writing literary criticism in the digital age: how'd we do?

Dr. Burton asked us on Monday (the last day of class! gasp!) to write about how we "met the stated learning outcomes." I whipped out the old syllabus to make sure I didn't forget anything. These learning outcomes were grouped under three headings:

Consume

I read To Kill a Mockingbird in what we usually call regular form, my own beautiful, new paperback copy; I had different experiences, however, with both Remix and Rainbow's End (read about my experience using a digital format here). Even though I didn't love reading those two books online, I grew to respect the digital world as a resource. I did both traditional scholarly research (here, here, and here) and not-so-traditional research, like forums and looking for other student work. One of my favorite tools that I use to consume other people's work is Google Reader. I use it every day to stalk friend, family, classmate, and wedding blogs.

Create

My most obvious creation is of course, this blog. At first it was intimidating to write a post every day and try to make it sound like a paper I would hand in to a professor, but Dr. Burton taught me that blogging is a completely different type of writing. You have to cater to an audience that will click away if they are not engaged from the beginning. This was also interesting in trying to write "legitimate" literary criticism (Dr. Burton answered my question in this post). I also started using Twitter; I haven't done much with it yet, but now that classes are almost over for me (hooray!) I think I can make things work. (as well as pinterest.com. it's so fun. i think you should try it out.) Diigo has been very helpful in seeing what my classmates are working on; we have been able to help each other as well as find simply interesting websites. And I'm using it often to show my mom things that I like as we try to plan a wedding.

Connect

This is one important aspect of learning/teaching that often gets overlooked. But the things we did under this heading were the ones that gave the most rewarding feeling (like hearing back from someone who responded to a forum that i posted; see this post). And it is always exciting to see that someone is reading my blog from France or Germany or some other foreign country. And finally, our eBook is complete. Never before have I worked on such a meaningful project with such tangible (in a digital sense) results. Being a part of the editing team was an intense and great learning experience (both Nyssa and I have shared our thoughts). It is honestly refreshing to have a class that I know will matter to someone, if not right now, at least someone in the future. 

Now, we would love you to join us at our final, a webinar, later tonight. See you there! 

free webinar: launching our eBook

Please join us for the launch of Writing About Literature in the Digital Age at a free webinar taking place Wednesday, June 15th, 2011 from 5:30-6:30pm MDT (you can sign in using LearnCentral's site, or simply click here at that time).

Writing about Literature in the Digital Age is a free eBook by students at Brigham Young University who are pushing boundaries of traditional literary study to explore the benefits of digital tools in academic writing. This collaborative effort is a case study of how electronic text formats and blogging can be effectively used to explore literary works, develop one’s thinking publicly, and research socially. Students used literary works to read the emerging digital environment while simultaneously using new media to connect them with authentic issues and audiences beyond the classroom. As literacy and literature continue their rapid evolution, accounts like these from early explorers give teachers and students of literature fresh reference points for the literary-digital future.

The table of contents for Writing About Literature in the Digital Age can be browsed here.

During the webinar, we invite you to hear the authors discuss their work and the making of their eBook. You will be able to download your free copy of Writing About Literature in the Digital Age during or following the webinar launch on June 15th, 2011.

Contributors: Alymarie Rutter, Amy Whitaker, Annie Ostler, Ariel Letts, Ashley Lewis, Ashley Nelson, Ben Wagner, Bri Zabriskie, Carlie Wallentine, Derrick Clements, James Matthews, Matt Harrison, Nyssa Silvester, Rachael Schiel, Sam McGrath, Taylor Gilbert, and Gideon Burton.

how we edited the eBook

The blogging hiatus is now over. We are completely finished with editing each individual chapter for the eBook and have sent them to the design team... And I gotta say, it's looking SO good!

Photo via Flickr

I was put on the editing team (along with Nyssa Silvester and Ashley Nelson) with zero experience. I am planning on pursuing a minor in editing, but as of yet I haven't taken any classes and haven't really edited papers aside from classmates'. 

Nyssa sent me a style sheet and my assignments-- 6 classmates' final drafts to do a first, medium edit. I was worried that I would be absolutely no help. After finishing the first chapter, Sam McGrath's, I sent it on to Nyssa for a second edit with this plea: "Please let me know what changes you made." When I received her email I was pleased with the results. She said, "Here's a copy of Sam's essay with the changes I made. I only took your edits out when they changed the voice of the essay or when they wound up obscuring the meaning. Overall, I think you did a very good job."

