Starting now on booktv the life, career and opinions of harper lee author of to kill a mockingbird. She moved next door to me and her sister alice in monrovia alabama for 18 months and spend time with the two women on a regular basis. This is about one hour and 20 minutes. Lets see if this microphone is hot. It is. Right on cue. Im with the alabama booksmith and on behalf of our dedicated staff of the books callers and this entire crew in the magnificent alabama theater and those at Penguin Press who published the book the literary world has anticipated for half a century it is my privilege and my pleasure to welcome a mockingbird tribute. We would also say a big high to the viewers on cspan. The audience enjoyed watching and hearing on the big screen the personal stories before the start of the main event. Each attendee has received a signed First Edition of the mockingbird nextdoor. Many of you wanted extra copies forou wanted extra copies for friends and gifts. They are available at alabama booksmith. Com. The folks sitting here are beyond the odds of the early 20th century moving palace that has been lovingly restored to its original charm. The final is that one lucky patron will walk away tonight with this 50th Anniversary Edition of to kill a mockingbird with a bookplate signed by harper lee. The rest of the evening format will be opening remarks, a conversation with the increase questions from the audience that hes written down as you enter the theater and then drawing for the prize. This podium will soon belong to the hottest author in america. We just found out about two hours ago and you were the first to know that it will debut on the New York Times bestseller list at number four and its only been out a few days. [applause] and you own a signed First Edition. It has been praised by the New York Times and Washington Post and the newspaper and radio talk shows and Television News program out there not to mention blogs Facebook Comments many of you like quite a few of the reviews that we have seen have an opinion before youve read the book. We ask that you reserve judgment until youve heard the presentations and answers to the questions posed. We hesitate to take more of the speakers time for much of an introduction as the media has done the job for us. We shared that the georgetown graduate owns a pivot surprise marvelous sense of humor and a manner that will be a parent as soon as you meet her. Even though she spent quite a bit of time in the College Football games she will not tell us there is one controversy she does not avoid when it comes to the coke and pepsi more. Since her grandfather ran a 2 milliondollar plant in her hometown in wisconsin she maintains a strong preference. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome back. [applause] thank you so much. Thrilled to be here and see this gorgeous theater. Ive been hearing about it for quite some time. Thank you for what you said and putting together a magical evening. It was such a privilege to get to know harper lee and her older sister and our privilege to share them with you. Some of my favorite times were around the Kitchen Table in the house i rented nextdoor to theirs. Lets celebrate with harper lee and also the friends and family in the town who so generously helped me understand the context of their lives in a town. Ive been edited and im trying to see if i can use fewer words was this isnt the option that comes to mind. I think a great opening comment if you would share with the audience just went to the what went through your mind when you were at the best western in monrovia alabama the telephone in your room rings and the voice on the other end says this is harper lee. I felt as if the wizard of oz placed a call to my hotel room and i was surprised and thrilled at the chance to speak with her. Right away i think i had the sense of what a down to earth person she was and not as shy as i had pictured. She asked if it would be all right to come by the next day and i said yes. And she showed up at the appointed time and began the first of many conservations over the years to come. One of the first things i remember sharing a laugh with her is when i was telling her about my reasons which was the Chicago Library system selected to kill a mockingbird as if of the first selection in one book in chicago which was designed to get people around the city from all walks of life reading and talking about the same book. So i was telling her more about the activities in chicago and the reason ive been sent there as a feature writer for the Chicago Tribune not with the thought of interviewing her so much, but the thought of talking to people around town seeing this place that is known to the readers around the world in the fictional form that helped inspire anyway. So we were showing the movie is a part of this in chicago and she leaned over this little table in that debate could best western room. This is a different conversation than i thought. It was a friendship that lasted through his death and after he died i. E. The lead in 2003 was with their family as well as the wonderful play right about one the oscar for adapting to the screen and then all these years later cheering about the man that shes referred to as the last gentleman. Throughout the book he referenced harper lee sense of humor. When she received a phone call. I believe the words were god here. Theyve been quoted in the New York Times where she had decided that after all these years its now looked like god only cleanshaven and we were having breakfast dot too long after that had appeared and she told me that she had answered the phone in this modest newspaper story, so i apologize, but in their modest house in quiet street the phone rang and so she answered it and heard god here so they called up and at the end of the conversation he simply said remember, god loves you. We really appreciate what youve done. The audience before the main event started they got to see catherine telling the stories. They were listening to the audio tapes. With a backup by giving you the context in which i moved. It was helpful in becoming a newspaper story with sidebars that i had prepared