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How does
one get a famously reclusive writer out of her shell and back
onto the literary scene? Apparently, all one has to do is
lie to the American public.
As Harper
Lee states in her new memoir, All Literature Is Gossip,
the public skewering of James Frey and his book A Million
Little Pieces inspired the Pulitzer Prize-winning author
to break her forty-year literary silence (not including her
published letter to Oprah Winfrey a few years ago). One might
assume that an intelligent octogenarian such as Lee would
rail against the shallow, pathetic decadence of modern society
for allowing such a thing to occur. Lee, however, finds the
situation hilarious.
Lee notes
that Frey's book follows what is, essentially, an old literary
tradition of turning aspects of real life into fiction, conjecture,
and speculation. Lee herself evoked her own childhood in To
Kill a Mockingbird; the only difference is that she called
the book "semi-autobiographical" to allow for artistic license.
"Reality," Lee writes in the introduction, "is often tediously
dull. Few people live larger than life, so they exaggerate
to sound more interesting. Luckily, I have no reason to lie.
I knew Truman Capote; he was liar enough for us both!"
As implied
by the title, a significant portion of Lee's book is devoted
to gossip: acknowledging it, disputing it, and certainly starting
it. The title, in fact, is a quote by Capote, Lee's childhood
friend and the basis for the character of Dill in Mockingbird.
Appropriately, some of the best gossip also revolves around
Capote, who was notorious for fabricating stories about his
relationships with celebrities. He was even partially responsible
for Lee's literary seclusion, as she details in a hilarious
but complicated story that involves a mind-boggling combination
of factors including drunken wagers, an elaborate series of
lies, Errol Flynn's skid-marked underpants, and a family recipe
for snickerdoodles.
The actual
truthfulness of Lee's memoir is questionable, however, as
she hedges many of the biggest bits of gossip surrounding
her life: primarily that Capote co-wrote To Kill a Mockingbird.
She neither confirms nor denies the speculation, but she alludes
to it when she takes umbrage with the idea that she was nothing
more than a talentless literary fag hag. She does, however,
imagine that if he were alive today, she would be helping
him in what would be his most passionate work: furiously writing
his fantasy sexploits into the scripts for a sixth season
of Queer as Folk. Apparently, Capote was a real bottom
for Brian Kinney types.
Beyond
the flamboyant social life that came with her friendship to
Capote, Lee's writing life is fairly typical: she writes,
she struggles to live up to her first novel, and she rides
out her early success as best she can. She remembers fondly
her experiences with the To Kill a Mockingbird movie,
including her friendship with Gregory Peck, who famously depicted
the iconic Atticus Finch. Nice things are said, and Peck is
portrayed as a lovely cross between father figure and older
brother to Lee, but compared to the flamboyance and fabrication
of Capote's New York glitterati scene, these stories are quaint
and forgettable.
At times,
one may feel compelled to skip over these stories just to
get back to the juicy gossip and hilarious lies. Even Lee
seems to agree, as she interrupts one of her own anecdotes
to delve into a story about a drag queen she once met in a
Philadelphia restroom, only to remember a few lines later
that she made up the story in the late '50s to entertain Andy
Warhol.
Perhaps
this juxtaposition between truth and fiction is Lee's point,
however. Though readers might enjoy the pithy, sweet stories
of accomplishment, expectation, and kindness that encompass
much of her life, these are too mundane for readers hoping
to live vicariously through the author. Readers look to memoirs
for provocative, titillating stories—for a truth stranger
than fiction—and nobody is truly bothered if the writer,
like Capote, takes a few liberties with reality. In the end,
readers want to be entertained, and they'll swallow as much
truthiness as it takes to make it work.
(April
1, 2008)
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