A Harper Lee joint

Who knew there's a reclusive author out there who makes the late J.D. Salinger look like an extrovert?

Britain's Daily Mail managed to score a rare and prized interview with Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, in honor of the 50th anniversary of the book. The catch? She won't talk about the book. Or anything relating to the book. The extent of the interview:

"Thank you so much,’ she told me. ‘You are most kind. We’re just going to feed the ducks but call me the next time you are here. We have a lot of history here. You will enjoy it."

Something tells me she won't be hitting up Oprah next. But I found it kind of charming. You've got to respect a writer who either knows her limitations, and didn't force a bunch of less satisfying books into the market just to prove she could do it again; or who simply decided she was Over It and didn't want to publish anymore.

Of course, there's the "what literature could we have had?" argument. But while I'd be curious about that, I don't think authors really owe us anything. And I don't think I'd trade the impact of, say, Franny and Zooey for a drawn-out, increasingly morbid and self-obsessed canon (sorry, messieurs Roth and Updike).

And this article reminded me that I really do need to read To Kill a Mockingbird (instead of saying I'd read it when, really, I'd just "read" the Gregory Peck version). It's a sad fact of my public school education, English major career, and general American Lit devotion that I've managed to avoid it so far. This summer, I swear!

40 is the new 26

So the New York Times announced The New Yorker's 20 Under 40 list. Do we really need an article about an article? Why not just wait for the magazine to print the freaking list? Usually, this kind of hijinks is saved for the hard-hitting venues, like Access Hollywood's exclusive "Inside People's 50 Most Beautiful People List." But anyway, since it's obviously not a secret anymore, here are the picks for the top 20 young go-getters of fiction:

• Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, 32
  
• Chris Adrian, 39
  
• Daniel Alarcón, 33
  
• David Bezmozgis, 37
  
• Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, 38
  
• Joshua Ferris, 35
  
• Jonathan Safran Foer, 33
  
• Nell Freudenberger, 35
  
• Rivka Galchen, 34
  
• Nicole Krauss, 35
  
• Yiyun Li, 37
  
• Dinaw Mengestu, 31
  
• Philipp Meyer, 36
  
• C. E. Morgan, 33
  
• Téa Obreht, 24
  
• Z Z Packer, 37
  
• Karen Russell, 28
  
• Salvatore Scibona, 35
  
• Gary Shteyngart, 37
  
• Wells Tower, 37

Of the 20, I've only read one extensively (Joshua Ferris). So I can't really get excited one way or another about the actual inclusions. But I find their ages very interesting. Only two of them are younger than I am. This means there's still time to produce that great work of fiction I haven't managed to produce in almost 30 years. Nice! See ya, Orson Welles watermark.