To Kill a Cultural Icon

 I didn't like To Kill a Mockingbird.

I read it only recently, usually avoiding 'that kind of book' because I thought it was both 'too modern' & 'not of my culture', without having the vaguest notion of what it was about. I've never seen the movie. I'm vaguely aware that Gregory Peck has a powerful scene in it. I had no idea how that famous scene related to the book, so it was definitely time to find out for myself, not knowing anyone who'd read it, & being vaguely aware that the author's only other book was published posthumously.

Very quickly, I formed a dislike for the book in the way it portrays a young child (of about five) with big ideas explaining their philosophy & incidental schooling in a US backwater around the time of the Depression. It tried to be Tom Sawyer, but failed miserably for being too highbrow & hokey at the same time, without the subtlety or innocence of Clements. I kept wondering where it was going, as a book, & what the fuss was about, as a legacy.

I mentioned that I was reading it & disliked it to a colleague, who said that she'd loved it. Because I hadn't finished, maybe it did have a powerful ending ... but it had a lot to make up for. Then it twigged - in what language did she read it? I was reading an untranslated version. Sure enough, she'd read it in Farsi. She'd looked into the process, & had been assured that the book she read was considered the best translation. The problem is, the dialect of the original would have to be translated into English first. I could understand it as it was, but I'm not sure that 'yessum' conveys the right tone when translated into Farsi. 

I've had this problem before. I told another friend I was reading A Hundred Years of Solitude, & she was in raptures over the imagery of one particular passage that I had quite missed. I had read it in English. She had read it in Farsi (coincidence), & the original was in Spanish. Now, we could both be getting it wrong. In this case, it was a noble-prize-winning author that could well have been butchered in multiple languages.

But let's get back to the book at hand. Mockingbird was a bestseller, & the movie was a box-office hit. Americans (if only them) have been reading the book compulsorily since the 1950s. That's the key. It was a book of its time. It was a book that spoke to a movement to recognise (finally) African Americans as no different to any other Americans. That is not the point of the book, but it's an observation within it, mostly shown through the naiveté of the heroine, who is often told that she doesn't understand how the world works, or that she's too young to have her opinion matter.

That's the author, because the book is in first person. The author considered her message - if that truly was germane to the book - as no more than an alternative view to what her upbringing provided. It wasn't just about black Americans being treated as second class - below white trash - or children being ignored, but also state-controlled education, vigilante justice, poverty within a small community, the treatment of fringe dwellers, religious intolerance, & a whole raft of social issues put into the mouth of a child who would not normally see any of this (or recognise it), but is more likely to accept prejudice as the norm than to question it. Repeatedly, the heroine reminds us that she was allowed to question her father, even if other kids couldn't.

The book itself does not come under criticism - is rarely critiqued - simply because no-one wants to touch that subject matter: inequality ... no, specifically the treatment of African Americans. It was then & is now a taboo subject - criticising books that justifiably criticise an historical society. White Americans never treated black Americans with such contempt. How could they possibly have done? But they did, & only a denialist can shout 'fake news' at that without crossing their fingers. The book is a representation of history, for being strictly fiction, & it is ugly rather than being inspiring, because no-one gets a happy ending. This is rather reminiscent of the work of Harper Lee's chief supporter, Truman Capote. I wonder if, if it wasn't for him, the book would ever have been published, or at least published in time. It was timely, but if it had missed its moment in history, it would not have been missed by the passage of time.

 It doesn't matter what language you translate it into, the book's moment has now passed. It is not timeless in itself. It reflects a period in that country's history that was shameful (a long period from the freeing of slaves to the recognition of equality) & should now be considered almost laughable (how could they think that back then?). If you are moved by such a book, then you are yourself living in the Southern states of the USA in the 1950s, because there is no modern revelation to be had from it.

As an afterthought, any counter-argument that suggests that the book is still relevant because there is still prejudice, not just in the Southern states of the USA, but across the world, should take into consideration that the 70 years since its publication should be considered sufficient time for it to 'work its magic'. The world is full of prejudice, but nothing so insular can change that, because the work can be happily pigeonholed in a time & place that no longer exist.