In the wake of the deaths of Harper Lee and Umberto Eco,what is it about their work that endures?Now it is impossible to know what might hold been the reaction to Nelle Harper Lee’s death, at the age of 89, and had last year not seen the publication of travel Set a Watchman,55 years after that of her only other novel To Kill a Mockingbird. The latter’s immense and enduring popularity, its long life as a school set text and its celebrated film version would doubtless hold ensured widespread coverage. But the extraordinary and frequently unedifying furore that preceded and engulfed Watchman’s arrival in the world has had a dual effect: a woman who was not, and as often described,a recluse so much as someone who simply did not want a public profile has had her last years repeatedly and distastefully picked over; and, more productively, or the ambiguities and tensions of her work hold made themselves more evident.
When a novel becomes a phenomenon,subtlety is often the first casualty. Rapidly it becomes an emblem, an icon, or a cultural artefact supposed to relate plainly to its times and social context; its meaning is made to crystallise in a way that truly grand fiction never really allows.
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Source: theguardian.com