...that Dill, the little boy in To Kill A Mockingbird who came to Maycomb, Alabama, from Meridian, Mississippi, every summer to stay with his aunts and who spent his days playing with Jem and Scout Finch, was based on a real person whose name you will probably recognize. His friendship with Harper Lee, the author of To Kill A Mockingbird, continued into adulthood. As a matter of fact, she helped him conduct interviews with people in Kansas that led to the writing of his own best-selling non-fiction novel (as it was called) about a family of four that was murdered, In Cold Blood.
Yes, friends, the Finch children's friend with the big imagination was none other than author Truman Capote.
"Why is this important?" you may be asking. It isn't, really. I just don't like to leave loose ends dangling. I don't like to leave any stone unturned. I like to tie up every package in a neat bow. Most of all, obviously, I like to speak in clichés and hackneyed phrases.
For 55 years, To Kill A Mockingbird was thought to be the only literary work Harper Lee ever produced. Then a manuscript called Go Set A Watchman was found in a box in her closet. It was first thought to be a sequel to Mockingbird since Scout was now an adult, Atticus was older, and Jem had died. Not so. Go Set A Watchman has been determined to be the first draft of the book that later, after much rewriting encouraged by Harper Lee's editor, became To Kill A Mockingbird.
I lived in Texas, not Alabama, so I didn't know Harper Lee or Truman Capote, but I did live two doors down from John Howard Griffin who wrote Black Like Me. I lived three doors down from the mother of the CEO of Gulf Oil, Ernest D. Brockett, Jr.; his mother, Janet Brockett, was my algebra and geometry teacher in high school. Years later, in Georgia, my children would know both Travis Tritt (country singer) and Ty Pennington (celebrity carpenter on HGTV) in high school.
It's a small world, really. Six degrees of separation are often five more than necessary. For example, on an autumn evening many years ago, at a restaurant called Mandarin East on 57th Street in New York City, I sat five feet away from Angie Dickinson and Burt Bacharach. It doesn't get much better than that!
My Dad would probably have said, "That and 25 cents will buy you a cup of coffee," and the high price of a cup of coffee today is a sobering indication of just how long ago it was that he probably would have said it.
More on him in my next post.
It is certainly a small world.
ReplyDeleteEmma, and it's getting smaller all the time.
DeleteI did not know about the Truman Capote connection. That is interesting, thank you for sharing that information!
ReplyDeleteBonnie, you're so very welcome! Glad to be of service.
DeleteIt is a long time since I read TKAM. One would like to think that things have changed all over the world for the better. However I sometimes wonder. The Six Degrees of Separation is amazingly accurate so often.
ReplyDeleteGraham, my point was that often times it takes only one or two degrees of separation.
DeleteI know I leave great gaps between one Blog visit and another, but each time I come to see you, I realise anew that our minds run on similar train tracks. Each crossing of points between our railway line thoughts, underlines the similarities in the way we enjoy our journeys through the forest words at our disposal. :-). LOL. Today, I've enjoyed visiting the rolling landscapes of a few more of your posts. Thank you!
ReplyDeleteJinksy, now you have me wondering which "few posts" you read!
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