To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Summary

Zero to Well-Read: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Podcast: Zero to Well-Read
Hosts: Jeff O’Neal & Rebecca Schinsky
Episode Date: October 28, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode of Zero to Well-Read is a deep-dive into To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, a perennial favorite and one of the most discussed (and contested) novels in American literature. Hosts Jeff O’Neal and Rebecca Schinsky explore the book’s plot, cultural resonance, literary qualities, enduring controversy, and its place in the canon. Their lively, irreverent tone blends book club camaraderie with English class depth, making it accessible to those revisiting the novel or coming to it for the first time as an adult.

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Main Themes & Purpose

• Revisiting a Literary Staple: Many readers “know” To Kill a Mockingbird from school, but the hosts examine how rereading as adults uncovers overlooked nuance, complexity, and datedness alongside enduring strengths.
• Cultural & Political Context: Discussion of how the novel intersected with civil rights discourse at publication, and how the conversation around race, class, and school curricula has evolved.
• Why It Lingers: Investigation into why the book still ranks as America's favorite (and why that’s shifting), what makes it “readable” and influential, and why it remains a battleground for book bans.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

What Do People Remember—and Misremember—About the Book?

• Commonly remembered:
  • A white lawyer (Atticus Finch) defending an innocent Black man (Tom Robinson) in the Jim Crow South.
  • Narrated by his young daughter Scout, with Boo Radley as the neighborhood mystery.
  • The book is “about racism.”
• Overlooked elements:
  • Large swathes are coming-of-age, episodic childhood misadventures, and detailed community observation.
  • Boo Radley’s role is subtler and less central than pop culture memory suggests.

Quote – On the book’s misremembered focus:
"The courtroom stuff and the trial of Tom Robinson I thought took up a much bigger chunk of the book than it actually does." —Rebecca [41:05]

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The Book’s Enduring Popularity and Affection

• For generations, To Kill a Mockingbird has topped “favorite novel” polls, especially among older readers, often symbolizing white liberal virtue and moral awakening.
• The hosts now question if it would win such polls among younger readers or in 2025, as the discourse and school curricula diversify.

Quote:
"The desire to be associated with what this book symbolizes outweighs or has surpassed the book itself in people's memory and association with it." —Rebecca [11:07]

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What’s It Really About? Plot & Literary Qualities

Plot Structure

• Set in Depression-era Maycomb, Alabama, mostly through Scout Finch’s child’s-eye view.
• Multiple threads: kids’ fascination with Boo Radley, everyday family and social life, Scout's struggles with southern femininity and education, and the central trial of Tom Robinson beginning midway through the novel.
• The true climax is not the trial, but the attack on Scout and Jem and their rescue by Boo Radley.

Style & Voice

• Adult Scout’s narration is “funny and sharp,” laced with warmth, sarcasm, and retrospection.
• Lee’s prose is praised for plainness that “masks quite a bit of skill.”
• Vivid detail evokes community, class, and the Southern setting.

Quote – On Lee’s style:
"Lee is an underrated writer of sentences. Simplicity and plainness mask quite a bit of skill, like a really wonderful writer…one of my favorite opening sentences." —Jeff [16:31]

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Cultural & Historical Context

Then vs. Now

• Written for a predominantly white audience, aiming to draw them into deeper consideration of race and justice.
• Seen as radical in its day for dignifying Black people and depicting white allyship, but now sits awkwardly as “the” anti-racist novel taught in schools.
• Atticus as a figure of “advanced general integrity,” but not a 2025 anti-racist.

The South & Social Order

• The book captures the small-town South through both affectionate and satirical portraits.
• Issues of class, gender, and social conformity are present but less central than race.
• Gender themes, especially Scout’s resistance to “becoming a lady,” are more pronounced and radical upon rereading.

Quote:
"I think the thing that they're really learning from Atticus is the value of pushing against conventionality. And there's a lot about gender on the page that I was surprised to run into." —Rebecca [25:50]

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Book Banning & Classroom Relevance

• To Kill a Mockingbird is frequently banned, objected to for racist language and content from both conservative and progressive angles.
• Lee and her publisher have refused to produce bowdlerized versions.
• The hosts discuss whether it’s still the best book to teach anti-racism and suggest newer works like The Hate U Give may now do the job better.

Quote:
"Younger readers, younger readers than us...probably aren't going to have the same experience...why are we teaching this as the anti racist novel when there are much more contemporary things?" —Rebecca [34:15]

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The Legacy of Harper Lee and the Novel

• Harper Lee’s biography as a near one-hit wonder, childhood friend to Truman Capote (the model for Dill).
• Persistent myth that Capote ghostwrote the novel, dispelled by scholarship and correspondence.
• The adaptation starring Gregory Peck remains definitive; the 1962 film came fast and still shapes public consciousness.

Quote:
"Most books are collaborative efforts. And there's extensive documentation about Lee reworking the manuscript with her editor…" —Jeff [57:15]

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Key Literary & Social Questions

Big Moral Questions Raised

• What do I owe my neighbor?
• What is the nature of good and evil?
• How do I know what I know? How does subjectivity shape our views?

Empathy & Perspective

• The novel’s most-cited quote is about understanding others’ perspectives, though the hosts question how radical that sentiment actually is.

Notable passage:
"You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view...until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it." —Jeff reading the top Goodreads quote [58:36]

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Modern Critique & Re-evaluation

Strengths Reappraised

• The prose is sharper and more satirical than many recall.
• Atticus Finch, while still an inspiring figure, is now more complicated and “weird” than formerly recognized.
• The book is “better than remembered” and more complex than divisive online takes suggest.

Quote:
"Atticus Finch really does rule. I think it's more complicated than, he's just awesome. There's more complexity when you start looking at the material conditions..." —Jeff [62:52]

Limitations & Blind Spots

• Popular memory overstates the “plotty” elements; much of the novel is episodic or atmospheric.
• The novel’s take on class is “naive,” and its approach to gender and race—though once radical—is often now read as dated or incomplete.
• The white-savior trope is dominant; Black characters’ perspectives, especially Calpurnia’s, are glimpsed but not inhabited.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (with Timestamps)

• "Scout's voice is fun to be with and she's funny and sharp... narrated about the summer that she was... 8 years old. But it's clearly Scout as an adult telling this story." —Rebecca [12:39]
• "It really centers around Boo Radley, frankly, is this is the organizing principle. And then Tom Robinson becomes important part..." —Jeff [13:29]
• "There's not a lot of subtlety happening to Kill the Mockingbird." —Rebecca [16:12]
• "These are the really the gothic element, this house down the street that the Radley family has lived in. It's been basically shut up for decades..." —Rebecca [22:37]

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Segment Timeline / Timestamps

• 00:29–02:07 – Why To Kill a Mockingbird is “the” shelf staple; its pervasive place in memory and book polls.
• 07:15–08:15 – What people actually remember (and misremember) about the plot.
• 12:25–13:29 – The book’s charm, readability, and unique character voices.
• 16:12–17:09 – Lee’s skillful writing and opening sentence breakdown.
• 20:26–21:08 – The “weirdness” of the southern town and its characters.
• 25:50–26:03 – Unpacking gender roles, Scout as tomboy, and southern femininity.
• 34:15–34:45 – Discussion of classroom bans, curriculum shifts, and why it may no longer be the best “anti-racist” novel to teach.
• 36:27–40:10 – Harper Lee’s biography and the myth of Capote’s authorship.
• 41:05–41:33 – Personal first readings and misremembered plot elements.
• 51:30–53:08 – Big philosophical questions raised: justice, morality, empathy.
• 62:52–64:11 – Reconsidering Atticus Finch as more than a moral paragon and the shadow he casts over the book’s legacy.
• 68:10–68:28 – The book’s lesser engagement with class complexity.

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Well-Read Score Breakdown

• Historical Importance: 8/10
  • Monumental cultural impact; perhaps not a literary innovator, but a phenomenon in sales, adaptation, and cultural memory.
• Readability: 10/10
  • Accessible, flowing, witty prose; eminently approachable for all ages.
• Current Relevance of Central Questions: 6/10
  • Still relevant questions (race, justice, empathy), but the framing feels dated.
• Book Nerd Read Credit: 1–7/10 (contextual)
  • Assigned reading: low; voluntary adult reread: high.
• Oh Damn Factor: 4/10
  • Surprisingly complex on reread; great set pieces (“Your father’s passing”), but not consistently astonishing.

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Takeaway “Hot Takes”

• To Kill a Mockingbird is better, funnier, and more layered than its reputation.
• Its role as “the” anti-racist/coming of age novel is overdue for reevaluation.
• Harper Lee’s sentences shimmer with subtlety, warmth, and satirical bite.
• The book is as ripe for critique (white saviorism, gender/class limits) as it is for admiration.

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Cocktail Party Crib Sheet

• Lee wanted to be the “Jane Austen of the South”—her book is as much about manners and morals as it is about race.
• The book’s massive popularity (40 million+ copies) puts it far above most American literary works.
• Persistent rumors that Capote wrote it are false; documentary evidence has debunked this.
• The story was adapted to film almost immediately (1962), with Gregory Peck’s Atticus defining the role in the public eye.
• Its most famous quote: “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view...” often shared out of context.

