Mobile Register.<\/em><\/p>\nI 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Jay got a story out of this, just not the one he wanted, we would joke of this one.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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?<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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<\/em> — 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.<\/p>\nI 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.”<\/p>\n
Even if she did, what of it? -30-<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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; […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7],"tags":[29],"class_list":["post-193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-course-of-words","tag-columnist"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4288,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2013\/05\/gatsby-critics-old-sport\/","url_meta":{"origin":193,"position":0},"title":"Sportin’ Life, Eh, Old Sport?","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"May 17, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"I knew a Jay Gatsby. We were in grade school in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and stayed close through high school. It probably wasn't until junior high when I saw this trait of his -- simply put it's a person sure he can buy friends with money. But that is so\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Course of Words"","block_context":{"text":"The Course of Words","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/course-of-words\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Click for Rotten Tomatoes website archive of top critics on the 2013 adaptation of The Great Gatsby","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/great-gatsby-movie-poster-200x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":119,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2005\/08\/mock-of-the-mockingbird\/","url_meta":{"origin":193,"position":1},"title":"Mock of the Mockingbird","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"August 25, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock \"[Russ A. Charif, a research biologist at Cornell Lab of Ornithology,] said after his talk that the 'kent' sounds alone were not conclusive because scientists could not completely rule out a blue jay mimicking the sound of an ivory bill. ...\" -- The New York\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News, Spin"","block_context":{"text":"News, Spin","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/news-spin\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":46,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2005\/01\/johnny-carson\/","url_meta":{"origin":193,"position":2},"title":"Johnny Carson","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"January 26, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock Wednesday, January 26, 2005: My newspaper rarely does front-page obituaries, particularly of celebrities. The last was Marlon Brando's. Monday morning it gave top-of-2A play for Johnny Carson, the penultimate spot. The front page would have been appropriate. Carson was a significant icon of the 20th\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "American Culture"","block_context":{"text":"American Culture","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/american-culture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1794,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2010\/02\/columnist-sympathizer\/","url_meta":{"origin":193,"position":3},"title":"Columnist Sympathizer","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"February 18, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"A nice thing just happened. On Jan. 31, I was elected vice president of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. I've been a card-carrying columnist since 1991, joining during the run of my column Mirthology, in the old Arkansas Democrat. The post is interim, to cover after a resignation, until\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Course of Words"","block_context":{"text":"The Course of Words","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/course-of-words\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Card-Carrying Columnist Card","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/02\/NSNC_card-300x180.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":93,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2005\/06\/couple-columnists-hit-a-bar\/","url_meta":{"origin":193,"position":4},"title":"Couple columnists hit a bar","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"June 24, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Two columnists walk into a bar Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock Friday, June 24, 2005: A temptation is to write rather complete articles from the notes I took at the just-completed conference of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists, meeting in Grapevine, to the northeast of Fort Worth and northwest\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Grapevine Lines"","block_context":{"text":"Grapevine Lines","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/nsnc\/grapevine-2005\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":371,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2007\/11\/compression-fracture\/","url_meta":{"origin":193,"position":5},"title":"Compression Fracture","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"November 11, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"It never occurred to me to presume this, probably because I'm not a technophile. But here I sit with a new computer (waiting months for the Apple operating system update as a few pieces of both hardware and software on my blue 7-year-old iBook fail), and it asks if it\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News, Spin"","block_context":{"text":"News, Spin","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/news-spin\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1507,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193\/revisions\/1507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}