Nyssa's email was not only relieving but gave me ideas on how to be more effective. It helped with the rest of my edits, and the second edits sent to me by Ashley. 

Using the Microsoft Word "Track Changes" feature, the editing team made grammar, punctuation, and minor content changes, sent them to the next editor in line via email, and then sent them to the author of the chapter so they could accept changes and send them back to Nyssa for the final look-through. This was easy and effective to get edits between editors and authors. I pretty much completed my entire assignment in two nights, long nights, but two nights nevertheless.

Of course, I have a lot to learn. But contributing in such an obvious way (this is what everybody who sees this eBook is going to read!) when I felt like I had nothing to contribute gave me a reason to continue at the fastest possible speed and do my best work. There wasn't too much stress either (but I only speak for myself; I bet Nyssa would say otherwise).

I feel good about the way the eBook is turning out. I have also found a lot of wonderful resources through this experience (like the online Chicago Manual of Style through the BYU Library). And I'm excited about where I'm going-- I like editing! Hooray!!

the final draft... finally!

Creating Mockingbirds: The Importance of an Authorial Online Presence

Alyssa Rutter

CCL photo by Dendroica cerulea on Flickr.

"For Harper Lee, [To Kill a Mockingbird] rolled out beautifully, it sold beautifully, it took on a life of its own, and its success had very little to do with the fact that she had to be out selling it. The book stood for itself. It would be nice to have that kind of a culture today, but we don't anymore." - Adriana Trigiani in Scout, Atticus, and Boo: A Celebration of Fifty Years of To Kill a Mockingbird

“Keep in touch!” Those three words had a prominent presence in my yearbook and bounced up and down the halls on my last day of high school. I was surprised one of my best friends said instead, “You have got to get a blog. I’m never going to know what’s happening in your life if you don’t keep a blog updated.” My family was beginning to enter the blogging craze as well: mom, sister, aunts, cousins, second cousins, and cousins once removed (you think I’m kidding). So a couple of weeks after the graduation parties died down, I created myself online with a picture, a short bio, and an introductory blog post. Posting the link on Facebook legitimized it: From that day forward I was a blogger with a publicly available online presence, despite my amateurism.

Pressure to conform is increasing in intensity for those who are not making themselves known through the internet. Facebook, Twitter, personal blogs and other sites are becoming requirements for keeping in touch and both receiving and sending information quickly. The stakes multiply for modern authors with desires to be a part of both popular and high culture. Authors who fail to enter with a strong presence into the digital age leave the door ajar for active members of the public to push in and create their presence for them.

Harper Lee

An aspiration to make an epic discovery for my class project started me on the search for contact information of Harper Lee, author of classic American novel To Kill a Mockingbird. Some snooping produced this: Harper Lee has not granted an interview since 1964 (a mere four years after publication) nor published anything since Mockingbird in 1960 (“About the Author”). I was stunned and disappointed, then curious. Lee composed a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel on her first try, a beloved novel that spent 88 consecutive weeks on bestseller lists, then abruptly dropped out of public view (“About the Author”). Why? My further search garnered intriguing results. In her final public interview, Lee admitted that the attention was unexpected and overwhelming, almost “frightening” (Madden 162).  Alice and friend Reverend Thomas Lane Butts explained that exploitation of her words and work, specifically misrepresented interviews and autographed books, was disheartening (Murphy 71, 128). More intriguing, however, were accusations that Mockingbird was in fact the work of renowned author and Lee’s longtime childhood friend and colleague, Truman Capote.

