Inspiration

Prior to publication of To Kill A Mockingbird in 1960, Harper Lee moved to New York, took menial jobs to support herself, and all in all, worked on her manuscript for about eight years. After putting it into the hands of an editor, she re-wrote for an additional couple of years. That’s ten years of writing and re-writing: enough struggle to frustrate anyone... I mean can you even imagine?!

One of the most well-known stories about Ms. Lee and her book comes from the early days of the editing process. One night in the winter of 1958, as she sat in her New York apartment surrounded by drifts of paper which mostly were drafts of the same material, she’d suddenly had enough. Flinging open a window, she tossed her manuscript out into the wind, and watched years of work tumble down into the snow-filled streets. I’ve searched, but I can’t find any report of what Harper Lee said as she flung her life’s work out that window, but I suspect it was neither well-crafted nor particularly literary. A phrase like, “Goddammit!” is what comes to mind.

Whether Lee intended to destroy To Kill a Mockingbird we’ll never know. Fortunately, she called her editor at Lippincott immediately, and Tay Hohoff sent her outside to gather up the pages. The cold air and exercise probably did her good, and the gathered pages, which came together quite nicely in the end, have done all of us good through the years.

Hearing the story, I was reminded of some wonderful passages in Flannery O’Connor’s letters, collected and edited by Sally Fitzgerald and published under the title The Habit of Being. Writing to Ms. Fitzgerald about her novel Wise Blood, she says, “Enclosed is Opus Nauseous No. 1. I had to read it over after it came from the typist’s and that was like spending the day eating a horse blanket. It seems mighty sorry to me but better than it was before.”

Later, there were references to Opus Nauseous No. 2, her novel entitled The Violent Bear It Away. In a letter to Cecil Dawkins, dated 17 July 1959 she celebrates in her typically understated way: “ Well, my novel is finished and on its way courtesy the US Postal Service to the publisher. Catharine Carver’s final verdict was that it is the best thing I’ve done. The most I am willing to say is that it has taken more doing than anything else I’ve done.”

And, in a September, 1959 letter to Maryat Lee she adds, “Been working on that book for seven years with time off occasionally to write a story. The relief of finishing it was extreme, but I haven’t spit up or anything…”

It’s often said that the opposite of love isn’t hatred, but apathy. If Harper Lee had allowed her manuscript to disappear in her apartment beneath drifts of junk mail, bills, and old National Geographic magazines, that would have been one thing. If Flannery O’Connor had said, “Well, I believe three years is long enough. We’ll just call this one done and stick it in the mail”, that would have been another. But both authors were bound to their vision of the truth and the integrity of their work by varying degrees of love, disdain, revulsion and amazement. If they were given to dramatic gestures and sardonic humor from time to time--well, so be it. In the end, their gritty, obsessive, and completely unsentimental view of their life’s work allowed them to persevere.

I know this. After a week of surviving off of three hours of sleep a night, when the coffee’s boiled down and the process of putting words to page is like putting my parent's cat outside during a thunderstorm, I want nothing to do with insipid paragraphs about the dignity of the writer’s vocation. Let me contemplate Flannery O’Connor eating a horseblanket, or Nelle Harper Lee crawling around in the snow on all fours, grabbing her manuscript pages.

Now, that’s inspiration.