Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee by Casey Cep

 

Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee by Casey Cep, is certainly a well written and engaging work, but only if you care for certain narrow concerns.  I care little for the generation of post-war writers who had problems writing, Lee, Salinger, or those who wanted to be left alone, their photographic legacy only a buck toothed portrait from their Cornell days (Pynchon).  Who cares?  Lee never wrote another book after Mockingbird because she did not have the power, stamina, and or creativity to do so.  The fact that she is somehow hailed for this shows that we often worship failure as much as success in our writers.  Why did she never write again, we whisper.  A mystery!

Cep shows that Lee had the material to write a far more complex non-fiction or novel about race in America.  She had gathered the materials, but failed to write the book.  Cep wrote the book while explaining why Lee did not write the book.  So why should we care about Harper Lee, or the others?  We should not.  We should allow those who wanted to hide and disappear remain in such a state.  That is what they wanted.