But Will Harper Lee Help Oprah Hunt Down Child Predators?
80-year-old Harper Lee hasn't given an interview in 40 years and, with the exception of a 1983 book review, she hasn't published anything in the same stretch of decades — but if there's anyone to pull the woman out of hiding, it's motherfucking Oprah. (OMG OPRAH SHE'S JUST THAT GOOD WE LOVE YOU.) For O mag's July "special summer reading" issue, Lee has written a piece, in letter form, about becoming a reader in Depression-era Alabama, when her parents and older siblings would read her stories and newspaper items every day. She writes, "Now, 75 years later in an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, iPods, and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books."
And thus her hermitude is explained: she's spent four decades calculating just how far the culture has fallen, making sure she could someday come forth and point a creaky old finger at us all: It's not my fault your children are retards.