for the tribune ended encouraged me to come back which i did and the possibility of spending some time living. People in birmingham that know that real estate prices will appreciate i had the idea maybe i could find an apartment over someones garage. But that kind of a rental was actually harder to come by. A good friend of theirs had suggested i look at the house two doors down and by that time i have spent a lot of time with both of them and it was something i could rent for a time and i did say to those i wonder if that would be kind of close for comfort. I dont even want to inquire about that if that might be the case. But then he encouraged me to look at it and i did. It was far more housed than one person needed. But as somebody that lived in downtown chicago, the rent they proposed charging, this was the house they hoped to sow but in a difficult market were willing to rent, they were going to charge me the outlandish sum of 650 a month for quite a nice house which sounded pretty good for someone that lives in downtown chicago. However, when i told the sisters about this kind of response now was to words highway robbery. She was offended. And for that 20 less it had been basic for some time and it was for sale. This one had actually been for sale for some time but have been sold and have some storm damage and had been on the market for quite a while. They offered to serve as references and encouraged looking into that, and so i did and looked about. They had been transferred to another city that i would rent from month to month while it was on the market. Perfect place for me to live while waiting to see which month this would sell. You could imagine that in the middle of the night i had to fight the urge to go out and takes it that for sale sign out of the front yard and tied it. I was hoping that it would be available long enough for me to spend a good amount of time come in and eat it was. I ended up renting the house for 18 months from the sea off all of 2004 until the spring of 2006 and one of my favorite things to hear when i picked up the phone in my little modest but very nice red brick house was are you pouring into that meant do you have a pot of coffee going and can i come over and talk around the Kitchen Table and we did about as often that as often as we were pretty regulars at mcdonalds for talk over coffee. I remember having to wait for harper in the parking lot. We had driven separate cars on that day and the tennessee game was on and she was asking if i could wait until she had the final score for us to go in and have our coffee. With alice i would just mention one reason. It was an inspiration for the character and an attorney that practiced in his quiet steadfast way and was 15 years older than harper and so knew her as a girl it was a sisterly relationship and yet. She led this interesting parallel existence in a way between an apartment in manhattan and then went to take the train and spend with alice and i think it tells you something about her that she had such a tied to both of those different places. Says the space x. Wrote in her memoirs that recording the audio to kill a mockingbird is one of the best things she did in her professional career. Gregory peck said in his biography that Atticus Finch was his role of a lifetime. Give us a perspective on why those two. It was always for me the first comes to mind when i think of how generous they were sharing their time and insight with me. And i think that, you know it is a privilege to know her and to know the people around her. Its also a privilege to try to honor the work that means so much to so many people and has remarkably so, since it was First Published in 1960. I remember the first time i saw alice, who stands maybe 5 feet tall on a good day very petite going into their p. O. Box in the downtown square and i know some of you have been there and can picture you can have the plastic bag from the Grocery Store and put in the correspondence of all those that all those years later i think about 40 years later when i first was spending time with them they would stream into the p. O. Box with people wanting to tell, both of them often times what the book meant to them and why. And i think that its a book that a lot of people feel a personal attachment to. It is a classic novel but i think that theres also a sense of maybe there is a little bit of a guide to living for some people and characters a lot of people feel attached to. Im suspecting there might be more than one grandchild among these people that are named atticus or harper. We can hardly see which of these lights but im thinking that its the same that if i were a gambling person and that is one more reflection of what it means for people to try to do honor to that work. Thank you. There are so many scenes in your book that put a normal ordinary image in the readers mind of this literary mysterious woman. Would you elaborate on the ambience of feeding the ducks lost to mention having coffee at mcdonalds. They drink oceans of coffee over time. And the feeding quarters into exile alabama. One of the things i appreciated most as i got to know both harper and alice was how they lived. And i think for me one of the most instructive things getting a glimpse of their life but harper ever said was on the drive into this relates to what we are talking about one of the great pleasures with six lowering that part they do not exist clearly. But now harvard was driving and alice is in the passenger seat and i was in the backseat. We can appreciate beauty without needing to possess it and i thought what a lovely walk in my experience that those with the world of material things. People even now when they hear are inspired by that and they spend time on updating a house or on television hes one these one of things that took very much of their time in my experience and it was refreshing that is a wonderful perception that so many of us think of as mysterious but you made it seem as normal as Blueberry Pie in many aspects. I have to say that given the sense of them in the town where they grew up for me one of the great pleasures is there was a story for them on the drive just about