Harper Lee Tells Oprah She's No Fan of E-books

by Edward Nawotka -- Publishers Weekly, 6/28/2006

Reclusive octogenarian Harper Lee, author of the 1961 Pulitzer Prize-wining novel To Kill a Mockingbird, has re-appeared in print for the first time after a long hiatus, writing a letter in the July issue of O, The Oprah Magazine.

In the letter which begins, "Dear Oprah," Lee describes a hardscrabble Alabama childhood where youngsters had little to do but read, this despite the fact that books were scarce and there was no local public library to attend. Nonetheless she goes on to describe what an important role books played in her upbringing. "My mother read me a story every day," she wrote. "Usually a children's classic, and my father read from the four newspapers he got through every evening."

Lee reveals that she's no fan of modern technology, or e-books for that matter, writing: "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." She asks: "Oprah, can you imagine curling up in bed to read a computer? Weeping for Anna Karenina and being terrified by Hannibal Lecter, entering the heart of darkness with Mistah Kurtz, having Holden Caulfield ring you up—some things should happen on soft pages, not cold metal."