2023-11-05 09:39:00
Of course, there are hundreds of literary places in this world, places that novels tell about and in which novels are written, or both. There is Paris, Berlin, New York and London, there is Weimar and Lübeck, and most of these places of course try to exploit their literary potential with festivals, museums (which is not easy at all, even if museums get an original Nobel Prize winner’s desk). On closer inspection, a desk is a pretty dull affair, not comparable to the Concorde or a stuffed polar bear with its mouth wide open) and to convert performances into concrete tourism.
Injustice and inequality
Monroeville, a small town in Alabama, claims to have an excellent place on this list of literary places, this claim is justified and appropriate, after all, Truman Capote and Harper Nelle Lee grew up in Monroeville, so even New York has to make an effort, to find two similarly famous writers. Harper Lee, whose novel “To Kill a Mockingbird” is still school reading in the USA, and Truman Capote, who was mainly famous because he was Truman Capote, lived in two houses right next to each other; they were friends, writers, literary characters , enemies, and when Harper Lee wrote “To Kill the Nightingale” at the age of 34, she talked about Capote, her father and her childhood in Monroeville, which she named Maycomb. In “To Disturb the Nightingale,” Harper Lee deals with the case of a black man who was unjustly sentenced to death; she tells the case like one from the past. But the themes of her novel – racism and inequality – were current in Monroeville when she wrote it. And they remain so to this day, even as the city becomes more and more committed to attracting tourists.
#Harper #Lee #Truman #Capote #Alabama