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Should You Read or Reread To Kill a Mockingbird?

Yes, if:

• You want to revisit or finally “get” what the discourse is about.
• You’re curious how time and changing social context affect your response.
• You want to appreciate excellent prose and distinctive character voices.

Maybe not, if:

• Frequent use of racist language is too uncomfortable to bear (even if contextually accurate).
• You struggle to “suspend judgment” on now-dated or problematic social attitudes.
• You’re looking for contemporary anti-racist literature—there are better modern options (The Hate U Give, Just Mercy, etc.).

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Related Recommendations

• For more contemporary takes on race and justice:

  • The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
  • Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson

• For a Black child’s perspective:

  • The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
  • Go Tell It On the Mountain by James Baldwin

• On the phenomenon of the book:

  • Scout, Atticus, and Boo by Mary McDonough Murphy

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Final Thoughts

Both Jeff and Rebecca agree: going back to To Kill a Mockingbird as an adult yields a richer, more complicated experience than school readings (or endless takes) suggest. The book’s complexity and resonance remain—if now as much a monument to former ideals and limitations as to progressive change.

Quote – On the reread:
"Better than I remember. And certainly more complicated and accomplished than Take Take in the take industry and read that." —Jeff [75:51]

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Memorable, Funny Moments

• Extended riffing on which Muppet should play Boo Radley or Atticus Finch, and whether a “Muppet adaptation” could even work [54:15–55:18].
• Ongoing tally of the book’s wildly varied editions and collectible values (including a $3.79 paperback vs. a $250 Spanish CD) [04:24–06:10].

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For more book guides, recommendations, and literary conversation, visit bookriot.com or email [e-mail].

Transcript

[A]

Foreign welcome to Zero to well, read a podcast about everything you need to know about the books you wish you'd read. I'm Jeff o'. Neill.

[B]

And I'm Rebecca Schinsky. Today we're exploring one of the most beloved and most challenged books in American history, Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. Before we jump in, though, if you're enjoying the show so far, we would sure appreciate it if you'd rate or review it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening. And it certainly doesn't hurt if you share it with a bookish friend or.

[A]

Five, because the chances are they've read this book. Of all the books that we're going to talk about, Rebecca, this is the one that most of the people you might want to recommend the show to has read, because To Kill a Mockingbird, it's a, it's a shelf staple of the kinds of people that kept their books from high school that went on to become other kinds of book nerds. We're going to get into a lot of it here. You and I were just saying before we start recording it, it's been a minute since we've, it has been, and I feel like culturally it's been a minute since anyone's considered To Kill a Mockingbird. Like, rather than just being a chestnut that sort of everyone thinks they knows, they know what To Kill a Mockingbird is. It is and isn't that book, Rebecca. I guess to preview some of my takes here.

[B]

Yeah, I agree. There was a lot that I remembered and a whole lot that was different than what I remembered. The last time I read it was, I think, in college 25 years ago. I definitely read it in seventh grade. So my young memories and the things that I thought loomed large in the book. I was actually surprised by all of the other stuff that's happening. The book was published in 1960, and I found a lot of reconsideration of it from 2010 when it was turning 50. But there hasn't really been a cultural discussion about this book in the last 15 years. And given that the book is so much about race and about how we talk about race and how white people can understand race and try to be good allies to black people, especially black people in the American South. We haven't had a conversation about it with how much our culture has changed that discussion in the last 15 years, especially the last five or 10.

[A]

And we're talking about it now, Abe, because it is, you know, routinely number one on polls of Americans. Favorite book like it just is to the point that we kind of find that boring. Like, this was a joke we used to do. We used to do a lot more polls on the site and we'd have to try to word things so that To Kill a Mockingbird wasn't like the number one result we do.

[B]

It's the best novel you've ever read that isn't To Kill a Mockingbird.

[A]

Right. And we're so it. It's worth talking about its own right. No question. But there is a new Harper Lee book coming out. The Land of Sweet Forever is coming out this month from HarperCollins, which is a collection of eight short stories that Harper Lee wrote before this. We're going to get into Harper Lee's life and the creation of To Kill a Mockingbird. But like with Ghost at a Watchman, there's a cycle, a super cycle of Harper Lee. And you know, the book is dated. I'm not going to say it's not. But it's also not irrelevant. It's not at all. And there's some things I found as an older person to be quite moving and interesting. Atticus Fitch is still my king, but for different reasons. And I think sort of like, I mean, of course, stand up for the rights of others, but there's some stuff about his demeanor and philosophy are weirdly radical. And he's a weirdo. Atticus Finch is a weirdo. Rebecca.

[B]

Atticus Finch is a weirdo. And that Atticus Finch was played by Gregory Peck, who is like conventionally handsome stand up dude. And won an Oscar for this performance, I think really hid the weirdness and the radicalness of this character in the popular adaptation of it. I was pleasantly surprised, especially by his character in revisiting the book for the first time. Truly as an adult.

[A]

If by some chance you do not have a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird, let me tell you what on Thriftbooks because they have sponsored this first season of zero to well read. And I have had the same paperback since. I think I read. I first read this book when I was 12. I picked it up off the library shelf. I think the copy I have I bought in high school. I will say for those of you looking to recreate my bookshelf for weird reasons, that particular mass market paperback I could not find on There are.

[B]

Was it the little one that had like the lilac.

[A]

Yes, yes.

[B]

Yeah, I remember that one.

[A]

There are, I should say. Would you like to guess how many editions there are for the first entry of to kill a mockingbird?

[B]

27.

[A]

See all 257 editions.

[B]

By an order of magnitude, but okay.

[A]

And there are collectibles. The cheapest one you can get is $3.79, which is a. This looks like this is the 19th January 1960 paperback.

[B]

Oh, wow.

[A]

So I think it's the paperback that came out right after that. 1960 can't be right because it wasn't published till 1961. But this is the paperback that came out right after it won the Pulitzer Prize. It's got a big sticker. It's actually a really cool tight. It's a really cool font. It reminds me of. And I wonder if the person who did the fake cover design for the boat rocker and Field of Dreams was actually looking at this To Kill a Mockingbird because it's like black with like bright letters. Maybe there's a whole podcast in it there. But you know, all the way you can get all the different kinds. Oh, here it is. I'm sorry. Here's the lilac one. I'm seeing it right now.

[B]

I guess I must good nostalgia there.

[A]

Yeah. So that ranges from 569. If you want a splurge, you can get a very good copy for $6 in $0.79. But you can also get, you know, the new hardback. There's been hardback editions out all the time ever since it came out. You can get To Kill a Mockingbird in Spanish CD if you want that. Would you like to guess how much that is?

[B]

Ooh. I mean it's either weirdly low or weirdly high.

[A]

Yeah, you're. You're on the right track here. $78, $257.

[B]

How many CDs does it say?

[A]

It doesn't. It doesn't say there is a 1960 bad copy like in bad condition. This is what we call acceptable is actually pretty bad in the book collecting world. That is $70. You can get the book club edition. This was selected for book of the Month club. And that's, you know, one of the things that catapulted into space. There's a whole history of the Book of the Month club in the mid century catapulting things into space. But a good version of that is $60. So there's some colle ones there. Tons of options, every language, every format you can possibly want.

[B]

I don't have my high school edition of To Kill a Mockingbird so I did get a nice used copyright books for reading on this episode.

[A]

Well, thanks for them to sponsoring the show. Go check out thriftbooks.com to find To Kill a Mockingbird and 19 million other books, movies and games there. Okay, Rebecca, do people know what like let's do this before you do the actual synopsis. What do people who read the To Kill a Mockingbird or and or have only heard of To Kill a Mockingbird think to Killing Mockingbird is about? What do they think the story of To Kill a Mockingbird?

[B]

That is a great question. I think people think or know that To Kill a Mockingbird is set in the south, that it's about a young girl and her father who's trying to instill moral lessons in her and that it deals with racism in some way. If you know a little bit more than that, you probably know that the father is a lawyer and he's defending a black man who was falsely accused of raping a white woman. And maybe you know some stuff about Boo Radley, who is one of the neighbors. And the kids have this game of leaving items and taking items that Boo Radley leaves for them in the knot of a tree outside the Radley's house. Boo Radley looms like much larger in my memory of this book and in the conversation of it than what I took away from this reading. But I think, you know, some Boo Radley stuff, some it's set in the south, it's about racism stuff is the those are the big points. Those are the really vague Cliffs Notes about To Kill a Mocky.

[A]

I was also thinking, well, let me save this, but I'll I'll let this question hang.

[C]

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[A]

When people say it's their favorite book, what. What do they like about it? Why? Why, Rebecca? Why? I mean, I'm not. It's not rhetorical. Like it's a.

[B]

It's a genuine question.

[A]

It's a genuine question.

[B]

I think first of all that if we conducted those surveys today, which we did in the on book riot 14 years ago, I do not think that this would still be people's common answer. I think we would get other answers from.

[A]

You don't think it would win?

