Wally Lamb: I think for a lot of kids it’s the voice of Scout, it’s certainly not the adult voice of Jean Louise Finch, it’s Scout’s voice. I think the fact that she is a tomboy helps the boys. And I think a lot of the guys, as I recall, liked Jem too. You know, he sort of spoke their kind of language, and a lot of them had annoying little sisters, so that sort of invited them along for the ride as well.

Also, this was, this was in the seventies when I started teaching. And, you know, there was a lot of racial turmoil in the country. And I think that book, because the characters are, become sort of personally applicable, I think a story can go a lot farther lots of times than a headline can or, something on the 6:30 news. So the kids, I think it became a sort of a vehicle by which they could begin to think and sort of process some of these emotional reactions that they were having.

I know one of the things that happened at our high school during that early era when I was teaching was that, the African American kids were demanding a black history course. And the school was not providing one, and so the kids staged a demonstration out of the green near the school. And you know, I was thinking about this just today, that I think in it’s own way, To Kill a Mockingbird, sort of, and I don’t mean to overstate this, but I think To Kill a Mockingbird sort of triggers the beginning of change and certainly puts onto the stage the questions of racial equality and bigotry in a way that I think, a century earlier, Harriet Beecher Stower’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin sort of stirred things up and got people riled up enough and motivated to maybe, to maybe change things.

And then this, of course, the inevitable exploitation of a book that a means so much to so many people. I know a little bit about Harriet Beecher Stowe because she lived close by, in Hartford. And I know that she was sort of appalled by some of these really cheesy stage productions that started traveling the country. And I saw at one point, maybe 3 or 4 years ago up in Montpellier, VT, a staged version of To Kill a Mockingbird. And it was, it was okay, it was, I wouldn’t say it was cheesy. But it wasn’t experience, it couldn’t even approach that same kind of experience that reading the book is.

Mark Childress: Yeah I always have. I mean, every time I go back I’m impressed more by the simplicity of the prose. And, we think of it as being…classic, and I think the reason that we think it’s so classic is that there’s, it’s not, the prose is not very adorned, it’s very plain. And although it’s plainly written from the point of view of an adult, looking back through a child’s eyes, there’s something childlike…I don’t want to say that. There’s something beautifully innocent about the point of view, and yet it’s very wise. So it’s a combination of either a wise child or an innocent adult, the point of view.

And the fact that Scout is surprised by people’s racism is what’s so, what was revolutionary about the book. Because most little kids in little towns like that, they weren’t surprised, because racism was all around them, it was the fabric of life. I mean, when I was three years old, my grandmother and I would walk down the main street of Greeneville, which was the little town where she lived, and black men would get off the sidewalk as a sign of respect. And if I walked down the sidewalk, at five years old, by myself, they would get off the sidewalk as a sign of respect to me. And this was in the mid-60s, after the book came out,

There’s something so…it’s just a child trying to understand, trying to make sense of something that doesn’t make any sense, trying to organize it into, you know…And I guess I’ve spent my whole writing career kind of trying to do the same thing, laboring in the shadow of…making sense of what race meant in the South and, how to you grow up having come from that system. It’s a lot of interesting problems.

I don’t think that they, the kids today have, read it with the same edge that we did as children though because the segregation was still very real when I was reading that book, you know. When I went to the swimming pool, there was a ‘no colored children allowed,’ as the sign said, “white” and “colored.” You know, we went to the Dairy Queen there were two lines, there was a white window, and there was a black window. So, it was a radical book at the time in the South. It might not have that way in the rest of the country, but it said radical things.

Richard Russo: You know the first time I read To Kill a Mocking Bird I don’t think I finished it and the reason I didn’t finish it was that– at the time– at that time I would have been in high school.  And at that time I had what was a hard and fast rule, which was to read everything I could get my hands on except what was assigned to me.  It was Catholic school and I just– I just– I was in that rebellious frame of mind that if somebody else wanted me to read it, it was probably for [censored].

