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Harper Lee letter condemns home town for making her into a 'tourist attraction'
The GuardianA letter from Harper Lee to an old friend in which the To Kill a Mockingbird author rages about the “bad taste” and hypocrisy of people in her home town she felt were “trying to turn [her] into a tourist attraction like Graceland or Elvis” has sold at auction for almost £20,000.
The letter is part of an archive of drawings and letters from Lee to Charles Weldon Carruth. Written in 1993 from Monroeville, Alabama, it sees her complain that “what was once a tiny town of considerable character is now six times its size and populated by appalling people”.
She goes on to rail against how locals are raising money to restore the town’s old courthouse, which was used as the model for the courthouse in the film of her novel, and turn it into a tourist attraction. She writes of how she loathes the billboards that have been erected around the town, showing the courthouse and an image of a mockingbird, and says she “nearly had a fit” when she saw one situated at an exit to the interstate highway, calling it “in indescribable taste” and “a fraud on the public”.
“People will drive miles out of their way to look at Monroe County’s heritage, which consists largely of ratty quilts and Mr Pone McNeil’s walking stick made out of a cypress tree,” she wrote. “The hypocrites in charge, not a one of whom I know, say they are doing this to ‘honour’ me. What they are doing is trying to drown me in their own bad taste, and are embarrassing me beyond endurance.”
The letter is part of an archive of drawings and letters from Lee to Charles Weldon Carruth. Written in 1993 from Monroeville, Alabama, it sees her complain that “what was once a tiny town of considerable character is now six times its size and populated by appalling people”.
She goes on to rail against how locals are raising money to restore the town’s old courthouse, which was used as the model for the courthouse in the film of her novel, and turn it into a tourist attraction. She writes of how she loathes the billboards that have been erected around the town, showing the courthouse and an image of a mockingbird, and says she “nearly had a fit” when she saw one situated at an exit to the interstate highway, calling it “in indescribable taste” and “a fraud on the public”.
“People will drive miles out of their way to look at Monroe County’s heritage, which consists largely of ratty quilts and Mr Pone McNeil’s walking stick made out of a cypress tree,” she wrote. “The hypocrites in charge, not a one of whom I know, say they are doing this to ‘honour’ me. What they are doing is trying to drown me in their own bad taste, and are embarrassing me beyond endurance.”
She really did not want fame and fortune.
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