[B]

No, I don't think it would. I think we would get a. Yeah, we'd get. We have a new generation of readers that don't have affection for this and we can get into the reasons that that may have shifted that the, the discourse around To Kill a Mockingbird and how I think that's overshadowed a lot of the more contemporary readings of it. So I think that would. The people who do answer it and like this was named the Great American Read in a big PBS survey a few years ago. But you have to consider the demographics people that are participating in PBS surveys, older people like I think elder millennials up through the generations above us, remember reading this and having affection for it, but also remember admiration for Atticus Finch and also like the affinity of being associated with a book that they have understood as sort of one of the early markers of liberal, like contemporary liberal politics. Of you are on board with the messaging of To Kill a Mockingbird. There's moral instruction directly on the page here that left leaning folks largely agree with. And I think that's what it is, that maybe the, the desire to be associated with what this book symbolizes outweighs or has surpassed the book itself in people's memory and association with it.

[A]

Can I add this? And this I think sometimes we underrate is it's a good ending. It's a very interesting, satisfying ending. And I think that's something people remember when they read a book in high school especially. We read more for plot in high school. You just do.

[B]

And it's, it's charming and it's easy to read. Scout's voice is fun to be with and she's funny and sharp like it's narrated about the summer that she was. Mostly about the summer that she was 8 years old. But it's clearly Scout as an adult is telling this story. We get a lot of, you know, adult infused humor and critique of like the education system. And it's a little sarcastic and biting in a way that especially girls weren't allowed to be in the south at the time. So there is something that felt, that must have felt radical about it. Scout is also a tomboy. I think a lot of girls had never encountered a tomboy on the page when this book came out, you know, more than 60 years ago. There are some things that would have made it a really unique reading experience to readers in the 60s and 70s and 80s especially.

[A]

Yeah, we're getting into the synopsis a little bit. I think the other thing that surprised me, well, one of the many things that surprised me on this read is the first 70, 80 ish pages is very much Scout being a kid right in sort of who the characters are, what the life is like, what Maycomb, Alabama is like, which is a thinly veiled version of our hometown of Monroeville, Alabama. And it has a bit of a. It's a Buildings, Vermont. It's a. It's a novel of education sometimes called the Coming of age story. And this is a little bit different where there's not really a plot. That's another thing that surprised me about this. There's. What is the plot of this exactly? It's just. It really centers around Boo Radley, frankly, is this is the organizing principle. And then Tom Robinson becomes important part because weirdly, Tom Robinson, who is the black man accused of raping a white woman and who is, we are told, and I think we believe, unfairly convicted of the crime that leads to someone doing something later. And, Nick, we're going to talk about spoilers here, but I had forgotten that the climax of the book is not your father's passing. It is. It is the, you know, Scout and her brother Jem being attacked in the woods and then Boo Radley essentially coming to save them. That's. That's as well in our. In our cultural consciousness. Gregory Peck in the. In the courtroom. That's the climax of this book, but it's not. It's not the climax of this book.

[B]

Yeah, I was surprised when the courtroom stuff ended and they go home after everyone's. Everyone's processing it. And it's. It's kind of like sometimes you see a movie that you think had four endings and there are several possible endings to this. But I was like, oh, yeah, I completely forgot that all of this happens. That the. The father of the young woman who was accused, who accused Tom Robinson of raping her, and the father is mad at Atticus for defending Tom Robinson. He comes after the family, he attacks the kids, and that Boo Radley kills him. And then Atticus, who doesn't want to lie about anything, agrees to cover that up because Boo Radley is such a private person that they kind of wrestle Atticus into agreeing that to make this public and to drag Boo Radley back out into the public sphere when he clearly doesn't want to be would be a mistake. But that was such a surprise to me.

[A]

Yeah. And this is one of the great. The title of the book is in the book and talked about and explained in the book like, this is another thing I think people. It gets taught in high school and people remember it is because the metaphor is quite beautiful and leaves no doubt of what the interpretation is.

[B]

There's not a lot of subtlety happening to Kill the Mockingbird.

[A]

Well, yeah, I think. I think in the big ways there isn't, but I think there's some subtlety in here, but it's certainly not that. That's certainly not the place. It is. If I might linger. Can I do a close read for you? Can we do a little close reading? Would you mind?

[B]

Let's do it.

[A]

So one of the things I have for hot takes or takeaways, I can't remember something down the road is that Lee is an underrated writer of sentences. And there's a simplicity and a plainness here that mass. Quite a bit of skill, like a really wonderful writer. And it reminds me again, the shame. The shame is not that. That's not fair. People can do what they want with their lives as long as they're not hurting other people. And she didn't owe us any more books. But in reading about her story and reminding herself her biography, it's like, boy, I would have liked to get her New York novel. Or boy, I would have liked to get her going back to Monroeville as in the famous adult and like thinly veiled. Like I would like any of that stuff.

[B]

Yeah, it is too bad that we never heard from her.

[A]

Really is. It really is too bad. So. And this also connects to what I was just saying about how Boo Radley is the spectral center, the haint at the center of this book. So here's the first line of To Kill a Mockingbird. When he was nearly 13, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow. So a couple things just to notice here. First of all, that breaking of the elbow hangs for 240 pages, right? Because we don't know until what the seventh to last page, 15th to last page.

[B]

I had forgotten by the time we got to the end that that's how the book.

[A]

Well, that's the other thing I was going to say is like it's not. It doesn't sort of repeat as a mist. Like you think it's going to be a mystery. We're going to tell us soon. But that's not the thing that hangs over the book. It's very unusual, but it sets an interesting tone. And here's, and here's, I think how this happens. First of all, I think this nearly 13 is an underrated element, right? You're 13 is a weird age. Also on the cusp of something that you're on the cusp of something. But also kind of Orwell's. The clock was striking. 13, like 13 is a weird number. It's unlucky. 13, like 13 is pregnant in a lot of ways. Got his arm badly broken. So we've got this colloquial got and the passive voice badly broken. So we don't know who did this. Also, I think there's something to your elbow broken. You get your elbow broken. That's a weird injury, right? Like that's. People break their arm, they break their leg, they can even break their back, Pollyanna style. But breaking your elbow is very strange to do. So it's underrated. How careful she can be. Also just a really wonderful writer of dialogue and scene and character. A satirist eye even as she has warmth and skepticism of the people around her. One of my favorite, one of My favorite opening sentences, because there's a little bit. There's. Doesn't seem like there's much there, but I think it's very, very careful and very adroit.

[B]

Yeah. And I thought just such a careful observer of people. And it really comes through in Scouts, the way that Scouts sees her world. Like, the feeling of being a child is really palpable in reading this, of the. Like, the excitement and the mischief, but also the confusion and that you don't really know how the world works, but you're trying to figure it all out. But with. With the mischief. There's a scene where the kids, Scout and her brother Jem and their friend Dill are hanging out at night and they're, like, spying on the neighbors, and they're looking at one of the neighbors. Mr. Avery sat on the porch every night until 9:00 and sneezed. Just like it goes on. He's. He's just out there. Like, this is what he does every night. And he sits out there and he sneezes and they watch him. And one night they see him pee off his deck. And it's like a huge revelation to them, but that they are so, like, intimately connected to all of their neighbors and woven into the fabric of this community that they're observing it, but they're seeing it through these really childlike eyes. And that Lee was able to tap into that writing as an adult. She was 34 when the book came out, is when I think one of the underrated pieces of magic that does make people feel affection and connection to this book.

[A]

Yeah. And this sort of hybrid consciousness Scout has of. Of Lee trying to capture the sense of what it was like to be eight, but also not holding in abeyance her own adult sensibility and reflection on life there. And the people. And it's not quite Winesburg, Ohio, by Sherwood Anderson's. Like, these are grotesque, but there is an element of this place is people are weird. Like, I think people are so weird in the particular strangest of this town in the south really comes through.

[B]

And I think that's the descriptions online of the book. Call it a Southern Gothic, which I don't think is correct, but it has gothic elements. And.

[A]

Yeah, you're right, it's not.

[B]

And the people. Yeah, the people are weird of it is there. So the book is, as you said, like, there's not one straight through plot line. But it is set the summer that Scout is 8 years old. Her name is Jean Louise Finch. Scout is her nickname. As we said, her father, Atticus respected lawyer in this fictional town of Maycomb, Alabama, and he's defending Tom Robinson, who's a black man accused of raping a white woman. She's telling this from her adult perspective and filling in the details of life in this small Southern town. It's set in the mid-1930s, so we're in the middle of the Depression. So Scout is telling us, like, as she goes to school and she's observing the other kids, we're seeing what poverty looks like in this town. We're seeing that some of the folks that Atticus represents can't pay him, but they leave food or they leave firewood, or there's kind of a bartering and mutual aid system that's in place. Members of the community are taking care of each other, and Scout is relaying to us the moral instruction that her father tries to instill in her and in Jem. And it's this ethos grounded in, like, the dignity of all people, which would have been really radical in the 1930s. Like, Atticus Finch would not read as a 2025 anti racist, but he was an anti racist in 1935.

[A]

Like, a profound humanism is, I think, the best way, sort of we say AGI, advanced General Intelligence for computers. This is advanced general integrity that Attica Finch is deploying across the. The board.

