There is, thus far, only one movie based on her work, though she’s been played in movies twice and in a made-for-TV movie once. All three times, the work was about other writers, because for many years, she’d only published one book. One great book, which practically everyone I know read as a sophomore in high school, at which point they then saw the movie.
My firm belief has long been that anyone good enough to play the lead in a remake of that movie is good enough to refuse the part on the grounds that he’s no Gregory Peck. Many iconic movies have actually been remakes; girls before Judy Garland played Dorothy Gale, and men before Boris Karloff played the Monster. But there is only one Atticus Finch.
Nelle Harper Lee herself grew up in Monroeville, Alabama, the daughter of a lawyer. Many of her own childhood experiences were woven into To Kill a Mockingbird, most famously the obnoxious neighbour kid, Dil, who would grow up to be Truman Capote. Meaning that Dil wrote a heck of a lot more than Scout did.
Indeed, Go Set a Watchman has been confirmed to just be a first draft of the story, so she did basically write one book. Not that I’ve read Go Set a Watchman; I was eventually to unsettled by its publication history to hurry out and get a copy, since it seems likely that she’d never intended to publish it. But it does say something that I could have initially heard that an author whose only book was published when my mother was about the age I was when I read it was publishing a second book and gotten excited. It’s a heck of a memorable book.
Nelle, as she called herself, lived so reclusively that I just kind of assumed she was dead until I was an adult, long after the first time I’d read the book, the first time I saw the movie. (Which is about the same time, thanks to my film-loving English teacher, who was probably happy for the excuse.) In recent years, she had been in ill health, which is suggested to be why Watchman ended up published. Her mind, you see, was not what it had been. The other thing I can’t help thinking, though, is how much she must have missed Dil. Even if he did grow up to be Truman Capote.
