one without closets.
I read it years ago, don’t recall hating it, but don’t recall especially LIKING it either. I didn’t understand why it was considered a classic, but that’s been pretty common for me with classics (Catcher in the Rye anyone?). I thought the movie was pretty boring too.
I think a lot of the kudos given the book (and movie) are PC-related, especially after the author was on Oprah (spit). You can’t say you didn’t like it without being accused of racism. Well, that and the fact that a bunch of repressed English profs DECIDED it’s a wonderful book, so if you don’t like it that shows you’re just not intelligent enough to understand the nuance.
Ever read Larry Correia’s take on the “classics”?
http://larrycorreia.wordpress.com/2011/01/12/correia-on-the-classics/
Thanks, Mark, that’s a very interesting discussion.
And yes, Catcher in the Rye was horrible.
My parents had a chiffer robe when I was little. But it must have been fancy, because they called it a “chiffonniere.” The first page of Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood mentions a chiffer robe, as I recall.
As to the execrable Mockingbird, Faulkner handled that plot much better in Intruder In The Dust, and Erskine Caldwell did a commendable job in Trouble In July. Both from the ’30’s. So Harper Lee was already trafficking in a shopworn cliche by 1960.
I guess. I never really think about it at all.
Had to read it in high school, which should say all there is to say about it.
M
A book and a movie so transparently and mawkishly tugging at the hallmark cliches of cartoonish guilt – like the mossy branches of an old Southern Plantation are as festooned with the blah blah blah of blah blah timeless and For The Ages…blah blah blah.
A chifferobe is just a stand-up steamer-trunk. :-)
When I think of the movie, I think more of the childhood wonder at the world about her than the courtroom plot.
And her affection for her dad.
And the bigotry, not against the black guy so much as Boo Radley.
Peck may have been a Dem, but you didn’t see that in most of his movies a la Henry Fonda.
But you cause me to rethink and I’ll watch it differently next time.
I just remember Boo Radley. Never had to read the book and the movie scared me witless. I was too little, I suppose.
Can we also reject Catcher In The Rye? Gah. Hated it. In fact, I hated most of my AP English classes. Nothing but Marxist Existentialism and outright Nihilism dressed up as thought-provoking American Literature. The Hell you say. I never made less than an “A” in English, but I purposely fetched a “D” one semester. Proudly. It did nothing for me, reflected none of my suburban high school realities and it offended my very heart. I knew it to be a cheat and an outright Lie. All of it.
Kill the Italians. . . er Italics.
One of the many things that put me off was the liberal wet dream of the man of peace (no guns for my kid) was so inherently superior to the gun toting rabble that the police officer had the man of peace take the shot on the rabid dog.
Steve,
I must have missed it.
That scene was one that instilled in me as a child to learn to shoot, and shoot the right thing, a rabid dog.
I think it was implied, that like many veterans of that period, he could shoot well, didn’t strut it, still waters run deep.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who doesn’t get Catcher in the Rye.
And let’s remember that despite a damaged spine from dancing classes that made him 4F, he stormed the Guns of Navarone.
I hated Tequila Mockingbird, too. It had so many sub-stories going on, the trial was lost in all the other noise, and the creepy Boo who put candy in the hollow of a tree for the kids to find still makes my skin crawl.
Catcher in the Rye? C’mon, half of it was great! I had to read it in junior year, and to a 17 year old reading about the highjinks; the guy farting in the hall, the a-hole jock roommate, the hotel with the ditzy call girl and “puke colored” chairs, and looking at the stupid stuff the people were doing in the windows of the hotel across the way, how school fed them “steak” on parent visit nights to make it look all swank, it was a fun ride, with dirty words, too! The first half of the book had me in stitches, even when he b.s.’ed that woman on the commuter train about his having cancer and getting her all weepy. Then it got all maudlin 2/3rds through, and even if this wasn’t a class assignment, I already put the sweat equity in to see how it ends, and it ends on a fizz-pop. It started out like a Porky’s or Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and decided to get serious and put a suit on.
I don’t see where people see the Meaning of Life in it, or shoot John Lennon over it.
If you are ever in South Africa I must buy you a beer… or two.
The best movie that was ever made from a book that should by all rights have been burned and the author forbidden to ever write again was The Natural.
What an absolutely awful, horrible book. I think Redford read it and made the movie just to prove that he could do better.