Literally Blogging

First, I want to give a big welcome to my wonderful friend Adelle Tilton, who is now writing here at Literally Blogging! You’ll love Adelle…trust me, you just can’t help it! Hooray for Adelle!

And now, on to our topic. I was listening to Bang Go the Bells in the car the other day, a song so glorious it’s nearly impossible to believe that Babylon A.D. never produced another noteworthy song. In my opinion, anyhow. Of course, I am the Rock Goddess, so my opinion is right.

It’s not an original story; the road to fame is littered with the broken bodies and scratched albums of One Hit Wonders. No matter how many times it happens, it still seems staggering: how can a person or group with enough talent to light the sky on fire and enough charisma to dampen the panties of young girls all over the world possibly dry up and blow away so easily?

Maybe the music is that much more powerful, and poignant, because we know that song is the Only One.

Truly heartbreaking is when the One Hit Wonders happen in the world of literature. It’s bad enough when your favorite author doesn’t write books fast enough for your taste, or you’re sick of waiting for the next Harry Potter installment, but what about when someone writes a book that goes straight to your heart…and then they never write again?

The writer I always think of here is Harper Lee, author of the heart-breakingly beautiful To Kill A Mockingbird. To write a book that so touched the world, that instantly became part of the tapestry of our culture and history and human nature…and then never write again…is almost incomprehensible.

There are the cynics who claim it’s because Lee never wrote the book, that her friend Truman Capote did, and that’s why there was no second attempt. But this is bull; anyone who reads Capote would see how different the styles are, and anyone who knows anything about Capote would know his ego would never had let Lee get the credit for such a success.

Was there one moment of magic, when Harper Lee was able to pull back the curtain that separates this world from the world of divine thought, when the characters and the steamy South suddenly sparked alive in her, heating her fingers, brain, and heart as she typed frantically to get the story onto paper?

Was that one story she told, those marvelous characters she created, so wonderful and significant that nothing else would really matter after that? Did she quit because she thought anything else would be futile, that she could never top her first creation? Was she all out of words and inspiration, or was she meant to change the world with just one book? Is one book enough to fulfill a life’s purpose?

I think it must be…actually changing the thoughts of people and the ways of the world with one beautifully written, starkly honest work of literature has to mean more than shooting out a hundred books.

So, thank you Harper Lee. You’ll always rock on.

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