Harper Lee closed herself off without giving the public a reason. Naturally, critics and readers alike ventured to understand the disappearance of the bestselling author. Lee, however, refused to give in. Most reader and critic explanations were positive and based on fact. One, however, had its beginnings in fact but was skeptical: Was Truman Capote an unappreciated ghost-writer of To Kill a Mockingbird? Lee and Capote had been friends since kindergarten, wrote side-by-side in New York, and then helped to edit and do research for each other’s novels (“About the Author”). And, of course, this was Lee’s first novel while Capote was already nationally-acclaimed. Speculation circulated that after so much fame and publicity Lee felt too guilty of hurting Capote’s career to continue in the limelight. Of course Alice, Lee’s close friends, and the majority of Mockingbird scholars and readers pled and still plead disparately (Block, Windham 5). But because neither Lee nor Capote has explicitly said otherwise, a few diehard Capote fans still believe. In 2003, Ben Windham crossed paths with Archulus Persons, Capote’s father, who continued to claim that “almost all” of Mockingbird was written by Capote (5). Though today greatly outnumbered, these loyal followers have portrayed Lee in a negative light, posting opinions of both her and Mockingbird on blogs and forums across the internet.

To Kill a Mockingbird’s popularity may not have suffered from the rumor that Truman Capote authored the piece, but the reading culture of the 1960’s South is hardly comparable to the blooming digital age in which we now live. I echo bestselling author Adriana Trigiani in the belief that publishing and reading culture has changed since To Kill a Mockingbird’s publication; no longer can authors release a book and go into hiding as Harper Lee did (Murphy 184). Readers are beginning to turn to the internet to find out more about a book or author; they generally either Google or guess the most obvious domain name, usually the author’s name or the book title (Krozser 16, 18). Type harperlee.com into the address bar and a fan-based website with this disclaimer appears: “Please note that harperlee.com is a private website, unaffiliated with Harper Lee or her representatives.” Instead of what Lee herself wants readers to know, an unknown entity includes what they consider to be worthwhile. Innocent readers can be deceived if they fail to read the small print.

Boo Radley

Mysteriousness, absence, and incomplete stories generate rumors; and few have told this tale more clearly than Lee herself. Through the narration of Scout, a young tom-boy, To Kill a Mockingbird depicts the small town of Maycomb and the adventures of Scout, her brother Jem, and their friend Dill while commenting on racism and assumptions in Southern communities. Arthur Radley, known to Jem, Scout, and Dill as Boo, was often talked about but had not been sighted since Scout could remember. Much of the children’s entertainment came from “the idea of making Boo Radley come out” (Lee 43, 9), but they were too afraid to actually go up to the door to say hello, instead sticking a friendly note on the end of a fishing pole and unsuccessfully trying to dislodge it on a side windowsill (Lee 53). Readers and critics alike have been holding out the figurative fishing pole to Harper Lee and distant authors like her for years, but attempts have fallen short and we are once again left subject to any information but the author’s.

Very little time or creativity is needed to twist a story or description into a slightly less factual one, and it takes even less time to proliferate through a well-connected community. Never having heard anything different, Scout believed Jem characterized Boo “reasonably”: “[He] was about six-and-a-half feet tall, judging from his tracks; he dined on raw squirrels and any cats he could catch, that's why his hands were blood-stained. . . . There was a long jagged scar that ran across his face; what teeth he had were yellow and rotten; his eyes popped, and he drooled most of the time” (Lee 14). The children knew only enough of the stories and descriptions which Miss Maudie believed to be “three-fourths colored folks and one-fourth Stephanie Crawford,” the town gossip, to create their own once-fact-based version of Boo (Lee 51). Jem, Scout, and Dill took for truth what they had heard, regardless of the source. They did not know what Boo Radley actually did or looked like, but because of “facts” circulating around their little town by those who were actively engaged in continuous conversation with their neighbors, the children did not know where to get the real facts, likely did not recognize that their perceptions were skewed.

The same can be said for literature readers on the internet today. Just as Boo Radley’s history, appearance, and even personality were formulated in the minds of many by rapidly-spreading gossip in a tight-knit town like Maycomb and Harper Lee was accused of taking undue credit for To Kill a Mockingbird, authors leave their readers to pseudo online presences  on the internet, where information spreads even more rapidly than Maycomb. The Internet is an impressive, medium that is evolving daily, and as a result authors must also evolve. Without using the resources available to explicitly form a legitimate online presence, authors lose control over how they are recreated and then perceived by the online literature community.

Works Cited

Block, Melissa. “Letter Puts End to Persistent ‘Mockingbird’ Rumor.” NPR. NPR’s All Things Considered, 3 Mar. 2006. Web. 5 June 2011. <http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5244492>.

