A Reaction Sauce

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August 12, 2009

Yesterday we linked to Malcolm Gladwell‘s most recent New Yorker essay, “The Courthouse Ring,” in which Gladwell discusses Atticus Finch, Alabama Governer “Big Jim” Folsom, race, and “the limits of Southern liberalism.”

Well over at The Millions Garth Risk Hallberg has published a reaction, “Fillet of Mockingbird in a Gladwell Reduction Sauce.” Hallberg wishes to defend Finch, and writes of Gladwell: “Following George Orwell, he seems to want novels to provoke ‘a change of structure’ rather than ‘a change in spirit.’ That is, he wants them not to be novels.”

Read both Gladwell’s essay and Hallberg’s reaction, and then let us know your take on the matter in the comments below. (via Rumpus reader lemuel)

BSKY

Isaac Fitzgerald

Isaac Fitzgerald has been a firefighter, worked on a boat, and was once given a sword by a king, thereby accomplishing three out of five of his childhood goals. Formerly of The Rumpus and McSweeneyâ€™s and most recently the founding editor of BuzzFeed Books, Isaac is now the co-host of BuzzFeed Newsâ€™ Twitter Morning Show, #AMtoDM. He also appears frequently on The Today Show to talk books, and is co-author of Pen & Ink: Tattoos and the Stories Behind Them and Knives & Ink: Chefs and the Stories Behind Their Tattoos (with Recipes) (winner of an IACP award), and the author of a YA novel and picture book forthcoming from Bloomsbury. He uses Twitter.

One response

Melissa Price

August 12, 2009

I don’t think Hallberg “wishes to defend Finch,” as you wrote in the intro above — at least this doesn’t appear to be his primary motive for writing the piece.

Hallberg’s most relevant points about Gladwell’s piece:

“A more nuanced article might have made the argument that To Kill a Mockingbird has a didactic streak, and that it puts Atticus Finch forward as an allegorical figure of enlightenment. Or that readers of the book have mistakenly read him allegorically, rather than as a human being with human limitations. Or that To Kill a Mockingbird is not a very good book, and is racist to boot.”