Nell Harper Lee:
“I was hoping for little, but got everything ...”

Alabama. In the 90th year of life, Nelly Harper Lee died.

The woman who wrote the best novel of the century left quietly, in a dream, in a nursing home, where she lived for the last 9 years after a stroke. Last year, she lost her best friend and assistant in business - her older sister Alice. After which, laconic and avoiding publicity in previous years, she seemed to put an impenetrable barrier between the old and the new life.

Invitations to various ceremonies, awards and initiations poured on her like from a cornucopia. But at the same time she refrained from lengthy speeches, advice and edification, invariably adhering to the principle: it is better to be silent than stupid. In her book, one could find answers to many questions that have arisen over decades. In it, she said everything she thinks about this world, justice, decency, courage and inhumanity of racism.

Harper Lee wrote To Kill a Mockingbird because she couldn’t do otherwise. Her burden was the popularity that had fallen on her, from which she sought to isolate herself in all possible ways. And the novel itself appeared as if by accident. Thanks to the Christmas present of friends who paid her a creative vacation of a year. Thanks to the editor Teresa Hohoff, who forced to rework the original version, which was nevertheless published a year ago under the title “Go Put the Watchman” and caused more bewilderment than joy.

Hochoff managed to break through Lee’s insecurity, to orient her in the right direction. The result was a masterpiece that formed the basis of the Oscar-winning film, was printed in tens of millions of copies, brought its Pulitzer Prize and forever quarreled with childhood friend Truman Capote. His dream of the main American award in the field of literature and other forms of creativity was never realized. He could not come to terms with it and rejected many years of friendship, forgetting at the same time about the enormous help that Harper provided him during his work on the book “Ordinary Murder”.

Due to a sad coincidence, the writer Umberto Eco passed away on the same day as Harper Lee.

Elena Tanakova © Gallerix.ru