A Little Read, Thai Style

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by Allan Appel | Apr 20, 2007 11:20 am

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Posted to: Arts

big%20read%20rice%20pot%20001.JPG Tom Wellington’s copy of To Kill a Mockingbird is that old 60-cent Dell paperback that many of us remember from college or high school. He was putting it to good use Wednesday night, when one of the Big Read‘s Mockingbird discussion groups gathered among the aromas of cardamom and curry at the Rice Pot Thai restaurant on upper State Street.

Wellington, who admitted to being more of a computer, science, and business book reader than fiction aficionado, had really gotten himself into the spirit of the Big Read, the series of events centered around having all of New Haven read the same book this spring and talk about it.

“I actually borrowed this copy from my friend,” he said pointing to the fraying binding, “and look at the number I’ve done on it. I mean I really read it thoroughly, and I wrecked it. I’m going to have to buy him a replacement copy.”

His energetic read was worth it. Wellington loved the book. He was especially drawn to the trial scenes, beginning about chapter 17, in which Atticus Finch takes on the wrath of his 1930s Alabama town by defending “Negro” Tom Robinson against false, racially motivated charges. “The courtroom scenes,” he said, “are more gripping than a John Grisham novel.”

big%20read%20rice%20pot%20002.JPG The discussion was organized for The Big Read by Bookrounds , an online book discussion group that was established in New Haven in 2003. John Jessen (pictured with Rebecca Lowry) is the founder of Bookrounds. He too was on hand to help orchestrate the discussion. “Bookrounds has about 1,100 people registered on line,” he said, “and people vote for the books they want to discuss. Mockingbird, of course, got some special treatment this summer, but lots of people wanted to read it.”

Jessen, who, after jobs in bookstores and publishing in New York City now works with the New Haven Free Public Library (NHFPL), was in on some of the planning for The Big Read. “We really wanted to see if we could get (author) Harper Lee to come to town. I got as far as calling her hometown library in, I believe, Monroeville, Alabama. The librarian said, ‘Oh, sure, Harper comes in to the library every two weeks,’ but we didn’t get much farther.”

Second best to the author herself, Jessen said, will be a lecture given by Charles Shields, the man who (lucky timing for him) completed a biography on Lee (unauthorized) in 2006. He’ll be discussing his book Mockingbird: An Intimate Portrait of Harper Lee at the main branch library on April 25 at 6:30. For a complete list of activities, click here.

Jessen’s Bookrounds, he said, is thriving, composed of people across the whole range of the community. “Although we started primarily with graduate students, now we have all kinds of people, including an 80-year old participant, and even one kid age 14. We had to throw him out, because we would have needed parental permission.”

Jessen also organizes for the library the Writers Live series. His take on the Lee novel is that the voice of the narrator, Scout, is so all-knowing, so acidic that at times it strains credulity that she is only a young girl, starting in the story at about six years old. When another member of the discussion group concurred, but also said that it is clear from the first pages that the story is told in recollection, Jessen nodded; it made more sense.

For her part, Lowry’s particular interest in this summer’s Mockingbird in New Haven derives from its potential to bring groups of people together from across the city. Born in Madison, returning to New Haven after several years of work volunteering in Botswana in the effort combat HIV/AIDS, she has also volunteered as a facilitator for Arts and Ideas, attending the various discussion groups, taking statistics, and helping to reports to the funders. She’s especially looking forward to the gatherings when groups of kids are being bussed to senior centers.

The Big Read is, of course, comprised of many little reads—by individuals who mull over their own reactions, when two people enter a dialogue, or in small and large group discussions. “I’d love to see,” said Jessen, “a situation in town where people go to the butcher and say, ‘I’d like a small leg of lamb, and, by the way, wasn’t it terrific in chapter 4 of Mockingbird, the way Scout and Calpurnia, the ‘Negro’ housekeeper, really mix it up!’”

Perhaps that’s happening already, perhaps not quite yet. In the meantime this discussion group, in the early days of our Big Read, didn’t fail to raise glasses of Singha Thai beer, and toast Miss Harper Lee.

Bookrounds will be leading four more Mockingbird discussions at local eateries: Sandra’s on May 8; Anna Liffey’s on May 21; Indian Palace on Mary 16; and Scoozzi on June 2.

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