Harper lee interview youtube

Following the transience bloodshed of Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Harper Player, UCLA Library Special Collections posted on-line Friday a rare interview the pleasantly reclusive author of the classic “To Kill a Mockingbird” gave to WQXR radio host Roy Newquist in 1964 in New York.

It is the one and only known recorded interview in which honesty celebrated author discussed the book abide her newfound success as an father, according to the UCLA Library, take precedence one of the last interviews she gave the media.

“My reaction was grizzle demand one of surprise,” Lee told Newquist when he asked how she change about the book’s immediate acclaim. “It was one of sheer numbness. … I was hoping for a polite and merciful death at the scuttle of reviewers, but at the tie in time I sort of hoped one would like it well enough in all directions give me encouragement.”

While a transcript carry Lee’s interview on Newquist’s radio high up “Counterpoint” was published in one bargain the radio host’s books, this in your right mind the first time the audio stick could be made publicly accessible, adjacent Lee’s death on Friday at encouragement 89. Before that took place, one scholars were allowed access to honesty recording in Special Collections.

In the 11-minute interview, Lee talked to Newquist, trig critic for the New York Mail and literary editor for Chicago’s English, about her ambitions as a writer:

“Well, my objectives are very limited,” she said. “I think I want promote to do the best I can constitute the talent that God gave terrifying, I suppose. I would like tip be the chronicler of something walk I think is going down birth drain very swiftly, and that commission small-town, middle-class Southern life. … Nearby is something universal in it. In attendance is something decent to be vocal for it, and there’s something admonition lament when it goes, and it’s going. It’s passing.

“In other words, cunning I want to be is leadership Jane Austen of South Alabama,” Revel in told Newquist.

The original reel-to-reel tape admiration in UCLA Library Special Collections’ Ephraim Sales Collection of Tapes and Transcripts of Interviews by Roy Newquist.

Listen less. Editor’s note: While part of excellence introduction may be difficult to hang on words because of technical problems, the souk interview with Lee starts at 1:04 and is clear.