[B]

Yeah. And before we find out about any of the stuff going on with Tom Robinson, we spend a large chunk of the book just in the summer. Dill is the friend who comes in from out of town. He's only there in the summers. And Dill, Boo, Dill, Scout and Jem are obsessed with this house. Like, this is the really the gothic element, this house down the street that the Radley family has lived in. It's been basically shut up for decades. There are all of these rumors about the family. And one of the sons, who's now an adult, whose nickname is Boo, never comes out. Like, the rumor is that he stabbed his mother. Some crazy thing has gone down in their house. No one ever sees him. And it's their mission, these little kids, to try to get a. Get a glimpse of him. They're, like, peeking through the windows, they're dropping notes on fishing line, trying to get in. They're, like, creeping through the garden, slapping.

[A]

The door and running away and, you know, hearing each other.

[B]

And on their walk to school one day, they notice that something is left in the knot of this. This. This old tree. And they eventually figure out that he is leaving gifts.

[A]

It's so charming that that little mystery element to that is so charming. I'd forgotten how fun. Like, because there's a sort of dramatic irony, don't you think, where I think the reader is supposed to get what's happening before the kids do. But maybe that's just, you know, having.

[B]

Read it before, that whole plot line kind of reminds me of the old man next door in Home Alone.

[A]

I was having the same. Well, I was gonna ask you this. I had that same thought, but did you have a house in your neighborhood that you're like, everyone's like, what the hell's going on with that? Doesn't it?

[B]

Oh yeah, I think everybody does.

[A]

What is the deal with that house? Or there's some weird rumor. I don't know if kids still have this because they have the Internet to do this kind of thing, but like there was definitely a house where we had heard Slash made up weird rumors about what was going on there. Like Jem says, like, oh, he could have died and his dad stuffed him up in the chimney. And he says that out loud and just like, why? What are you talking. That's the. I mean, and it's not that the Jem. It's interesting. One thing I didn't think about, I didn't realize when I was a younger person that part of this is Scout watching Jem grow up and realizing that Jem is different than she is and has a different way of interacting with the world. But he's enough older where she has multiple sort of moral compasses to orient herself based on how old they are and how related they are to the community. Because Atticus is obviously the load store. But Jem's emergent sensibility is important to her too, as is their maid slash housekeeper. Capernia's worldview and ethics and morality in the black church that she's. And then there's like the, you know, the people of town. There's always the people of town sensibility that we have to get, which is usually superficial and close minded and, you know, just mannered without having real substance to it. But that was something that struck me too is how much she is really navigating the value systems and sort of picking some from all of it and trying to decide what to what to take onto our own. Because like, I think the. I think a common reading is like, you're just supposed to be Atticus, but I think there's actually something else emergent. Like I think the idea is like be going beyond Atticus is something that Scout and Jem want to do even if they can't articulate it that way.

[B]

Yeah, I think the thing that they're really learning from Atticus is the value of pushing against conventionality. And there's a lot about gender on the page that I was surprised to run into.

[A]

It doesn't get played very often in our, in our cultural, our memory of it.

[B]

Yeah, there's really like direct definitions of what it is to be a gentleman or at least what Atticus is understanding of to be a gentleman is. And it's different than what a lot of the men in town are doing. You know, he's not showing up at the courthouse with his gun, he's trying to solve things with words. Jem is right on that cusp of puberty and is trying to figure out how to be a man and like to separate himself from his kid sister. And Scout is surrounded by these older women, her aunt who comes to stay with them, the women from the town who are telling her that she needs to grow up and be a lady. And she's looking at them like, if this is what it is to be a woman, I don't want, I don't want any part of that. I don't want to be that kind of lady. I want to go to Scott school and actually learn things. You know, there's all of this stuff is made where she goes to school and the teacher is mad that she knows how to read already because it's going to interrupt the teacher's plans for instruction. And the teacher tells her to stop learning at home. And she's so from her very first interactions with like public education and these sort of public institutions is learning that the way they do things at home is different than what public convention tells you. And sort of this value of making your own decisions about how to show up in the world is. I think that's the big thing that Atticus is trying to instill in them. And we see Jim and Scout both figuring that out for themselves.

[A]

And Atticus is unafraid, he's afraid, but he is willing to hazard his own life and, and by extension his kids lives. And there's a couple of moments where he realized he's gotten out over his skis into territory where it's genuinely dangerous. But what you do not see him do is back away. And that's something that, that Scout really much takes to heart. And as you say here, like one of the things that's so hard to remember now is what was going on in America at the time. Like these are the were pre assassination civil rights movement in 1960, 61. I can only imagine what it felt like if these were issues that you cared about and you were part of this movement, this novel comes out. You know, we're getting protest marches. Things are changing. You know, Kennedy's getting ready to be elected. Like, I think that's one of the things I wish I could. I can know my history, but you can never know what it felt like to be there. And this is one moment I was thinking about again. Like, it must have felt amazing. I mean, it must have felt amazing. It must have felt amazing. Yeah.

[B]

There's this tension in the world in the 1960s that I think is a flavor of tension we're familiar with today right now, that there is a. An occasionally violent conversation about rights and freedom and what it means to be free and who gets rights and what those rights are, and that. That Lee publishes this story into that environment, but set in the past and. And her readership is going to be predominantly white. This is a book written to white people. Like, I. I believe she is trying to talk to white people about how to understand their role and participation in systems and institutions that are racist. And she's doing it through this story and these very relatable characters rather than, you know, like a big nonfiction instructive text. But I think it's intended to be both welcoming and challenging. The writing is so charming. The characters are relatable. There's clear affection for the small town. Like, she's writing this while she lives in New York, but there's no east coast coast eliteness about this. There's real love and care. And, you know, she does. There's not a lot of interviews with Harper Lee. There's not a lot of commentary about what was going on. So we can only guess that what she was trying. That. That that's intentional, that what she's trying to do in setting the book, where and when she sets it and writing it the way that she does is draw more people into this conversation. Like, yeah, yeah, it feels dated because we understood race differently.

[A]

Well, it's a hundred years ago.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

In 1960. Right.

[B]

In the 30s.

[A]

Like, the setting is 100 years ago.

[B]

Right. And one thing that I've said for a long time on the Book Riot podcast, when a book hasn't aged well, is that this is a good thing. It is a good thing that society moves beyond the point where a certain thing was radical, so it doesn't have radical ideas in it for today, but these were radical for 1935, and we're still pushing people in 1930. 60.

[A]

Yeah. The she hasn't said much about it. HARPER LEE but one, one bit I did find is she said she wanted to be the Jane Austen of the South. And I was thinking about that, and I know Pride and Prejudice being one of your favorite books, you'll really resonate with this is, you know, how Austin captured the manners and morals of the day. But on top of it, underneath it, around it, was a more than wry critique of how those things happened. Much more of a critical consciousness in this book than in something like Pride and Prejudice. But there's this element of especially, you know, women's lives are important, and it's worth capturing what's going on here to this degree. HARPER it's worth capturing what's going on in this small town, Macon, which isn't even like the third biggest town in the county or something. Like, she goes out of the way to say it's been about the same size forever. Not a lot happens, but there's, there's something important to be captured here, and it is this side of drama and the sort of meaning and as likely to produce a hero and a villain, an interest as anywhere else. So I think that is a piece that, when people read in high school and they don't touch it for 30 years, like, like I have. And this is one thing that says thinking of it as a slice of life for this place and this time is. It's historical. It was historical fiction in 1961.

[B]

It's a great point.

[A]

So that's important to remember, too. And I think it makes it. You can read it with a different sensibility than this is a book about American race relations. Like, reading it through that lens is not, it's not as current. It doesn't feel alive in that way, though. Less, a lot more alive than maybe it should in some places. But if you look at the larger project, I think it can feel alive, like much historical fiction can feel alive there, too. We want to talk about book banning.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, this has been one of the most frequently banned and challenged novels basically, since it came out, but especially in the last 20 years. And what makes it relatively unique among frequently challenged things is that the criticism comes from all the sides. There are white parents who don't want their kids reading this because it makes them feel bad about themselves. There are parents that don't want their kids except exposed to the idea of rape that's in the book. And there are, like, some relatively descriptive conversations about it in the courtroom scene. And the book does use the N word, which is historically accurate. For the 1930s where the book is set. And there are folks who object to the use of that in the classroom on all sides of the conversation. You know, it does read very loaded today and the characters have conversations about whether or not this is an okay word to use. But Atticus's reasoning that they shouldn't use it doesn't stand up to 2025 readings like he's like, that's a common thing to say. It's not about the fundamental dignity of black people or the impact that it would have on who you're saying it to. It's about what it says about the person saying it. So there is a real, a real shift. And again like society has grown and changed in the way that that's come, that we've, that we talk about it, that we understand that. But it has been challenged from all sides. Harper Lee and her publishers rejected repeated and sustained requests for a version of the book without the offensive language. There has never been one. And you know, maybe despite or because of that halo of things, you know, it, it won the Pulitzer in 1961. It's consistently been voted American Reader's favorite book of all time, been featured all over the place. And I think we will continue to talk about it. Younger readers, younger readers than us. I would, I would guess Gen Z readers and like, you know, your kids and Gen Alpha probably aren't going to have the same experience.

