Wayne Flynt - Afternoons with Harper Lee - Notes

Historian Wayne Flynt reminisces about 64 evenings spent with Harper Lee and family talking about literature, Southern history, and family.  What splendid Southern writing!

The Lees were devout Methodists.  I have trouble relating to devout Methodists since I've never met one.  :)  Nelle Lee attended the Methodist school, Huntingdon College in Montgomery, not a party school but not exactly intellectually rigorous either.  She was a notorious recluse.  Though growing up in Monroeville, Alabama, she spent most her life in New York City, preferring to write in the Big Apple.  This fact in itself is fascinating.  I wonder if she knew Willie Morris.

Nelle was obsessed with family and Southern history, well-versed in Alabama history, but unlike Faulkner she was not obsessed about the Civil War.  Most Southern writers find literary fertility in that war.  When Johnny comes marching home again, hurrah, hurrah.  Robert Penn Warren, take notice.  Was she obsessed with race like Faulkner?  Faulkner and race.  Please don't get me started. I have never figured out Joe Christmas.   Amazing that Nelle missed one of the key attributes of a Southern writer: she was not an alcoholic.  But she took her stand.

From family history,  hearing Southern stories, and knowing Southern geography.  She knew about the White Sticks and the Red Sticks.   Nelle was Southern personified.  Unlike Flannery O'Connor, a Southern Catholic trying to write about Protestant fundamentalism.  Good writer but she was a misfit here.

Nelle was not a one-trick pony.  She wrote essays at UA  One is an hysterical description of Southern writers.  What Southern writers need:

An abussive father. an abusive, alcoholic mother.  mistreatment by older siblings.  all leading to the required unhappy childhood.  Sexual frustrations are especially desirable.  Self love.  Cursing God at regular intervals.  Best environment is a small town.  In the South is best.  Periodic race riots are a big plus.  Pentecostal and Holiness revivals are also a big plus.  Crooked town officials.  Bootleggers,  Blatant hypocrisies.

I think she nailed it.

"I consider television quite educational. Every time someone turns one on, I go into another room and read a book"

-Groucho Marx P. 145