“Contact Us.” Harperlee.com. n.p., n.d. Web. 5 June 2011. <http://harperlee.com/contact.htm>.

Hyatt, Michael. “7 Ways to Build your Author Brand Online.” MichaelHyatt.com. Michael Hyatt, 10 Nov. 2008. Web. 5 June 2011. <http://michaelhyatt.com/seven-ways-to-build-your-author-brand-online.html>.

-- . “Why Every Author Needs a Powerful Online Presence.” MichaelHyatt.com. Michael Hyatt, 9 Nov. 2008. Web. 5 June 2011. <http://michaelhyatt.com/why-every-author-needs-a-powerful-online-presence.html>.

Krozser, Kassia and Kirk Biglione. “Building Author Web Presence.” Slideshare.net. n.p., 2009. Web. 2 June 2011. <http://www.slideshare.net/kbiglione/building-author-web-presence>.

Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2006. Print.

Madden, Kerry. Harper Lee: A Twentieth-Century Life. New York: Viking, 2009. Print.

Murphy, Mary McDonagh. Scout, Atticus, and Boo: A Celebration of Fifty Years of to Kill a Mockingbird. New York: Harper, 2010. Print.

 “To Kill a Mockingbird: About the Author.” The Big Read. National Endowment for the Arts, n.d. Web. 5 June 2011. <http://www.neabigread.org/books/mockingbird/mockingbird04.php>.

Windham, Ben. “Southern Lights: An Encounter with Harper Lee.” Tuscaloosanews.com. The Tuscaloosa News, 24 Aug. 2003. Web. 5 June 2011. <http://tldev.ny.atl.publicus.com/article/20030824/NEWS/308240365?Title=SOUTHERN-LIGHTS-An-encounter-with-Harper-Lee>.

Alyssa Rutter is a Brigham Young University sophomore studying English and editing. She is a musician, a learner, a reader, and a family enthusiast.

teaser photos. which one?

CCL Photo by Alan Vernon via Flickr

What picture do you see when you hear the title "Creating Mockingbirds: The Importance of Authorial Online Presence"?

I like both of these photos for their simplicity.

The first one seems regal [maybe what authors can be if they utilize the opportunities].

CCL Photo by Dendroica cerulea via Flickr

This one, on the other hand, focuses more on the pestering [of a reader wanting information from an author].


Opinions?

WANTED

CCL Photo by Nic McPhee

 

A little more time for revision.

hey, look! i'm in a magazine!

My friend Whitney Sorensen called me Monday night and asked if I would be able to answer a few questions for her about my recent engagement. She wrote an article for LDS Living Magazine called "Marriage age on the rise, LDS single adults still hanging out." Check it out!

i apologize for not posting yesterday...

But I had an interesting experience. I had a meeting with Dr. Burton yesterday and on my way home had a couple of good ideas, but no computer. 

So I finally pulled out the memo app on my phone for the first time and started writing. 

I rewrote my whole introduction on my phone via texting. 

Alright, I know that's nothing new for people, but it's such a big step from where our culture was not that long ago. How's that for digital culture?

[And if anyone has great ideas for a way of getting all this stuff off my phone without having to type it again, let me know! I tried Evernote, but it's not giving me what I need because my phone is not compatible.]

Creating Mockingbirds: Harper Lee, Boo Radley, and the Importance of an Authorial Online Presence

"For Harper Lee, [To Kill a Mockingbird] rolled out beautifully, it sold beautifully, it took on a life of its own, and its success had very little to do with the fact that she had to be out selling it. The book stood for itself. It would be nice to have that kind of a culture today, but we don't anymore." - Adriana Trigiani in Scout, Atticus, and Boo: A Celebration of Fifty Years of To Kill a Mockingbird

After the first day of Writing Literary Criticism in the Digital Age, I knew exactly what I would do for my final project, and it would be the most exciting BYU had ever seen. The 50^th anniversary of the publication of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird had just passed and I wanted to talk to this celebrated author. I would compose such an enthralling and complimentary letter that when Nelle, as her friends call her, opened her mailbox she would weep then offer to fly me down to Monroeville, Alabama, where we would sit and talk for hours about her novel. Or, worst-case scenario, at least we would visit pleasantly over the phone.

