Harper Lee once criticised her hometown for trying to turn her into a “tourist attraction”, comparing herself to Elvis Presley, a resurfaced letter shows.
The missive, which is part of an auction package sold by Bohnams, includes several letters written by the To Kill a Mockingbird author to her friend Charles Weldon Carruth.
In a letter dated 1993, Lee, a native of Monroeville, Alabama, tells Carruth: “You remember the Faulknerian prophecy — the Snopeses shall inherit the earth? They’ve already taken over Monroeville ... they are trying to turn Harper Lee into a tourist attraction like Graceland or Elvis.”
Elvis Presley’s former Graceland mansion in Memphis, Tennessee, has been turned into a public museum and is now a popular destination for tourists and fans. A spokesperson told Voice of America in 2017 that 600,000 people visit the venue every year.
The author bemoans the restoration of Monroeville’s Old Courthouse, which was used as a model for the film adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird, and decries the installation of a billboard with a mockingbird on it.
“[They] say they are doing this to honour me. What they are doing ... [is] embarrassing me beyond endurance,” Lee writes before telling her friend: ”So keep an eye out for a small place that will hold 10,000 books ... is near grocery stores & hospitals, and you! ... We can look at each other and celebrate our longevity.”
The courthouse in Monroeville, which has been turned into a museum, is advertised on the venue’s website as “the model for Harper Lee’s fictional courtroom settings in To Kill a Mockingbird”.
While the courthouse served as a model for the 1962 To Kill a Mockingbird movie, the film was not shot on the premises but on a precise replica built on a Hollywood backlot.