[A]

They're going to read it.

[B]

Right. And honestly, like this is one of the big conversations about To Kill a Mockingbird now is like why are we teaching this as the anti racist novel when there are much more contemporary things? There's, you could grab Angie Thomas's the Hate U Give and have a much more current conversation. And that's just one example. And I think that's a great question. Like there are things to recommend about this book.

[A]

I think it's more of an open question than yes or no or this or that.

[B]

School curricula is limited. Like you can only put so many books on it. And I, I don't think that this is the best option for illustrating the kinds of points or inviting students to do the kinds of thinking that we them to that, that originally you wanted them to do is To Kill a Mockingbird. There are other contemporary novels that can do it. But I coming away from this reading, I also didn't. My elbows don't feel as sharp about like, well why are we still talking about Harper Lee? Which there's the book and then there's the discourse about the book. And in a lot of ways, the discourse has exceeded the book itself as.

[A]

A paragon of moral instruction, I think, especially around race, gender, class especially. We can talk about that a bit more. You probably should just, like, read regular sociology, honestly, but as a literary document, as historical document, as a way into talking about American historical concerns, I think there's quite a bit to recommend it. You can. I think you can kill multiple mockingbirds with one novel here in terms of thinking about American history, literary history, what language and writing could do in storytelling. So maybe some of the less political stuff, but you can do still the art and history stuff quite well. And maybe reframing that way could be useful. I'm not going to. I'm not going to take up a banner for or against the book in any given context, but I think either a complete rejection or a wholesale assumption of it as a paragon for something. Neither of those I'm particularly interested in.

[B]

Advocating for when I think, you know, a lot of the conversations about this book that happen online are occurring between people who haven't read the book in 20 years or longer, which is usually.

[A]

What happens when people are arguing about books like this is that, you know, that's happened. Let's talk about Harper.

[B]

Yes, Harper. Lisa. She's born in 1926 in Monroeville, Alabama, which is a small town, a lot like Maycomb. She was, As I said, 34 when the book came out. And she was close childhood friends with Truman Capote, who, it was later rumored, wrote the book. And then that was.

[A]

And who is Dill, by the way? The character Dill is Truman Capote, who kind of steals every scene Dill is in.

[B]

Dill's a good hag. Quite a character. She grew up, she left town. She attended a small college, and then she studied law at the University of Alabama before she moved to New York. She wrote stories all through college and into her adult life. And then in 1957, she and Capote are still friends, and he introduced her to a literary agent who got her the book deal for the manuscript that became To Kill a Mockingbird. It was pretty immediately a hit, as you said. It was featured by Book of the Month. It was condensed for an edition for Reader's Digest. Unlike a lot of the books we're going to talk about on this show, it has never been out of print. There's been an estimated 40 million copies sold worldwide. And that is rarefied air. It's 10 million more than the Great Gatsby and Gone with the Wind are estimated to have sold. And just 10 million less than Lolita and 100 Years of Solitude just as an example and to give you some grounding in the constellation. And as recently as 2008, it was the most read book in American high schools.

[A]

40 million cop because like, oh, so we're looking at 65 years. Right. So three quarters of a million copies per year. I wonder what the shape of that is. Maybe we'll have to get. Maybe I can ask my. A little birdie at Circana to help me. Like how many new copies of To Kill a Mockingbird selling in a week right now?

[B]

Oh, that's a great question. And it made me think about the fact that like Gatsby is consistently Scribner's number one selling book of the year. And this has sold more books over time than Gatsby has. So it's moved around inside Harper. But I wonder, whichever Harper imprint it happens to be with at the time, is it was that imprinted by Lippincott.

[A]

Which was bought by Harper, which is something else later. So I, I don't. Do you think Lippincott probably got a premium because they had this in their stable? Maybe that's like this is someone's exit plan. It's like probably this is a good.

[B]

Like Aqua Hire, basically cash cow to go here.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And then at the top of the show, we talked about how this was. Was voted the best novel in PBS's Great American Read, which was in 2018. Outlander was number two. The very first Harry Potter novel was number three. And Pride and Prejudice followed. So these are Americans favorite books, but not necessarily written by American authors. In that vote in 2018, the highest rated book by an author of color on that list was the Color Purple. And it came in at number 27. So that I think is perhaps an illustration of why we still need books like this. But 2018 is a very different cultural moment from 2020 and then from where we are now in 2025. I would be very surprised if the list was. It would still be heavily white. I'd be surprised if it was quite as white. And I would be surprised to see To Kill a Mockingbird still.

[A]

You think Pride and Prejudice wins now? If that's. If that's. I mean the Harry Potter stuff has all kinds of things going on with it. I think that would affect.

[B]

It's a great.

[A]

Outlander feels like like that was more of a.

[B]

That was of the moment.

[A]

But Pride and Prejudice, if anything, has only grown in esteem. There have been multiple. You know, there's going to be another.

[B]

Edit we're having a big Jane Austen 250th this year.

[A]

I'd be very curious.

[B]

Well, this is an under talked about thing that any year that you do a big vote like this depends on not just what people have had a long time affection for, but for what old books are currently in the zeitgeist because of something. So it could be Great Gatsby this year because it's been the 100th anniversary and people have been reminded.

[A]

Yeah, it's hard to think of a contemporary book that would even be in contention. So it'd probably be a reshuffling of the high school plus syllabus stuff. I mean, I think in a lot of college curriculum in some high school, their eyes were Watching God has replaced To Kill a Mockingbird and some others. And there are pros and cons to that. That also. Also is historical fiction. I mean, it wasn't at the time. Well, Hurston's a tricky one when it comes to what's fiction, what's folklore.

[B]

You can go back and listen to the episode about that.

[A]

Yeah, go listen to the episode. But I. Maybe we should. Maybe it's time for a book riot poll and we just, you know, take the guardrails off and see what happens at this point. Never has been. I have never been one to count in my first tier of favorite books. Rebecca and I, I read it early. Then I had to read it again. I remember liking it, but moving on pretty quickly to stuff I like better. What is your. How is it rank for you? And what was your own first reading?

[B]

Yeah, I never had a big attachment to it either. I first read it in seventh grade. The courtroom stuff and the trial of Tom Robinson I thought were took up a much bigger chunk of the book than it actually does. So when I started reading and I was like 150 pages in and we still weren't in court, I was like, what's happening? When is this. How did this your memory just become. My primary memory is that I had no idea what the hell a Shifa robe was.

[A]

And.

[B]

No one explained that to us in seventh grade in Kansas. So, like that was confusing. And then I reread it in college in the early 2000s when I was writing a paper that compared the courtroom scene and To Kill a Mockingbird to a big courtroom scene that is the climax of the movie Pleasantville. Yeah, but it's been. I haven't read it really in my adult life and I probably would never have gone back to reread it if not for this show.

[A]

Yeah, I don't think I would have. I don't think I would have either. I felt like I kind of knew the deal with To Kill a Mockingbird, which is sort of true, but mostly not true at the time. You know, as you say here I was doing this reading, like the original views were sort of mixed, largely positive. I think it's hard to realize then at what a lightning rod it was for political discourse where now it is. It does read as historical fiction. Whereas then I felt more current because the civil rights movement was underway and very much up for, well, debate.

[B]

Yeah. And the folks trying to ban books are still trying to ban To Kill a Mockingbird.

[A]

Trying to ban the Mockingbird.

[B]

Yeah. Time magazine said it was an account of an awakening to good and evil. The New York Times review called it a level headed plea for interracial understanding. But then the Atlantic was less glowing. They said it was sugar water served with humor. Pleasant, undemanding reading.

[A]

Yeah. And you know, one thing that's happened over the last 10 to. Well, I mean, going back to the 60s itself, but where to get instruction about race relations in America. And largely we have. We have moved more to like, let black people speak about black people.

[C]

Yes.

[A]

In this regard, I will say there's something to be said for watching, reading, thinking about a white person navigating racial politics at the same time, like there is a place for that now. Should it be at the center? Probably not. But if racism is going to be dismantled, you know, a lot of that work is going to be done by white people, the perpetrators of. And one thing that this book is putting on display is how that might happen. Right. Spoiler here. Tom Robinson is convicted. All 12 jurors convict him. But meaningfully, interestingly, there is one person. And we're given to believe that for the first time because Atticus is sort of Superman of Law and Order, but also because there's one person and it's presented in a specific way. And maybe, just maybe, Tom Robinson would be acquitted. It might be beyond a reasonable. It might be beyond. There might be a reasonable doubt. And so it's presented as like, how change can happen. And Addison, like, well, I want you to see. You have to see this way. Everyone's like, get the kids out of the courtroom. But it's meaningful that we are in the position of the kids watching this travesty play out and thinking about how the jury is selected, how this comes to pass. Where is that? Why didn't you call? Why do they get to do this? Like it's very, very bureaucratic and logistical about how he gets convicted. And I think that is important to see.

