A Geographical Tour of Literary America

The Grand Tour of Literary Landmarks resulted from my students' success with another project that we called "Poetic License with THE AMAZING RACE." This new journey also begins and ends in my students' hometown. Chosen writers are specific to our curriculum and texts; however, teachers can adapt new selections to their students' needs. Side images are their original work. Photo images at each destination go directly to official sites or to the slideshows of my own travel photos. The main sources of written material here are www.Poets.org and Adventures in American Literature, Heritage Edition and Pegasus Edition.

Monroeville, Alabama


On the literary map, travel from Pulaski, Tennessee, to Monroeville, Alabama.

Calculate:

# _____________ Miles to Monroeville, Alabama

$ _____________ Cost for Gasoline to Monroeville, Alabama

Visit Harper Lee and Truman Capote at www.SouthernLiteraryTours.org and fill-in-the-blanks.

"In small town life and in rural life you know your neighbors. Not only do you know everything about your neighbors, but you know everything about them from the time they came to the country."

Harper Lee, quoted in Mockingbird, A Portrait of Harper Lee by Charles J. Shields.


"Harper Lee lived next door to the cousins Truman Capote came to stay with in her small country town. The Monroeville playmates became, arguably, America's most famous pair of _______________________. The films Capote and Infamous have established them as one of the country's most complex pairings of collaborative investigators who sought the true story behind the brutal Kansas slayings of Capote's In Cold Blood."

"The friendship began on South Alabama Avenue where Harper was raised by her father A.C. Lee, a local attorney who owned the town's newspaper The Monroe Journal. Mr. Lee wrote influential editorials for the Journal and practiced law in the 1903 Courthouse. Capote insisted that he was the model for Dill, Scout's playmate in Mockingbird. In a letter to his friends Alvin and Marie Dewey of August 12, 1960, the author of Breakfast at Tiffany's and Other Voices, Other Rooms wrote: Nelle's book is high on the best-seller list; she has gone home to Monroeville for a month. And yes, my dear, I am Dill."

"Capote was no stranger to best-seller lists either. Monroeville gave him poignant material. Writing ___________________ in 1972, Capote said, 'As a child, I lived until I was ten or so with an elderly spinster relative in a rural, remote part of Alabama. Miss Sook Faulk. She herself was not more than twelve years old mentally, which is what accounted for her purity, timidity, her strange, unexpected wisdom.' He wrote two stories about Sook:_______________and ____________________________. A historical marker in Monroeville now serves as a guidepost for visitors seeking the Faulk house: a plot of land with the remains of a brick foundation near the historic courthouse square."

"The courtroom of the ______________________was meticulously re-created in Hollywood for the film version of _________________________earning Gregory Peck an Academy Award for his portrayal of ___________. Finch was named America's number one cinematic hero by the American Film Institute. Thanks to literary masterpieces by Truman Capote and Harper Lee, Monroeville does not seem remote today, though it preserves the rural life of Mockingbird for the book's generations of admirers. The small town of Capote and Lee has been declared _____________________________________."