Harper Lee’s ‘Land of Sweet Forever’ review: Collection adds to legacy

Fortunately for avid bibliophiles, Harper Lee was an avid pack rat. The To Kill a Mockingbird author, born in rural Monroeville, Alabama in 1926, whose first name is Nell, her grandmother Ellen's name spelled backwards, spent most of her adult life in Manhattan after moving there in 1949.

She first lived in a cold-water apartment on the Upper East Side (subsisting on peanut butter sandwiches, a meager bookstore salary, and a ticket cashier); then in the Midtown hotel room where Edith Wharton and Mark Twain once lived; rise to York Avenue on the third floor ($20 a month for five years, where Go Set a Watchman and To Kill a Mockingbird were written); and finally four decades at 433 E. 82nd St. There, among “the piles of her correspondence and virtually every pay stub, telephone bill and canceled check ever given to her, were notebooks and manuscripts” and eight previously unpublished early stories and eight once-published essays and magazine articles. These recordings were discovered in her New York apartment after she died in her hometown in Alabama nine years ago were collected into the long-awaited hybrid collection “The Land of Eternal Sweetness.”

Stories occupy the first half of the collection, but an unusual selection in the second half, “Essays and Miscellaneous Works,” can tell as much about the aspiring author as about the fictional young men. In an article published in The Artists' and Writers' Cookbook (1961), along with entries by Lillian Hellman, William Styron, and Marianne Moore, Lee offered a one-page recipe for crusty bread, complete with the author's observation: “Some historians say it was the reason the Confederacy fell.” The opening instructions are: “First, catch your pig.” After this, the ingredients (ground white flour, salt, baking powder, egg, milk) and instructions can serve as an analogy for the process of writing and editing a manuscript.

In his foreword, Lee's designated biographer, Casey Sep, notes that “it takes great patience and unerring instinct to turn a piece of history into something… poignant and moving.” Lee admits that he is “more of a scribe than a writer.” In a 1950 letter to one of her sisters, she describes her typical writing day, working on at least three drafts:

Starting around noon, work on your first draft. By dinnertime I usually write down my idea. Then I stop for a snack or snack, depending on whether I need to think more about the story or just finish it. After dinner, I work on the second draft, which sometimes involves tearing up the story and putting it together again in a completely different way, or just saving it until everything is the way I want it. I then retype it on white paper according to manuscript preparation guidelines and mail it. It sounds simple, but sometimes I would work on one project all night; I usually finish work around two or three in the morning.

It's all like testing, perfecting a recipe. If the product were these eight stories, then “Yes, the Chef” has baked a great loaf.

Each story reveals Lee's typical talents as a “balladeer of small-town culture” and chronicler of city life. They demonstrate storytelling skills, a keen ear for dialogue (especially in the vernacular), the development of fully rounded characters, and vivid descriptions of setting. They also introduce subjects and important themes—family, friendship, moral principles—that reappear in her journalism and novels.

Village life imposes restrictions on the childhood heroes of the first three stories. In “The Water Tank,” anxious 12-year-old Abby Henderson, reacting to rumors in the schoolyard, believes she is pregnant because she hugged a boy whose pants were undone. Anti-authoritarian first-grader Dodie (one of Harper's nicknames) in “Binoculars” is scolded for writing her name on the board instead of writing it out. The first glimpses of Mockingbird's Scout and Atticus Finch appear in the hilarious film “The Scissors,” when third-grader “little Jean Louis” (minus the final “s”) subverts gender rules by picking off the long locks of a rambunctious priest's daughter.

In New York, where “sooner or later you'll meet everyone you've ever known on Fifth Avenue,” the stress of the city leads to a shocking monologue with a rousing conclusion about a neighbor's feud in “Room Full of Poop,” a frivolous parlor game of movie titles in “The Spectator and the Seen,” and a humorous parking lot incident when one friend agrees to help to another with fashion show lighting in “Is This Showbiz?”

The story's final title, “The Land of Everlasting Sweetness,” combines locations and themes well. It begins with a satirical allusion to Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice: “It is a truth universally acknowledged by the citizens of Maycomb, Alabama, that a single woman, possessing nothing more than a good knowledge of English social history, must need someone to talk to.” When grown-up Jean Louise (now with an “s”) leaves town for home, she has a cheerful encounter at church with someone she hasn't seen since they were kids, 21-year-old Talbert Wade, who now has the patina of three years in the economics department at Northwestern University and the patina full of Europe, looking “suspiciously like he's come back from a tour and… I picked up a Brooks Brothers suit on the way home.” Together they try to understand why the doxology, always sung “in one way and only one way,” was suddenly “enlivened” by energetic organ accompaniment. Before addressing this issue, there is an amusing anecdote about a cow's obituary in verse and a final nod to Voltaire's Candide when Jean Louise admits that “everything happens for the best in this, the best of all possible worlds.” This story is a prime example of Lee's brilliant sense of witty humor.

The larger themes of love, family and friendship are repeated in eight previously published essays and articles (from 1961 to 2006) that have appeared in Vogue, McCall's, the American Film Institute program (on Gregory Peck), the Book of the Month Club newsletter (on the “little boy next door” Truman Capote and In Cold Blood), Alabama History and Heritage Festival and O, the Oprah Magazine (a letter about the joy of learning to read). In addition to the crusty bread recipe that serves as the starting point for Lee's writing process, the standout essay “Christmas to Me” details how she received a generous gift that changed her life, allowing her to become an accomplished, published writer. In 1956, best friends, lyricist and composer Michael Brown and his wife Joy surprised her with an envelope at her Christmas tree with a note: “You have one year off work to write whatever you want. Merry Christmas.” That meant $100 a month, more than five times her rent.

Juvenilia is complicated. It can be fleeting, revealing weaknesses or revealing strengths and talent. The Land of Everlasting Sweet enhances Lee's indelible voice, providing a valuable addition and resource to the delicate canon of her literary legacy.

Crispy bread recipe:

First catch your pig. Then send it to slaughterhouse closest to you. Bake what they send back. Skim off any solid fat and discard the rest. Fry the fat, drain the liquid fat, and combine the remainder (the so-called “cracklings”) with:

1 ½ cups white flour, ground in water
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 egg
1 glass of milk

Bake in a very hot oven until golden brown (about 15 minutes).

Result: one portion of crusty bread for 6 servings. Total cost: About $250, depending on the size of the pig. Some historians say it was only because of this recipe that the Confederacy fell.

Papinchak, a retired English professor, is a freelance book critic in Los Angeles. He was also interviewed by Bon Appetit.