Books in Review

   When I was a little kid, I loved to read books, books about animals. Not fantasy, cartoonish animals, but real animals, dogs and horses mostly...Black Beauty, Lassie Come Home, Beautiful Joe, Smoky the Cowhorse...I didn't care who the author was at the time; I just wanted to read the story. When I got a little older, I read a book called The Black Stallion, and when I found out there were more stories about that horse, I wanted to know where to look, so I cared about the author.  But I only wanted to know Walter Farley's name, so as to find the books.   I wasn't interested in knowing anything about him as a person.  I just appreciated what he had written.
   I still feel that way, kind of.  I thought I understood why Salinger never wanted to revel in his fame, was rather glad that he hadn't caved.  A movie about him made after his death sort of dissipated the satisfaction though;  I'd rather have just appreciated what he had written without delving into his rather tormented life.
    I'm currently reading The Mockingbird Next Door.  I think it would be classified as an authorized biography.  It is intended to open up some of the mystery about the reclusive Harper Lee.  She seldom granted interviews until she met this writer, and has agreed to talk to her about some, though not all, of her life and life's decisions.  I enjoyed the book and its message when I read it, and also the film.  But I never wanted to know about the person who wrote it. For many years it was her sole novel; she only recently released another.  Any worthy work should stand on its own, as an entity, not as an outpouring of some internal subliminal message.
    About halfway through the book, I find the author, Marja Mills, has concentrated on what the elderly author has allowed about her personal life.  She is so old now, and times have changed so much, that she has exposed details of her life that reveal what may possibly have, back in her youth at the time of her fame, been radical and unthinkable.  A lesbian?  Oh, the innuendo. Harper Lee is tall, not delicate, dare we say mannish, did not date, never married, was interested in women's rights, was and is fiercely independent, successfully entered into a man's world.  Was she gay?  Even if she didn't act on it?  Was her characterization of the tomboy Scout her doppelganger?  When I read the book and saw the movie, I never once thought about what type of person Harper Lee was.
     Possibly Lee consented to this quasi and controlled interviewing because of her age;  maybe she realizes that the only path beyond submitting to the vagaries of aging is to reclaim just a touch of her former identity.  She and her 2 sisters are now firmly ensconced in that other country, where everything has to do with the inevitable.