every property that we drove by think of the story that had a family that lived there and the few that started three generations earlier and had been patched over maybe and the different stories in that landscape and i often was just trying to get the sense of what it was like growing up there and being the ones listening to the stories. They had an aunt alice who was their mothers sister that sounded like quite a character. Whenever there was a story it didnt take long before i heard most of those a time or two and so i felt welcomed hearing about them more. They grew up as a lot of people in their generation did hearing stories that wasnt just information but have pleasure in telling the story and appreciating these characters a lot of time into town and in the family and having a bit of a sense of humor. They can be a source of great consternation of is also there is something human the appreciated. I thought one of the most powerful parts of the book close at that time when there was a confluence of three major events when the movie was coming out into the movie infamous was coming out playing harper lee. At the same time, charles shields biography was coming out and you write and be read the influence on how that affected harper lee and another key will all see this she got a copy of the tape. A bootleg copy. Spin again she was playing at the residence and they have a little trouble both of them at that time so you say the words that now said i did not say. Would you set the scene . This is another redbrick modest house that belonged to a friend of theirs that have also become a friend of mine, someone that was a fellow methodist in the congregation and with whom they took a lot of outings and that kind of thing. In this crowd if you are technologically unsophisticated as i am but you want if you like a rockstar in the technical world, hang out with people who are impressed if you can press fast forward and rewind. Not only harper and alice got a number that a number of their friends were quite a bit older and so someone that knew how to work in this case it wasnt even a dvd player with a vcr grade so one evening harper as anybody would not coming how they would be portrayed and wondering about this experience that weve actually had being brought to the screen through the imagination and research of the film makers, so she wanted to see it and we went to this friends house but had a vcr. Ad hearing difficulties at that time. The remote button i was pushing was the volume. And that was we pressed play and were going to watch the beginning of this movie that she knew was about to be seen by all kinds of people. And i said, tell me what it is loud enough. It went up and up and up. A lot of you can relate to how difficult that is. Its hard to here the dialogue. I would pause after a liner to dialogue and tell her. I wasnt sure whether i should be sing she would be saying and then you or than she said and so i settled on and then you said. It was so interesting. Every couple of lines ofting. Dialogue paused and repeated. She also had commentary on that. T g i couldnt help thinking that evening, as she was going home she w goi after this what ended up being a special evening at a friends house that was all for me. Could you imagine imagine what it was like for her. And i think on a sad note, shenote had been so complementary of those performances. Sh he was a big man in real life ymour and somehow managed to have ae parcular particular mannerism. Time she had him as a childhood friend and then an adult friend. He prected she predicted that t evening, well wel before he would win the oscar win that he would do so. T was it was uncanny the way he wasad bee able to capture the character. I remembered making a note that it would be willing to share ai rembe little bit about him. Bout th i was driving when i got the air news that he passed away and i felt the sadness that anyone would who admired his work. Appriati she also told me that she wrote the filmmaker of the other movie but i believe it came out second the one where sandrabably bullock plays now. She was spotted a photograph where Sandra Bullock was wearing white bobby socks with black pumps. She did not spend a lot of time worrying about fashion but that was a little more than she could ta tke. Was a i remember her saying i never filaker but she did drop a note to the filmmaker and said you have created a creature of such goodness and light called harper lee that i forgive the socks. [laughter] we will get to the drawing eventually but if you bring those up on stage we would appreciate it. That was quick. What took so long. [laughter] okay lets bring them around. Can you have a timeout . Thank you so much. On. I want to ask this question, im sure many of the audience know. Before you start, like a writer im ready to rewrite iam. Think you had started to ask me a question and after spending this much time with an olderoav generation of alibi mouse Story Tellers alabama storytellers ive been tutored in that line of storytelling but you had asked me how it was that some ofhat i the tapes of Catherine Tucker windham telling those marvelous. Stories. Blyon not terribly long after i had moved next door and was settling into this unfamiliar sounds of the house and getting spooked at times there was some taxidermy on the wall that didnt match myked at t decorum on the walls. Consider i considered hanging towels over the deer head and a couple otherecided things because i wasnt sure what they were. The marble eyes were following me but i decided that would be creepier than just having theely marble eyes following me. I learned to live with my roommate. It was lonely sometimes. I have lupus which is an autoimmune disorder that canan lead leave you quite tired. I spent a fair amount of time in chicago and while there and it could be lonely. I missed having a a voice in the room. There had been damaged to then antenna so there wasnt Much Television there. I couldnt get npr which i willld fe as admit as a good chicago girl, i was used to my npr. That reception would fade and ip me just want to hear some people who have made that drive. I wanted a f riendly voice in the