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When we think about noteworthy careers, we tend to envision
the gradual incline of a person’s success over a steady period of
time. We are simply enamored with the idea of long years of hard
work culminating in some ambiguous notion of wealth and re-
spect within a specific field or community. In short, it is most
admirable (and proper, really) to put in your time and reap the
benefits in due course—because successful careers are formulaic.
So, where does this ideal of “career” leave us when consid-
ering Harper Lee? While to ascribe her as noteworthy would
certainly be an understatement, there is still this tension in
facing the reality that her life and work has hardly conformed
to our modern American conceptions of “career.”
Harper Lee established her legacy with just one work, and she
had the humble foresight to realize there was no guarantee of
fulfillment in trying to gain even more. Engaging issues such as
the importance of moral education and the existence of social
inequality, “To Kill a Mocking Bird” has a unique kind of uni-
versal, transcendental staying power. It’s the kind of poignant,
eternal relevance that other authors might try to literarily attain
in dozens of published works over the course of their entire lives,
but only managing to barely scratch the surface of the precedent
set by Harper Lee. Reflecting on students’ responses to the nov-
el, even over half a century since it was first published, Ms. Lee
commented, “[young people] always see new things in [To Kill
a Mockingbird]…the way they relate it to their lives now is really
quite incredible.” She went on to modestly acknowledge her liter-
ary achievement, saying, “When you have a hit like that, you can’t
go anywhere but down.”
When Ms. Lee first began working on “To Kill a Mockingbird,”
she believed that all she truly needed to be happy was “pen, pa-
per, and privacy.” Her mysterious, elusive reputation with the
public and the press seems to emphasize that she continues to be
most content in simplicity—something that can hardly be said
for most individuals of celebrity standing in our today’s culture.
HARPER LEE
THE EXTRAORDINARY NON-CAREER OF
ILLUSTRATION BY ATLEE SPENCER
WORDS BY ALEX MERRILL
Career [kuh-reer]: noun—an occupation or profession, especially
one requiring special training, followed as one’s life work.
We have become accustomed to an incessant inundation of new works by
vocational artists, striving to maintain a societally elevated position by con-
tinually asserting their presence in “new” ways. In an articled titled “The Nar-
cissism and Grandiosity of Celebrities,” Dr. Gad Saad (Professor of Marketing
at Concordia University) speculates that many individuals who pursue an
artistic career “are largely driven by the [potential] outcomes, [such as]
fame, money and adulation.” But where is the true artistry in that?
Tom Randy, an attorney of Alexander City who had the opportunity to
spend some time with Ms. Lee, observed her to be too authentic to be moti-
vated by frivolity. “I think the reason she doesn’t like publicity is, to her, that
would be flaunting her success. And she’s not that type.” Harper Lee genu-
inely enjoyed her writing process, and she made it clear that she would rather
have the joy of continuing in that passion than meet public expectations. Ms.
Lee has rightly observed, “it takes time and patience and effort to turn out
a work of art, and few people seem willing to go all the way.” She truly be-
lieved that writing was meant to be an art, carefully and intentionally crafted,
meaningful and thought provoking. “To Kill a Mockingbird” lives on as such.
Even with the controversial “did she” or “didn’t she” publishing of
Lee’s “Go Set a Watchman”, Ms. Lee defies our conceptions of career
and celebrity culture and, in doing so, forces her readers to give greater
attention to the work of the art itself. This ultimately necessitates her
audience acknowledging her irrefutable brilliance and perpetuating
her success for decades (so far). By not overwhelming us with more
works than we could possibly digest in an effort to convince us of her
depth and intelligence, we’ve been afforded the opportunity to draw
those conclusions of her on our own, in a much more genuine way.
In refusing to continue to publish novel after novel in an attempt to stay
relevant, Ms. Lee has truly maintained a level of relevance that has become
one of the most amazing success stories not just in the history of Alabama,
but in the history of our literary world. Notoriety has a way of distorting
perceptions, but Harper Lee refused to let that become her story. She built
her career and her name on a single novel, and she chose to leave it at that.
Such modest bravery can hardly be found today. Harper Lee is nothing
short of what it means to have good grit.