[B]

Yeah, I think that really matters. Like, to read it today, you really have to work to separate the book from the discourse. Like, I found the book to be charming and funny and poignant. Like, Scout's innocence is a little hard to relate to from here in 2025. But she's 8 year olds. Yeah, but 8 year olds, like, seem a little different today, a little more worldly. And so there are moments that, you know, strain credulity. But the discourse is more about, like, how society has or hasn't changed and what that means for this book's place in the classroom and in the canon. Like, is this the best way to introduce students in 2025 to a conversation about racism? Where's the line between drawing white people into the work of anti racism and the importance of white people talking to other white people about racism and then the over the line to elevating people into the position of white saviors?

[A]

This becoming the definitive book about American racism.

[B]

Right. And I can understand. And that critique, certainly that like Atticus Finch as the hero of American anti racism is problematic. Like, what does it mean that we give this book or that we have historically given this book by a white author Primacy, when many black authors have been addressing the same ideas and have been doing it more recently. But there are still generations of readers holding on to Kill a Mockingbird. Like, readers on the left have largely migrated away from this book in recent years. It puts them distance between themselves, but it's. The message is still potent. And like, as early or as recently as, like last week, there were right wingers on social media, like, losing their minds in viral tweets calling this book a blood libel on the South. So, like, it still rings a bell. I know. I was talking to a friend who's a historian and she was like, have you seen that? The right is like, they're still mad about to kill a baki word and they're mad about it.

[A]

I mean, they're still mad about the Civil War, so I guess it's not a surprise. They're still mad about the killer mockingbird. Interesting. 1861, when I won the poster prize, that's, you know, 100 years after the beginning of the civil war.

[B]

1961.

[A]

1961. Pardon me. You know something that struck me this time and I was gonna. And I have this to ask you something. I did not clock at all in high school and got me a little squirmy is Atticus. Atticus's cross examination of Mabel on the stand about whether or not she was raped in a post Me too environment. I was like, huh, this is pretty, you know, in the believe women sort of like it's a. It's. It's more fraught. It's more fraught than I, than I was expecting to walk into.

[B]

I didn't think about that because it's set up for us like so clearly going into that scene that Tom is innocent.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

That we're. I, I'm re. I was reading the scene for like, how is. What is Atticus gonna do here to get her to, you know, show that she is lying? And then of course, Tom stands up and one of. One of his arms is severely malformed.

[A]

And it's.

[B]

It's clear that he could not have like, done the beating and the physicality of the. The things that she says happened to her. So I didn't read it through the. I did not read it through the me too lens at all because it's not about doubting whether she was raped. He believed like something happened to her, someone did beat her. But it's. He. He's trying to get to the truth of who did this to you and that it was her father beating her because she came on to Tom Robinson. And he tries to like, he tries to get out of it because this is an uncomfortable position, but he's in an impossible position as a black man that a white woman is coming onto and he can't fight against her. He's not going to hit her. But if he runs, he looks. Looks guilty. And so he is there when Mabel's father sees that they're touching. But Mabel is the one who initiated it and her father attacks her.

[A]

Yeah. The book doesn't leave any doubt about what actually happened, but in the early stage of his cross examination he does some of the things that you. Why didn't you go to the doctor right away?

[C]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

Why, you know, why didn't you tell any. I mean these are things that are used to doubt like sexual assault crime. I mean, I'm. Don't tell anyone here, but there was a couple of questions like, ah, that reads a little bit differently now.

[B]

If it hadn't been set up for pages and pages in advance that like, that we should expect that she was lying about the whole thing and that it was a setup on Tom Robinson to get someone off the hook. Like you go into that scene knowing that Tom Robinson is a scapegoat. So who Are they covering for.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Yeah. Is the real question.

[A]

Yeah. And it again, it's. It's not. Not a major point. But I did have. It was an intrusive thought. I don't have our intuitive thought. I had an intrusive thought of like huh, this is. Yeah.

[B]

She would. I think she would write that differently today.

[A]

Might write that a little bit differently at this particular point, but that was just sort of a side piece. Okay. Is it for you, Rebecca? What. What if you. It maybe if you haven't read it at all or it's been 40 years. Who might be the kind of person that might just be especially you know, enjoy or get something picking up again.

[B]

I think it's worth picking it up or going back to it if you want to know what the big deal is. Read it through your adult eyes and form an opinion on a book that launched a thousand hot takes. Like my perspective on the discourse about this book is really different having just read it. And that's. That's valuable.

[A]

Yeah. And you have a couple of good maybe nots similar like if reading the N word a bunch is really uncomfortable, you're going to get a lot of that deployed in very casual way which can be more disturbing or differently disturbing than use as an epithet. And again, if you have a difficult time putting to the side momentarily sort of contemporary understandings, readings, interpretations and practices, you're going to be uncomfortable for a lot of the book. I would encourage people to do their best when encountering any book from some period that. That has ideas they do not exactly agree with all the time. Right. Then to sort of keep in suspension, suspension of disbelief. But maybe a suspension of judgment for a little while as well can be helpful. I do think if you like storytelling and writing, there's a lot to be gained from this. We'll get to the well read score in a minute. But like knowing having a real take on To Kill a Mockingbird is a rare thing like a genuine understanding and reaction that's authentic and not parroting something else or you know, a CliffsNotes version of online discourse can be very helpful. All right. Immortal question are asked. Here are the ones that we try to figure out. What is the good life? What do I owe my neighbor? How do I know what I know? Is this all there is? How to deal with the certainty of death? What else there might be? And what's the deal with good and evil? Rebecca, what are the. What are the ones you think here?

[B]

We're doing a lot of these. We're really doing. What do I owe my neighbor.

[A]

I think that's the primary one. One I would say. Right? For sure.

[B]

Yeah. And also, what's the deal with good and evil is on the page a little bit. How and why do people do bad things? You know when you see 12 white jurors line up behind the worst of them. Like, Mabel's father is a bad dude and the. The. And he's shameful. And like, the townspeople don't like him. It's not like he's a respected figure, but they will. That they will line up behind the very worst of them rather than convict. Rather than let. Rather than convict him, they will convict a black man who was innocent. Scout is doing a lot of learning here about how and why people do evil things.

[A]

Yeah. How do I know what I know? There's quite a bit about subjectivity here. Like, people hear what they want to hear and they see what they want to see. Like, Atticus talks to that about how. I mean, Jem and Scout are outraged. Right. Like, how can Tom have been convicted? Like, don't. How does everyone not see what I see? And there's a lot about subjectivity. There's a. There's a lot in this book about the kids realizing that what they thought about Boo Radley or this person who was kind of mean to them but is actually dying and she's going into drug withdrawal because you want to die, not a morphine addict. Like, I had completely forgotten that subplot. There's a bit of, like a Tom. There's a bit of a Mark Twain esque episodic element where you kind of forget some of these smaller pieces that go into the larger tapestry.

[B]

Yeah. There's a lot of instruction about empathy on the pieces, too, about trying to imagine what someone else's life is like before you try to draw judgments about them.

[A]

Yeah. So I think it's. It's about a few of those things, but it's not about. It's not epistlemic. It's not about the good. And maybe there's a. I mean, Atticus Fitch as a moral figure, but not necessarily, like, what's a good life? He comes home, he's single, he's sort of ostracized by the community. He just reads the paper.

[B]

Yeah. It's like, what is the good life in the Aristotelian sense of, like, what is it to be a good life person?

[A]

Was it to be a good person? Yeah, that's very true. Are we sure this isn't about art and writing? I say probably less than we've encountered so far.

[B]

I agree.

[A]

Scout is a reader. Dill is a storyteller. Weirdly, the thing that gets the most anti shine is the fads in primary education. The 1930s. We get introduced to, like, multiple systems that teachers bring in and all the kids are like, okay, well, I guess we're gonna go with this version.

[B]

I think Harper Lee was a real. Born in school. School as a kid.

[A]

Not great. Not having a great time as a precocious reader and wannabe writer. Rebecca, could you get most of the gist? Not most. Most of the gist is the, The, The. The. The line we're going for here from watching a signal. The signal adaptation, which, of course, the Gregory Peck version. It's never been redone.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, you totally can. And Gregory Peck won an Oscar for this largely on the back of this. This six and a half minute monologue that he gives as his closing argument in the courtroom scene. If you don't go back and watch the whole movie, it is worth watching that scene. Like, that's an incredible performance.

[A]

It's one of the great adaptations. It just is. Would this be. Question, Would this be watchable as a Muppet version where a human plays the main character?

[B]

Subject matter makes it pretty tough, my friend. I did not do any thinking for this one about who the. The one human in the Muppets.

[A]

I mean, almost has to be scouted. I think it's funnier if it's Atticus Fitch and they just come in and it's like, I don't even know who. Who's the most sort of. I'm trying to think if he would even get it. We don't. Do we have a Gregory Peck? Have we a Gregory?

[B]

I think the closest we've. No, I mean, he's. We know he can be too funny now, but, like Clooney or Jon Hamm.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. I don't. I don't think we want. I don't think we want something come out of people's mouths to come out of. Like, you could.

[B]

You could do a mother version that's like, oh, my God, that's like just the kids and the Boo Radley stuff. That would be fun. Like, Dill would bet Dill would be Fozzie Bear.

[A]

And what if Boo Radley is the only human just comes in at the end?

[B]

Then I will revive my Adam Driver suggestion from the Hamlet episode. What if the answer to this.

