Harper Lee still saying, "Hell no!"
Harper Lee denies any involvement in forthcoming memoir. It’s also her 85th birthday today.
The answer, as ever, appears to be “hell, no”. The hopes raised that a new memoir might solve the mystery over why Harper Lee has not published a novel since To Kill a Mockingbird, have been dashed by the reclusive author, who denied any involvement in the book.
“Contrary to recent news reports, I have not willingly participated in any book written or to be written by Marja Mills,” Lee wrote in a statement. “Neither have I authorized such a book. Any claims otherwise are false.”
The statement from the Monroeville law firm Barnett, Bugg, Lee & Carter – where Harper Lee’s sister Alice Lee still works – comes only a day after Penguin Press in the US said that it had bought former Chicago Tribune journalist Marja Mills’s memoir The Mockingbird Next Door: Life with Harper Lee, an announcement which coincides with today’s celebration of the author’s 85th birthday. The book was “written with direct access to Harper and Alice Lee and their friends and family”, said the publisher, and recounts “all the Lee sisters have to say about their life in Alabama, their upbringing, how To Kill a Mockingbird impacted their lives, and why Harper Lee chose to never write another novel”.
Read the full story by Alison Flood here.
Who says a writer have to write any more than they end up writing? Did the death of JD Salinger mean we had to find someone else to pester?
The world is ravenous. The thick curtain gets moth eaten faster than the flame can devour it. I’m just glad to be on this side of it. I hear they let the dogs eat what’s on the other side. If it galls a few gifted liars who have fallen in love with their own words, so be it. Perhaps her and her words have had a falling out. I’m willing to bet she’s been burned before.
If I know anything about the friends of writers though, what she has written for her own reasons will be available in print within thirty years. Good for them. I hope to live to read them and pay her survivors for the privilege.