It never happened. Firstly, I’m not a brilliant writer. Secondly, after some snooping (a.k.a. Google-ing) I discovered that Harper Lee has not granted an interview since 1964 (a mere four years after publication) nor published anything since Mockingbird (“About the Author”). I was stunned and disappointed, then curious. Lee wrote a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel on her first try, a beloved novel that spent 88 consecutive weeks on bestseller lists, then abruptly dropped out of public view (“About the Author”). Why? My further search garnered intriguing results. In her final interview, Lee admitted that the attention was unexpected, overwhelming, and almost “frightening” (Madden 162).  Alice and friend Reverend Thomas Lane Butts have said that the exploitation of her words and works, specifically misrepresented interviews and autographed books, was disheartening (Murphy 71, 128). Even more intriguing, however, were accusations that To Kill a Mockingbird was in fact the work of renowned author and Lee’s longtime childhood friend and colleague, Truman Capote.

In 2003, Archulus Persons, Capote’s father, claimed to Ben Windham that “almost all” of Mockingbird was written by Capote (Windham 5). Of course Alice, Lee’s close friends, and the majority of Mockingbird scholars and readers plead otherwise (Block, Windham 5). But because neither Lee nor Capote has explicitly said otherwise, a few diehard Capote fans still believe. Though today greatly outnumbered, these believers have pushed their opinions into the spotlight, posting on blogs and forums across the internet. 

Mysteriousness, absence, and incomplete stories generate rumors; and few have told this tale more clearly than Lee herself. Arthur Radley, known to Jem, Scout, and Dill as Boo, had not been sighted since Scout could remember. It is unknown whether it was by force or will, but Boo rarely, if ever, appeared outside the Radley Place, and certainly never in broad daylight. Never having heard anything different, Scout believed Jem characterized Boo “reasonably”: “[He] was about six-and-a-half feet tall, judging from his tracks; he dined on raw squirrels and any cats he could catch, that's why his hands were blood-stained.... There was a long jagged scar that ran across his face; what teeth he had were yellow and rotten; his eyes popped, and he drooled most of the time” (Lee 14). The children’s playacting was based on half-true stories, and much of their entertainment came from “the idea of making Boo Radley come out” (Lee 43, 9).

Very little time or creativity is needed to twist a story or description into a slightly less factual one, and it takes even less time to proliferate through a well-connected community.  The children knew only enough of the stories and descriptions which Miss Maudie believed to be “three-fourths colored folks and one-fourth Stephanie Crawford,” the town gossip (Lee 51). Jem, Scout, and Dill took for truth what they had heard, regardless of the source. They did not know what Boo Radley actually did or looked like, but because of “facts” circulating around their little town by those who were actively engaged in continuous conversation with their neighbors, the children did not know where to get the real facts, likely did not recognize that their perceptions were skewed.

The same can be said for literature readers on the Internet today. Just as Boo Radley’s history, appearance, and even personality were formulated in the minds of many by rapidly-spreading gossip in a tight-knit town like Maycomb, authors who fail to enter with a strong presence into the digital world (where information spreads even more rapidly) leave the door ajar for active members of the public to push in and create their presence for them.

When readers turn to the Internet to find out more about a book or an author, they most often Google it or try the most obvious domain name, usually the author’s name or the book title (Krozser 16, 18). Type Harperlee.com into the address bar and a fan-based website with this disclaimer appears: “Please note that harperlee.com is a private website, unaffiliated with Harper Lee or her representatives. Her reps cannot be reached through this site and we cannot forward messages to them.” Something similar appears under the domain name harperlee.org.

I echo bestselling author Adriana Trigiani who considers our digital age culture as one which rarely supports authors who are not marketing themselves (Murphy 184). No longer can authors release a book and go into hiding as Harper Lee did. Now it is necessary for authors to “participate in the conversation” about their work and make participation for readers easy, entertaining, and informative (Hyatt “7 Ways”). The Internet is an impressive, relatively new medium that is evolving daily, and as a result authors must also evolve. Buddying up to readers is now not simply a supplement to an author’s marketing scheme; it is a necessity.

Works Cited (unfinished)

Block, Melissa. “Letter Puts End to Persistent ‘Mockingbird’ Rumor.” National Public Radio. Web. 5 June 2011.

HarperLee.com. “Contact Us.”

Hyatt, Michael. “7 Ways to Build your Author Brand Online.”

