{"id":46731,"date":"2018-05-30T15:21:18","date_gmt":"2018-05-30T21:21:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=46731"},"modified":"2018-05-29T21:41:43","modified_gmt":"2018-05-30T03:41:43","slug":"southern-historian-joseph-crespino-with-atticus-finch-the-biography","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/southern-historian-joseph-crespino-with-atticus-finch-the-biography\/","title":{"rendered":"Southern Historian Joseph Crespino with “Atticus Finch: The Biography”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Crespino will read and sign at Off Square Books Thursday, June 7 at 5 pm<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

It has been nearly three years since the publication of Harper Lee<\/strong>\u2019s once\u00a0<\/span>long-dormant first novel, Go Set a Watchman<\/strong><\/em>, and its surrounding\u00a0<\/span>controversy in relation to its successor, To Kill a Mockingbird<\/strong><\/em>, the most\u00a0<\/span>beloved novel of modern American literature. Both books, says historian\u00a0Joseph Crespino<\/strong>,\u00a0<\/span>\u201cbecame a kind of Rorschach test for the politics of race in the period that\u00a0<\/span>they were published.\u201d Three years is time enough for the issue to have\u00a0<\/span>dissipated somewhat, and also time for Crespino to\u00a0<\/span>complete research on Harper Lee\u2019s central character, \u201c. . . the orienting figure of both novels, that\u00a0<\/span>touchstone of decency and goodness itself, Atticus Finch,\u201d who was based on Lee’s father.<\/span><\/p>\n

Crespino\u2019s previous books on Southern politics and race, combined with his discovery of much\u00a0<\/span>unused or unknown research material, bring tremendous scholarship and insight to our\u00a0<\/span>understanding of Harper Lee and Atticus Finch<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n

In Atticus Finch<\/strong><\/em>, Crespino draws on exclusive sources to reveal how Harper\u00a0<\/span>Lee’s father provided the central inspiration for each of her books. A lawyer and newspaperman,\u00a0<\/span>A.C. Lee<\/strong> was a principled opponent of mob rule, yet he was also a racial paternalist. Harper Lee\u00a0<\/span>created the Atticus of Watchman<\/em> out of the ambivalence she felt toward white southerners like\u00a0<\/span>him. But when a militant segregationist movement arose that mocked his values, she revised the\u00a0<\/span>character in To Kill a Mockingbir<\/em>d to defend her father and to remind the South of its best\u00a0<\/span>traditions. A story of family and literature amid the upheavals of the twentieth century, Atticus <\/em><\/span>Finch<\/em> is essential to understanding Harper Lee, her novels, and her times.<\/span><\/p>\n

Joseph Crespino is the Jimmy Carter Professor of History<\/strong> at Emory University<\/strong>. He is the author\u00a0<\/span>of In Search of Another Country<\/strong><\/em>, winner of the 2008 Lillian Smith Book Award from the\u00a0<\/span>Southern Regional Council, and Strom Thurmond’s America<\/strong><\/em>. He lives in Decatur, Georgia.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Crespino will read and sign at Off Square Books Thursday, June 7 at 5 pm It has been<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":238,"featured_media":46744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2239],"tags":[12566,12565,12568,12561,12560,12569,12567,12563,12564,842,12562],"class_list":["post-46731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-literary-events","tag-a-c-lee","tag-atticus-finch","tag-emory-university","tag-go-set-a-watchman","tag-harper-lee","tag-in-search-of-another-country","tag-jimmy-carter-professor-of-history","tag-joseph-crespino","tag-southern-politics","tag-strom-thurmonds-america","tag-to-kill-a-mockingbird"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/JosephCrespino.jpg?fit=710%2C355&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/238"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46731"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46731\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}