Which self is awed, which one is angry, which is embarrassed, which is confused by some ol’ story that ran in the newspaper days ago?
My colleague the columnist Jay Grelen in Little Rock wrote Sunday of his long pursuit of an interview with novelist Harper Lee. He didn’t write it for publication just then; a disclaimer under the remembrance says it was originally published in Alabama’s Mobile Register.
I should note, with some pride, I know Jay a little, as he is highly skilled. With atypical patience and more than expected cleverness he stalks the reclusive Ms. Lee (she calls it stalking and, while Jay does not deny it, stalking implies a compulsiveness and frequency that he does not have) over a several-year period. Wily as he is, Jay gets only enough face-time for her to slam to a door or window on his: This is a tale of a dogged reporter’s defeat.
He sets little, well, traps. He interviews townspeople. He haunts the drive-in where she’s known to order “for here.” He sends her letters and a gift. These things we are taught in J school and nod in approval after deadline in the newsroom parking lot or on someone’s porch with beers.
Jay got a story out of this, just not the one he wanted, we would joke of this one.
But the lady wants to be left alone. She is not a hermit, but she does not consent to interviews. Nothing about being an artist, including a writer, indicates a social or moral obligation to act as a celebrity, to presume that what one says now is of import and by access encourage its publication.
So I am angry on behalf of Ms. Lee. She may not be mad at him, though. Over the course of 45 years she must have fended off many Jays; it goes with success. But why do some reporters relentlessly pursue people like her?
Aspects of celebrity depend on publicity, of course. The less-evident the talent (Haris Pilton), or perhaps just the less-stable it is (Jitney Peers), the more needed fame is. Still, even deeply talented artists depend on celebrity to increase their audience and their earnings. But success as a performer or storyteller does not of its own open channels of reciprocity with other chroniclers, like Jay.
This makes me embarrassed on behalf of capital-j Journalism. Let’s say Ms. Lee gave him a fairly candid half-hour in her front parlor. He writes it up — I see it as a surreal episode of The American Sportsman — but immediately he has to work on the next column, about something else entirely. At best, she is left as she was, living as she chooses and not really more understood by strangers, as if that’s her goal.
I remain confused. What would we readers have gotten for Jay’s Q-and-A? At best, it would be an item read over breakfast to be replaced in short-term memory with what came on TV that night. The chance is almost nil that Ms. Lee would reveal something that even “To Kill a Mockingbird” lovers would say, “Now that explains Atticus.”
Even if she did, what of it? -30-