-- . “Why Every Author Needs a Powerful Online Presence.”

Krozser, Kassia and Kirk Biglione. “Building Author Web Presence.” Web. 2 June 2011.

Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird. Print.

Madden, Kerry. Harper Lee: A Twentieth Century Life. Print.

Murphy, Mary McDonagh. Scout, Atticus, and Boo: A Celebration of Fifty Years of To Kill a Mockingbird. Print.

“To Kill a Mockingbird: About the Author.” National Endowment for the Arts: The Big Read. Web. 5 June 2011.

Windham, Ben. “Southern Lights: An Encounter with Harper Lee.” Web. 5 June 2011.

Alyssa Rutter is a Brigham Young University sophomore studying English and editing. She is a musician, a reader, a family enthusiast, and a lover of all things beautiful.

[Dear Readers,

Feedback is much appreciated. To get you started… Here are some questions:

How’s the title?

Do you think the writing is too “bloggy,” or not “academic” enough?

What didn’t flow like it should?

Anything confusing? Did it work to not pull everything together until more towards the end?

How do you cite forums and blog comments?

Would it be helpful to have headings, such as Harper Lee, Boo Radley, and The Importance of an Authorial Online Presence?

I can edit this piece until Wednesday, June 8.]

putting it all together... it's coming

The long post earlier today was more for me than anyone else. I've been struggling a little bit the last couple of days because of a sudden change in topic. Suddenly, my previous research is rendered useless, and I'm left to find all new research and write a chapter for a book [albeit a rough draft] in two days. I failed on that account. I spent way too much time at the library on Thursday finding way too much research, finding over forty quotes when I only needed three or four. So please bear with me as I scramble to put together a cohesive chapter on a subject which I am really interested in...

working draft: boo radley, harper lee, and creating an online presence

I apologize for the extremely rough draft; this is more of an outline with ideas and quotes. Good organization is still in the process; I'm open to any ideas!

Boo Radley

  Why? 

    * "I think I'm beginning to understand why Boo Radley's stayed shut up in the house all this time... it's because he wants to stay inside." (Lee 259).

        - Compare to Harper Lee (see second quote)

  Personality, physical description, actions as seen by everyone else

    * "Jem, naturally, was Boo: he went under the front steps and shrieked and howled from time to time. As the summer progressed, so did our game. We polished and perfected it, added dialogue and plot until we had manufactured a small play upon which we rang changes every day." (Lee 43). 

    * "That is three fourths colored folks and one-fourth Stephanie Crawford," said Miss Maudie grimly. "Stephanie Crawford even told me once she woke up in the middle of the night and found him looking in the window at her. I said what did you do, Stephanie, move over in the bed and make room for him?" (Lee 51).

        - Very quickly, descriptions and stories transform into new stories. Jem, Scout, and Dill in reality had not idea what had happened in Boo's life or what he actually did or looked like, but because of the stories circulated around the community by those who actively engaged in conversation with their neighbors, the children had a skewed perception about what was going on.

    * "Jem gave a reasonable description of Boo: Boo was about six-and-a-half feet tall, judging from his tracks; he dined on raw squirrels and any cats he could catch, that's why his hands were blood-stained-- if you ate an animal raw, you could never wash the blood off. There was a long jagged scar that ran across his face; what teeth he had were yellow and rotten; his eyes popped, and he drooled most of the time." (Lee 14)

        -Compare above quote to what he really looks like: "I looked from his hands to his sand-stained khaki pants; my eyes traveled up his thin frame to his torn denim shirt. His face was as white as his hands, but for a shadow on his jutting chin. His cheeks were thin to hollowness; his mouth was wide; there were shallow, almost delicate indentations at his temples, and his gray eyes were so colorless I thought he was blind. His hair was dead and thin, almost feathery on top of his head." (Lee 310).

  Is there a problem? 

    * "What Mr. Radley did was his own business. If he wanted to come out, he would. If he wanted to stay inside his own house he had the right to stay inside free from the attentions of inquisitive children, which was a mild term for the likes of us. ... What Mr. Radley did might seem peculiar to us, but it did not seem peculiar to him. Furthermore, had it never occurred to us that the civil way to communicate with another being was by the front door instead of a side window?" (Lee 54).  