[A]

No, I think. I think it has to be Michael Shannon who's like the creepy. Also most enduring Southerner Michael Shannon.

[B]

Forever.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Trivia adaptations, rumors, Mr. Misattributed quotes and more based on her life Scout Dill Atticus's Lee's father. That's. It's auto fiction. Here. Do I have this? Where did I put mine? I'll let you do yours. Oh, my favorite Harper Lee factoid is sometime in the late 1950s I couldn't find the actual date. A bunch of her friends got together for Christmas and gave her a year's wages so that she could take off her job and just write and try to make as a writer. Which also there's a. I have a mini one which is. Is there something you learned in the course of this that you'd watch a one act play about? I would watch Harper Lee and her coterie of people in New York in the 50s doing their thing. Anyway, that's, that's.

[B]

That's beyond that sounds like a good time.

[A]

What else did you find, Rebecca?

[B]

There was this persistent conspiracy theory that Truman Capote actually wrote it. That that endured for decades. That he wrote it or that he made significant contributions to it. And this was finally put to rest in 2006 when scholars surfaced a 1959 letter that Capote wrote to Lee telling her that he had read the book. He offers praise for it. He doesn't mention any involvement. And we are taking that as. As Harper Lee wrote this book herself and then the adaptation was in 1962. That is a fast turnaround from the book getting published to the rights being sold and scripted and the movie filmed.

[A]

Yeah, you don't get any faster. You really can't.

[B]

And Peek did that six and a half minute closing argument in one take.

[A]

I mean you can see how it's possible again because of the day and time where it has a play like quality where there you can keep it to a limited number of scenes. You use a real town, you get some cameras and you can go. But it is, it is pretty surprising. I always like to remind myself and others that most books are collaborative efforts. And there's extensive documentation about Lee reworking the manuscript with her editor. And this goes. I mean come really full circle when we see Go Set a Watchman, which we were told was some kind of weird ass sequel, which it was not. It was an earlier draft that got reworked and things got moved around like. Like this is not the work of a lone genius. Like people. It can be both that she wrote it and that a lot of people were part of the process at the same time too. A little light to moderate sexism going on with the Capote, he wrote this. But also some of it is the Shakespeare elements. Like, there just wasn't a lot of other work to compare it to because she just didn't write. She was out there alive. She wasn't doing a pension. She'd come to, like, these writing competitions that happened every year. And like, like students, she would read, she would listen to students write about her work and, like, was out and around still sporting one of the worst haircuts anyone's ever had. But, like, she just wasn't writing. Yeah, very strange. Let's see. I did some quotes here. Would you like to hear what the most popular Goodreads quote is?

[B]

Please tell me.

[A]

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view, until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it. On the one hand, sure. On the other hand, isn't that like one of the. Like, walk in someone else's shoes is like, that's been around for a while.

[B]

Yeah, it has. I am genuinely surprised that the Goodreads number one quote isn't. Until I feared I would lose it. I never loved to read one design.

[A]

I think that was number two. I think that was number two dot Yeah. I think. I think because Harper To Kill a Mockingbird broke containment outside of just the nerds. A reading relating quote isn't the first one. It is a more of a you could put this on a pillow, live, laugh, love situation. There. Let's see. Where else do I want to go? Yeah, yeah. People generally see what they look for and hear what they listen for. Again, subjectivity. But, you know, we didn't have Kahneman Tversky. You know, we weren't really thinking about subjectivity in those particular kinds of ways. I think that's interesting.

[B]

At the same time, as a Southerner, I appreciated Lee's ability to depict the South. Like early in the book, we get. Somehow it was hotter than a black dog suffered on a summer's day. Bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square. Men's stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon after their three o' clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft tea cakes with frostings of sweat and talcum. Just wonderful. Like, if you have been in the south in the summer and ever thought, oh, my God, how did they do this before? Air conditioning.

[A]

Yeah, you know, it's. I was talking on the other pod the other day about. I wouldn't mind. I know Civility gets a bad rap. And I'm not really talking about civility, but Atticus does represent a kind of advocacy for sure, putting himself on the line, but he does not demonize people that aren't him. And he says they're certainly entitled to think that, you know, basically that's referring to anything that he doesn't agree with and they're entitled to the full respect for their opinions. But before I can live with other folks, I've got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscious. The idea of your own conscious is not something we talk about very much like it's not a social media friendly idea of what is true for yourself within your interiority, not about your desire, but about your sense of morality. Right. So much now is about scoring points or acquiring power, but thinking of being a person of conscious or a people of conscience. And you know, we talk about bad faith arguments. I think that sometimes is a way of talking about this doesn't seem like an argument that comes out of individual belief or conscious, but about a will to be right, a desire to score a point, to acquire power or you sort of get an agenda pushed towards me. But one thing I think that is always, you know, there's only one thing that's more interesting me than, than art making and creativity and that is sacrifice. And anytime you're thinking about doing something that serves your conscious, but not your physical, social material well being is always interesting. And Atticus Vinci is a remarkable example of that.

[B]

Just earlier in that same passage you were quoting from, he's talking to the kids about how it matters the way we conduct ourselves when the chips are down. And that there's a couple mentions of just because you know you're licked before you start, or in this case, just because we were licked 100 years before we started because of the systems of racism in the south, doesn't mean that we shouldn't try. And that like he's doing something, as you said, he's putting his body on the line. He is doing something. Atticus Finch is like not just posting a thing on Instagram about how racism is bad, he's actually doing something. And I think especially for white people in our political environment today, the reminder of the value of doing that and of leveraging your privilege for something. And of course this is all the 2025 language for it. He doesn't talk about leveraging his privilege, but that's what he, that is what he is doing. And there's a way to read it through modern eyes as a reminder of how to act today.

[A]

Some of those Atticus moments of, like, it's. Some people read it as nobility, and I think there's certainly nobility to it, but there's a different kind of commitment, a different kind of perseverance and endurance that I. I feel. I feel like there's something to grab onto and draw power from if you're open to it. So that leads into my first hot take. What's. Atticus Fitch really does. Does rule. I think it's more complicated than. He's just awesome. I think there's more. There's more complexity to. When you start looking at the material conditions of how he actually lives and walks back into. And he. He doesn't take part in the society. He serves in the state legislature. And he. He will. He goes with Calpurnia to tell Betty his name. Betty, I think. I can't remember. I think it's Betty Robinson. Tom Rom. Like, what happened? Like, he is there. Like, he takes the public defender case and he's seen as someone who will take up a lawsuit. Lost cause and give it an effort. And lost causes are only lost until they're not.

[B]

Yeah. One of the things, especially speaking of Calpurnia, they're made is this book made me think that elements of the Bluest Eye really feel like a response to To Kill a Mockingbird. And like, this comes out in 1960 and the Bluest Eye comes out in 1970. And Toni Morrison would have been aware of. Of To Kill a Mockingbird. Certainly I couldn't find anything where she talked about it, but, like, still an editor.

[A]

She was probably an editor at Random.

[B]

House, but it's impossible to think that she wouldn't have this in her consciousness in some way. And, like, the things that really stood out to me, especially since we're doing both of those books in this season of the show. Atticus tells the kids not to use the N word, but it's in the context of not being common. It's not about the impact of that word on black people. You go to the Bluest Eye and Morrison gives us a really deep look at the words weight on just about every character, but especially the kids. How the kids use it, how they experience having it used on them. And then in To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout's mind is totally blown by the realization that Calpurnia lives a double life. And she used. She uses the phrase a double life. Like, she goes to church with Calpurnia and sees her interacting with People in a different way. She sees her code switch and she asks, like, why are you talking black? Basically, where Morrison gives us Polly, who is a character who is also a domestic worker. And we go. We see Polly at home, and then we see Polly at work with the white kids that she's raising and how she cares for them. And it was just. Having just reread the Bluest Eye, it was impossible for me.

[A]

It's a really good connection to, like.

[B]

Read the scenes with Calpurnia and these kids without thinking about Polly and without thinking about Calpurnia's experience of it. But Lee is not interested in that at all.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, I think she is a little bit. She doesn't quite know. She doesn't dare to try to inhabitants. Calpurnia's sensibility, which is probably responsible. We do get a lot of Calpurnia. And Atticus is a great defense of Calpurnia when you know his relatives, like, yeah, you can't let the kids listen to her and do. It's like Calpurnia knows more than all of us. She's a part of our family. She has a work. Until she says he doesn't want to be here. And it's sort of a sense that that's the sort of a. It's. It's almost a noblesse oblige version of it. But, you know, giving. Seeing the church and seeing a different kind of connection and seeing the black community of Monroeville in some kind of a way, even if it's only as a interloper, is different than you get in. You know, you don't get that in Huck Finn. You just don't. That's a new thing under the sun for To Kill a Mockingbird. Let's see. You can go if you want to do other things like this. There's kind of. Not a lot. I couldn't think of a lot of direct comps like, if you want this, but for a different place in time. I had a hard time with that.

[C]

Yeah, it's.

