The Truman Show Screen Play by Harper Lee

The Monroe Center, Hoboken and  Monroeville, Alabama.

What’s the connection here?

Nothing.

Just a coincidence of names.

Just thought I would mention it, that’s all.

Something happened this month. Old Harper Lee, came out of seclusion after a long, long time. She is America’s most famous recluse. Harper Lee, all of eighty-years-old emerged from her tomb this January in Montgomery Alabama. She attended a High School play based on her book.

Boo Radley with a twist of Lazarus.  

Boo who?

If you haven’t read To Kill A Mockingbird don’t bother to read any further; on the other hand, if you like mystery novels, where plots thicken and conclusions  leave you panting, alone in a dark room with your confused deductions, READ THIS.

I mean, the “Who done it” theory is literal here.

Have you ever heard of an artist who painted one canvas, became hugely successful and then refused to paint another?  Or a writer, who wrote one book, became hugely successful and then…..

Harper Lee, who lives in Monroeville, Alabama. She wrote one novel.

Here at the Monroe Center, like everybody else, we continue to wonder why.

Since Lee, decided to show herself in Montgomery, Alabama this January we had to say something about her resurrection.

With a talent like that a writer MUST WRITE or kill her or himself.  It is not a question of wanting to or not wanting to. Passion to write or paint shoots forth like stomach churning vomit. You crouch before the porcelain God and just let it go. There is no stopping it. You just have to do it. That’s just my view sitting alone in the nose bleed section.

So here is the question that has become an incessant echo: Why did Harper Lee not write another novel?

Mockingbird has sold over 10,000,000 copies since the novel was published in 1960. It got Lee a Pulitzer Prize in 1961. People all over the world have read her novel.

Even Borat has read it. In Kazakhstan where they don’t have a printing press. He read the papyrus edition.

For years, it has been openly whispered that Lee’s childhood friend Truman Capote wrote a major portion of To Kill a Mockingbird. The eccentric author was quizzed about this, many times before his death on August 25, 1984. Capote, generally shrugged off the questions, often saying nothing. He admitted that he had seen Lee’s manuscript of To Kill a Mockingbird that was all he said. Lee of course, has maintained her silence. She views the media and literary critics the way dogs view fire hydrants. In her rare public appearances she has always declined to speak.  The question of course remains, WHO wrote To Kill a Mockingbird. If it was Harper Lee, why has she not written again? Is she writing in secret, to be published after her death? Is she scared that her first book was a hard act to follow?  Will she take the secret of Mockingbird to her grave?  Maybe, the next time Harper Lee emerges from her tomb, she will have some answers.

Remember June, 2005, when Mark Felt, formerly of the FBI finally revealed that he was in fact ‘Deep Throat,’ more than thirty years after Watergate. It was great to finally put a lid on that one.

If Truman Capote did write a major portion of To Kill a Mockingbird and Lee filled in the blanks, another book by her will put to rest years of speculation and doubt. What she says at this stage does not matter. Harper Lee knows that.  Another novel will put Truman Capote to rest. The question of course is: Can she do it?

Boo Radley is the only man who knows the answer.

Boo Who?

Radley and Lee have one thing in common.

That is the song the Mocking bird taunts the world with.

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