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The following was a review I wrote April 1. I've since come to view it in a different light, and now believe it's one of the finest books ever written.

April 1

It's funny how things can change. I recall really liking this book the first time I read it back in about 8th grade. Maybe I should have just left well enough alone. It was a pleasant memory from my youth. Why spoil things by picking it up again as a more clear-sighted (some might say jaundiced)adult? I probably wouldn't view my favorite book from 4th grade, The Secret Weapon, the same way either. The intense drama of a glue-fingered benchwarmer called in at the end of the big game to catch the winning touchdown might seem shallow and contrived to the current me.

I realize I'm swimming against the tide here, but how many of you have reread this supposed masterpiece in your more mature years? With that perspective, I can't be the only one to see Scout as the rather obvious wish-fulfillment of Harper Lee. Reading since infancy, brave as any boy, inherently fair-minded, a noble spirit well beyond her years... C'mon, Harper; you've got to give her some flaws mere humans can relate to. Now Jem, in comparison, was a run-of-the-mill dullard. As written, he's not necessarily going to grow up to be the depraved male in a Lifetime movie, but it's clear that Ms. Lee doesn't much care for this kid with the penis. And Dill? How can we not think of him as the future Truman Capote, fat and affected?

My real problem with the book, though, now that my blinkers are off, is the pure perfection of Atticus. His progressivity knows no bounds. You're going to tell me that a lawyer is capable of empathy and integrity?!? And where is the complexity of context, you might ask. Wouldn't this son of the South, to be at all realistic, have wrestled a grudge match against himself, his Doppelcracker, if you will? Even modern-day hacks know to include that much conflict.

Clearly, Atticus is a balm to assuage white guilt for a nasty racial past, but I wonder if that by itself qualifies as clothes for the emperor. Ironically, people who are happy to applaud the courage Atticus displayed in standing against popular sentiment will likely castigate me for doing the same.

Whenever you take an extreme view (and I know I have; even defying Oprah, for chrissake), you have to wonder what that says about you more than it does about the work under review. Maybe had this been March 31 or April 2, I would have felt differently, but today I felt a strange need to rock the Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ boat. Did anyone fall out? Happy AFD!