[B]

It is kind of singular in that way. I mean, if you want to see the book's origins, you can read. Go Set a Watchman, which was published, what, about 10 years ago now? Eight or 10 years ago. And it is an early draft of the book, despite the fact that they called it a new novel by Harper Lee at the time, which I will be bitter about forever. Tell us. Tell us what the thing is. Treat me like an adult and tell me what the scam is. But you could pick up Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson. It's a nonfiction book. He's a lawyer who represents poor people in the south, many of whom were wrongfully convicted. And one of the main stories that he tells is about a man from Lee's real life hometown, Monroeville, Alabama who was put on death row after a sham trial in front of an all white jury. So if you want to go more in the like real life anti racism education, you could go there and then. Mary McDonough Murphy has a book of essays and criticism that came out when this went to Kill a mockingbird was turning 50 called Scout, Atticus and Boo that I've also seen good reviews of. I haven't had a chance to read that myself.

[A]

I mean, if you want to see. I guess in terms of a similar kind, like thinly veiled auto fiction from a writer of this era talking about being a kid in the South, James Baldwin's Go Tell it on the Mountain would be a go. It's not style, but like if you want a black author telling a story about being a kid growing up in a complicated situation, a complicated time, well, maybe it's not that complicated. Fraught it. Maybe not that complicated was. It was fraught. You know, that would be an interesting twin. I don't think I've ever considered them together and what I like that pairing they're doing at the same time. I forgot what are my hot takes?

[B]

Tell me.

[A]

Lee is really struggling to figure out class. Scout is really trying to figure out inheritance. Class divisions, society. Atticus, if there may be a simple, there may be a clear and maybe some naiveness or overly simple, I don't know, relation about racism. How to figure out how to deal with class is not something. It's there and it's present. Like we get poor people and they can be a caricature, I think. But also Atticus and the rest of them become sympathetic to Boo, who is this outcast and strange person and poor and has some sort of divergence from the main in multiple ways. There is sympathy to be offered, but not much understanding. And I'm sure there's interesting critical work on especially poor white people and racial segregation and class hierarchies. But that is not something an Atticus ever deals with directly. That's not a lesson that's imparted directly to the reader via Atticus and Scout. So that's something that I thought was interesting this time too.

[B]

Yeah, the gaps in Atticus's parenting through a 2025 lens are interesting. Like also. Also a moment where somebody talks about a child Being mixed. And Scout is like, what is a mixed child?

[C]

And I.

[B]

Like, one of my notes on the page was like, okay, Atticus is missing some points here.

[A]

Yeah. And then. But that character gets a moment because they think he's a drunk, but he's performing drunkness so he can live the life he wants to live. Like, that's very fascinating. And something that certainly my teachers didn't tell me when I was in 11th grade is like, let's.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Nobody pointed out on this person pretending to be drunk so we can do something legal and not be sort of. And not to be an outcast for it. Very strange. Cocktail party. Cocktail party. Crib sheet. Lee wanted to be Austin of the South. I think that's an easy one to remember. Like, this is a novel of manners and morals. It's also about the big things, but also manners and morals. Too. Hard to remember the phenomenon. Right. Like, we were left with, like, the echo of the phenomenon, but what a phenomenon it was. Lee is underrated as a writer of sentences. The discourse around this has overshadowed what she could do and what we didn't get. Like, we didn't get 40, 50 years of Lee doing this stuff. I wonder what the reputation would be if, like Pynchon, she had seven or eight more novels. I don't know if she won the Nobel Prize in 1980. It's possible. That's entirely possible.

[B]

Or is this the best book and the rest of them.

[A]

Well, she says at one point, I read what I had to say, and I didn't want to do anything else. Like, is that a clever rejoinder to why you didn't write anything else, or is that the truth? I think both of them are interesting. And as you said before, the gender dynamics and what especially Atticus Finch is doing with Scout in 1935 is maybe more radical than some of the racial dynamic stuff because it's not on display in the same way.

[B]

And there's a lot of, you know, like, older women on the page that are telling Scout she needs to be girly, basically. But there are also plenty older women who are pushing against things. Like, there's a wonderful description of Miss Maudie who's, like, allergic to being inside her house. And she gardens all day and her big straw hat, and then come evening, she's, like, holding court on the porch. There's Mrs. Dubose who, like, she dies. The kids have hung out with her right before she dies, and Atticus tells them that she was conscious to the lack of last, almost conscious and cantankerous and like, put that on my headstone, please. Yeah, that's goals. Maybe we need a category here for, like, what's my tattoo from this?

[A]

I like that. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good one. What. What would we tattoo on a Muppet? What would we tattoo on a Muppet? Would be a.

[B]

That's a bridge too far.

[A]

All right, let's do zero to well read score. Each one gets a score from 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest. We have five categories. Historical importance, readability, current relevance of central questions, book nerd, read credit, and oh, damn factor. Interesting one, Rebecca.

[B]

Historical importance is really tough here because this is such a, like, classic of American fiction. But also, it doesn't change anything about American fiction.

[A]

It feels like a one of one, which is hard to deal with. Yeah.

[B]

It's not like the start of a whole new stylistic thing or the start of a sub genre. I don't know, like a four.

[A]

Well, but also, it was. It's the people's favorite book, like, for half a century. Like, that matters. Like, to understand that book in the con, I would go 8 just because of that element. And it was a huge phenomenon.

[C]

Like one of the.

[B]

Okay, 40 million. Like, it did win the Pulitzer, but a lot of things have won the Pulitzer.

[A]

But it did that and sold 40 million copies and has a landmark adaptation.

[B]

And let us say Harper Lee.

[A]

People know who that. They know the name To Kill a Mockingbird.

[B]

Okay, don't Atticus Finch me here. We can give it an eight.

[A]

Well, I mean, like, that's what. But I was thinking along the same lines. It sounds like. I think we're. So this is a case where we work in this industry that we've sometimes missed the forest for the trees.

[B]

I think that's a good point. That's okay. That's a compelling point about that one.

[A]

Readability. 10, 9.

[B]

Yeah, it's.

[A]

Are we gonna have a more readable book than this? No. If we're ever gonna give it 10, we have to give it here.

[B]

Shiverobe is a chest of drawers. That's all you need to know. It's a 10.

[A]

10. Current relevance of central questions. I mean, this is also tricky because racism ain't gone, but we don't talk about it in this way. It doesn't feel like you're gonna get your hair blown back by, like. Oh, I just. I understand American racism in a different way. Like you did then. On the other hand, the past isn't like, you know, Faulkner. Joyce said the past. No, Is that Faulkner or Joyce? I can't Remember, I get things confused. The past isn't gone. It's not even dead. Is very much present in that the.

[B]

Questions are still central. Like, the Questions are a 10, but Lee's version of the questions is like a three or four.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. Maybe we can split the difference of like a 6 or 5 or something like that. Bookner recred. Also a fascinating one because this one, I almost want to get a slash score to like, almost none. Because most people. If most people have read a novel that's even close to literary fiction, they've read this. On the other hand, to have read.

[B]

It on purpose after you graduated from high school.

[A]

No, but I'm saying even if you were in high school and it wasn't this, like, if you read it on your own, I'm giving you points for that.

[B]

Yeah. I think it. The points here are all for you read it outside of a classroom.

[A]

Yeah. So like a one if you were assigned to read it. But if you're like, you know, I went back and read it and I always wanted to understand it. Like, I'm giving you a seven. I'll give you a seven for doing the work.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

Oh, damn factor. Also a tricky one.

[B]

Yeah, this was tricky. I was surprised by how much I appreciated about the book on this reading. So there's an O. Damn element to like, this is better than I expected it to be based on what the discourse has been pumping out for the last several years. But I. It's not like, stylistically incredible.

[A]

No. The moment. Like, I do think. I do think if I were to rate like 30 Top 50 Moments in American literature. Stand up. Your father's passing is a peak. Like that is something else that there's another hundred pages I could maybe do without. To be perfectly honest with you. I don't know.

[C]

Four.

[B]

Four. I think it's four in there.

[A]

Weird one. A very strange one to be presented with and try to reckon with something that's more of a monument than an alive.

[B]

The idea.

[A]

Yeah. You're wrestling with that the whole way through. Last thoughts. Anything else you want to say, Rebecca?

[B]

I'm really glad that I went back and read it.

[A]

Yeah. Better than I remember.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Better than I remember. And certainly more complicated and accomplished than Take Take in the take industry and read that.

[B]

Not the best of the books we're talking about this season. Not my favorite of the books we're talking about this season, but I am glad for an opportunity to go back and revisit it. And I think if you have any question about whether your memory of it from your educational reading of it is accurate or how you might relate to it today, it's worth going back.

[A]

I think it would be fascinating to teach in like a college classroom with the discourser. I mean, it's almost more interesting because you have something to push against like some sort of oversimplifications to read. Show notes are gonna [e-mail] Listen, you can shoot us an email. Zero to well read bookriot.com thanks again to Thriftbooks for sponsoring this inaugural season of Zero to well Read. If you have a spare moment, maybe you're while, you know, you're, you're doing Halloween stuff, you're in the rain, you're, you know, watching TV or football and you think about giving us a review on Spotify or Apple podcasts. We'd greatly appreciated that. And Zero to well Read is a proud member of the Airwave Podcast Network. Rebecca, thank you so much.