Hey, Boo.

Wilfred McClay on Harper Lee, via the First Things site. Here's the whole thing.

"...Leaving aside its literary merits, which are not inconsiderable, it is a book that has made an incalculable difference in American attitudes on the subject of race. It was, and remains, a historical force. I think one could argue that To Kill a Mockingbird did for twentieth-century race relations, or at any rate for white attitudes toward blacks, what Uncle Tom’s Cabin did for white attitudes about slavery in the antebellum nineteenth century. And yet it is rarely examined as a work of serious literature, not to mention one whose convicting force changed the moral life of the nation."