And so I– I went into– I went to– To Kill a Mocking Bird with– with that notion, that– that it was like the other books that the nuns wanted me to read.  And so I– I– I read– I– I remember reading, of course, I’m thinking– reluctant– reluctantly, you know, thinking this is a– this is really good, but I couldn’t admit to it; I couldn’t admit it to them, I couldn’t admit– admit it to myself.

But there was that– that father/daughter relationship– burrowed, I think, under my skin even then.  We all– those of us who become writers– are becoming writers long before we ever put pen to paper.  In the same way that the– my first reading of Great Expectations which I didn’t finish either because it too had been assigned.  But there was something about the opening scenes of that book where– where– where Pip and Magwitch come together, there was something that burrowed into me there, a way in which you can be and– you can be ashamed of someone you love,

Yeah, yeah– that– that relationship between Joe Gargery and– and– and Pip– really burrowed underneath ‘cause I had a– I had a father who was– who was largely absent and– and– and when he came back, it was a very– it was a small town and everybody wanted to know why my father didn’t live with us and so there was something about the opening of– of Great Expectations that burrowed very, very deep.

And To Kill a Mocking Bird was that way.  Even though I didn’t finish the book, even– even though I was– I was stubbornly a teenager and– and– but– and in some way it probably frightened me– something– something about that book frightened me.  But– I look back on it now in the way in which you are becoming a writer– and certain books influence you, it’s hard to imagine Empire Falls being written without To Kill a Mocking Bird because I don’t think Tick could have existed– without Scout.

And something about that– that father/daughter relationship– when I came back to it as an adult– a lot of– a lot of the way I– I felt about my daughters and the way in which they were– they were going about in the world, the way Scout does– Scout loves her father but the truth is young people are to a certain extent on their own and– and they’re– and they’re– they’re learning about life through their own– through their own eyes and through own experiences.

James McBride: Well, I mean, as a professional writer, the character…the whole business of character description and character construction in To Kill a Mockingbird is really the ceiling against which great character writing will forever bump in a lot of ways, because the characters are so strong and so definitive, yet they have a great deal of ambiguity, and they have a great deal of innocence and then soiled innocence, and they have a great deal of obvious death and they are swept by the events of their time.

She certainly set the standard in terms of how some of these issues need to be discussed but in many ways I feel the bar’s been lowered…I think the moral bar’s been in terms of that. And that, that is really distressing. I mean, we need a thousand Atticus Finchs.

And also as an adult, you know, it occurs to me that the black characters in the book, heroic as they are, they don’t survive. The violence that…the societal violence that takes place to, I think his name is Tom…Tom Robinson. You know, the violence, the abject societal behavior towards Tom Robinson affects his family for generations, at least fictionally. And in real life, you know, my wife’s great-grandfather was shot while he was standing in line to get feed because a white guy just told him to move and he wouldn’t move. And that murder just goes on and on, it’s told to generations of people in my wife’s family. And similarly in Harper Lee’s book, that part of the story was something that for me has never been quite resolved in the manner that I would liked to have seen it resolved, partially because that wasn’t her purpose to tell Tom Robinson’s story, but that’s partially my purpose, as a writer.

I think the challenge that she laid out for us, for us the writers who follow in her wake, is to make sure that the various dimensions of these stories are told properly, and that we stand up in own time to talk about issues that count now. It’s easy to poke fun and say, ‘I would of done this and what a brave women she was,’ and so on and so forth, but when it counted, Harper Lee did what was necessary. And how many of us now are doing what’s necessary…in terms of standing up for the good and for the just?

I mean, look, I wish I’d written the book so, let that be said. I’m not criticizing her work, she’s a great writer, she’s an American treasure there’s no question about it. But just like anything else, when the imprint of racism lays its hand on you, you have to be conscious as to how that affects you and your work. I think she did the best she could given how she was raised. That still doesn’t absolve the book or this country of the whole business of racism.