"HOLLYWOOD, IF YOU DIDN'T KNOW IT, IS PROBABLY THE SPOT MOST CLOSELY RESEMBLING HELL ON THIS PLANET": TYPED LETTER FROM HARPER LEE, SIGNED "NELLE," TOGETHER WITH A COPY OF TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD ALSO INSCRIBED BY LEE
LEE, Harper. Typed letter signed. WITH: To Kill a Mockingbird. Monroeville, Alabama: : March 13, 1962. One leaf, typed and signed on recto, measuring 6 by 8 inches, with typed envelope. Book: octavo, original black and brown cloth, dust jacket.
Wonderful typed letter signed by Harper Lee using her real name "Nelle," which she only used with close friends, together with an early book club edition of To Kill A Mockingbird, inscribed to the same family, "To the Masoners with my love and admiration—Nelle Harper Lee."
The letter, dated "Monroeville, Alabama, March 13, 1962" and with an envelope addressed to "Mrs. Paul Masoner, Garden City Kansas," reads in full: "Dearest Margy: You know it goes without saying how wonderful it was seeing you again, and getting to be with you for a while. You & Mase, of course, are among T.'s and my favorites in the world. I'm throwing cold ashes all over myself for not getting to see your parents, but the floods and landslides in the L.A. area complicated my travel plans so, I was lucky to get a flight out of there to Denver. I had planned to get in touch with them while in Los Angeles and stop off, or either make a side trip. Not seeing them was the greatest disappointment of my journey. In fact, I planned to fall into their arms, their laps, and their beds: Hollywood, if you didn't know it, is probably the spot most closely resembling hell on this planet. The unrelieved grimness of it all is exhausting. The people are unbelievable. The smog (when it's not raining) is unendurable. Tell Hazel and Lester I cried when I got their card! Am taking off soon for New York and probably Connecticut. If any of you are up that way this summer, my address is 433 East 82 Street, NYC 28. A note in advance should flush me out of the woods, and I'll come running. Love to you all, [signed] Nelle."
Lee's agent sold the rights to her book in 1961; she declined the opportunity to write the screenplay, but was present in California for some of the filming. Contrary to this letter, Lee usually spoke fondly of her time in Hollywood: "I know that authors are supposed to knock Hollywood and complain about how their works are treated here, but I just can't manage it. Everybody has been so darn nice to me and everything is being done with such care that I can't find anything to complain about" (quoted in Shields, Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee, 213). "Unlike so many other authors undone by Hollywood, Lee actually found the place 'as comfortable as an old pair of slippers,' Peck once recalled her telling him. 'She vowed she never met so many friendly people'" (Benjamin Svetkey in the Hollywood Reporter, February 20, 2016). Although we have not been able to trace the details of the letters' recipient, Lee spent months in Garden City, Kansas in 1959 and 1960 working as Truman Capote's assistant while he was working on In Cold Blood, his classic "nonfiction novel" about the murder of the Clutter family in nearby Holcomb. Lee's humor and modesty, along with her keen understanding of small-town ways, made her a valuable asset for Capote in getting locals to open up to them, helping to offset his dramatic and somewhat exotic personality. At the time of their first visit, Lee's novel had been accepted for publication but was not yet released. When she and Capote returned to Kansas in January of 1962 to do follow-up work, she was the famous author of a Pulitzer-prize winning novel; "for her Kansas friends, she brought an armload of complimentary copies of To Kill A Mockingbird" (Shields, 210). "Nelle" was a name that Lee reserved for her close friends—she had used her middle name as her pen name in part from a fear that "Nelle" (her grandmother's name backwards) would be mistaken as "Nellie." Dust jacket is supplied from another copy of a Book Club edition book.
Book fine, bright dust jacket with tape repairs to verso; letter fine. A wonderful pair.