    * "Boo was our neighbor. He gave us two soap dolls, a broken watch and chain, a pair of good-luck pennies, and our lives. But neighbors give in return. We never put back into the tree what we took out of it: we had given him nothing, and it made me sad." (Lee 320).

        -Authors are writing books that aren't being recognized because they aren't marketing them well enough, especially over the internet. Furthermore, when we enjoy a piece of work, we have the opportunity to say something, find their website and contact information and send them an email. Are we letting authors without those things go unappreciated because other forms of communication are just too time consuming?

    * "even from the first, when Boo is most terrifying, he is not an alien totally removed from their lives: Boo is closer to them than they first suspect. He is from the first metaphorically kin to them, a part of them even before he enters their minds and imaginations, and he has lived on the street with them for as long as they can remember. He is always there, near them, in a house that at one time was white and not unlike their own. In befriending Boo, the children are confronting a hidden part of themselves." (Johnson 85).

Harper Lee

  Why? 

    * "Nelle Harper Lee 'comes from a generation of writers who never appeared on Oprah, people who were fairly private. And as we've made stars and personalities of our novelists, we can't understand why anybody would want to keep their private lives private. Everybody wants to be on TV.' --Professor Claudia Durst Johnson." (Madden 21).

        - This is one particularly common point of view. The majority of our community has their own Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, blog, and other websites which are seen by some as exploitation. But why not use those resources for good?

    * "It was like being hit over the head and knocked out cold. You see, I never expected any sort of success with "Mockingbird." I didn't expect the book to sell in the first place. I was hoping for a quick and merciful death at the hands of the reviewers, but at the same time I sort of hoped that maybe someone would like it enough to give me encouragement. Public encouragement. I hoped for a little, as I said, but I got rather a whole lot, and in some ways this was just about as frightening as the quick, merciful death I'd expected." -Harper Lee(Madden 162). 

        - This quote came from Lee's final public interview.

  Who is she? 

    * "If you want to know what's in her heart, in her consciousness, then go open the book. The truth is, you just open that book and you just start pulling things from it that you spent a lifetime thinking about." - Rick Bragg (Murphy 60).  

    * "I once referred to Nelle Harper as being conservative, and she corrected me. She said, "I'm not conservative. I'm independent." - Reverend Thomas Lane Butts (Murphy 70)

    * "A lot of people think that she's recluse, which is absolutely untrue. She's a person who enjoys her privacy like any other citizen would. She's not reclusive; it's very different from that. She's open, she loves to be around people and associate with people. She does not like to be exploited by people. And she does not like to have her works exploited for profit by people." - Reverend Thomas Lane Butts (Murphy 71).

    * "For Harper Lee, her novel rolled out beautifully, it sold beautifully, it took on a life of its own, and its success had very little to do with the fact that she had to be out selling it. The book stood for itself. It would be nice to have that kind of a culture today, but we don't anymore." - Adriana Trigani (Murphy 184).

  Is there a problem?

    * "She may not grant interviews, but she is still singing away via her 1960 masterpiece." (Murphy xiv). 

    * "Reverend Thomas Lane Butts... has been a friend of Lee's for more than twenty-five years. ... 'She has controlled her own destiny. She doesn't have a PR person. She doesn't need one. I think she has led a happier life and certainly [a] more contented life because she has chosen how she relates to the public.'" (Murphy 10).

    * "'Maybe for Harper Lee there was nothing else to play," James McBride said. "She sang the song, she played the solo, and she walked off the stage. And we're all the better for it. We're very grateful to her for the amount of love that she's given us.'" (Murphy 41).

Online Presence: Personal Branding [specifically for authors]

    *When you don't create your own online presence, someone else will do it for you

    *Create a website domain with your name or the name of the book.

Bibliography [not complete]

    Johnson, Claudia Durst. "The Danger and Delight of Difference." To Kill a Mockingbird: Threatening Boundaries.

    Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird. 

    Madden, Kerry. Harper Lee: A Twentieth Century Life.

    http://www.slideshare.net/kbiglione/building-author-web-presence

[Dear Readers, I'm looking for some kind of research that shows the results of not having an online presence. Have you heard of any authors who have had a harder time marketing their books because they didn't have a strong online presence, such as other people creating websites in their names?]