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There are no saints and there are no sinners people can simultaneously be both, says Casey Cep.
I think she was interested in how this could be.
There would be no artfully crafted, cathartic scenes thatnever actually took place.
Every word she wrote would be true.
These ambiguities, these shades of gray, would make the book a tough pill forMockingbirdfans to swallow.
That moral complexity is exactly what appealed to Cep about investigating both lives Maxwells and Lees.
Harper Lee is like kryptonite for reporters, Cep says with a smile.
Cep researched a good deal of her own book inside the building.
As a writer you dont form your ethics in the ether, she says.
You do it in response to what other people are doing.
But she had no interest in being one.
Did that book possibly affect Lees thinking?
I think she had thoughts on everything, says Cep.
Im sure she followed the murder case that Joe McGinniss covered, the basis for Malcolms book.
Lee would never have been part of her own book, as McGinniss was.
(Entire podcasts have been built on less.)
Cep thinks Lee was prescient in grappling with those questions privately.
It was an early draft ofMockingbird, a messier piece both aesthetically and morally.
Asked if she was hesitant to readWatchman, Cep says, I would read her grocery list.
Mentors can create a kind of charismatic coercion.
You want to hey them.
It depends on the kind of reader you are.
(Is it surprising that Lee was interested in a lawyer influenced by her most iconic invention?)
Cep believes that Radney played a major role in the book Lee was trying to write.
Tom was a very good man who lived in a complicated time, says Cep.
Any lawyer is pressed by their ethics and the ethics of their career.
So, why on earth didnt she write it?
Some people say that Lees scrupulousness is why she ultimately couldnt publish this book, Cep says.
I think its a terrible way of looking at it because her scrupulousness shaped her fidelity to that case.
And maybe there is more; theres certainly cause for hope.
For someone who loved facts so much, I have a hard time believing shed just discard them.
