UCLA Library Special Collections has released "the only known recorded interview" with Harper Lee about "To Kill a Mockingbird." 
 
 The 11-minute interview, conducted in 1964 by Roy Newquist for New York radio station WQXR, is believed to be one of the last the reclusive Lee granted to the media. Lee died last week at 89. 
 
 In the interview, Lee discusses the critical and commercial success of her first novel. "My reaction ... was not one of surprise. It was one of sheer numbness," Lee, laughing, tells Newquist. "It was one of being hit over the head and knocked cold. It was something I never expected to -- I never expected the book would sell in the first place. I was hoping for a quick and merciful death at the hands of the reviewers." 
 
 Transcripts of the interview had been available previously, in Newquist's book "Counterpoint," and had been posted online. But the tape lets listeners hear Lee's Southern accent, her occasional drags on a cigarette, and her humor. When she says "knocked cold," she's laughing. 
 
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 Lee mentions in the interview that she had begun working on another novel. "Like 'Mockingbird,' it goes very slowly," she says. "I'm a slow worker; I'm, I think, a steady worker. So many writers don't like to write. ... I like to write, and sometimes I'm afraid I like it too much, because when I get into work, I don't want to leave it. And as a result, I'll go for days and days and days without leaving my house." 
 
 The author also discusses Southern literature, spurred by a question from Newquist asking why so many great novels come from the South. "Roy, first of all, you have to consider who Southerners are," Lee says. "We're mostly Irish, Scottish, English, Welsh. We grew up in an agricultural society, mainly. The tradition of the South is not urban. ... I think we are a region of storytellers, naturally, just from our tribal instincts. We did not have the pleasures of the theater, or the dance, motion pictures when they came along. We simply entertain each other by talking." 
 
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 The interview is not the last one Lee gave. In 1978, author Michael Freedland talked to her while working on his authorized biography of Gregory Peck, who starred in the film adaptation of "Mockingbird." 
 
 UCLA released the audio of the Newquist interview on Friday following Lee's death. 
 
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 Marco Rubio's super PAC casts Trump as Voldemort (and who is Harry Potter?) ||||| Harper Lee, one of America's leading novelists who wrote about racial injustice in a small Southern town, gave a rare radio interview in 1964 about “To Kill a Mockingbird.” 
 
 Following the death of Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Harper Lee, UCLA Library Special Collections posted online Friday a rare interview the famously reclusive author of the classic “To Kill a Mockingbird” gave to WQXR radio host Roy Newquist in 1964 in New York. 
 
 It is the only known recorded interview in which the celebrated author discussed the book and her newfound success as an author, according to the UCLA Library, and one of the last interviews she gave the media. 
 
 “My reaction was not one of surprise,” Lee told Newquist when he asked how she felt about the book’s immediate acclaim. “It was one of sheer numbness. … I was hoping for a quick and merciful death at the hands of reviewers, but at the same time I sort of hoped someone would like it well enough to give me encouragement.” 
 
 While a transcript of Lee’s interview on Newquist’s radio show “Counterpoint” was published in one of the radio host’s books, this is the first time the audio recording could be made publicly accessible, following Lee’s death on Friday at age 89. Before that took place, only scholars were allowed access to the recording in Special Collections. 
 
 In the 11-minute interview, Lee talked to Newquist, a critic for the New York Post and literary editor for Chicago’s American, about her ambitions as a writer: 
 
 “Well, my objectives are very limited,” she said. “I think I want to do the best I can with the talent that God gave me, I suppose. I would like to be the chronicler of something that I think is going down the drain very swiftly, and that is small-town, middle-class Southern life. … There is something universal in it. There is something decent to be said for it, and there’s something to lament when it goes, and it’s going. It’s passing. 
 
 “In other words, all I want to be is the Jane Austen of South Alabama,” Lee told Newquist. 
 
 The original reel-to-reel tape is in UCLA Library Special Collections’ Ephraim Sales Collection of Tapes and Transcripts of Interviews by Roy Newquist. 
 
 Listen here. Editor’s note: While part of the introduction may be difficult to hear because of technical problems, the main interview with Lee starts at 1:04 and is clear.
– Available only to scholars for decades, on the date of Harper Lee's death last week the UCLA Library Special Collections released what may be the only recorded interview of Lee talking about her most famous work, according to a press release. And while the transcript of her 1964 interview with New York radio station WQXR has been available for a while, the recording "lets listeners hear Lee's Southern accent, her occasional drags on a cigarette, and her humor," as the Los Angeles Times puts it. According to the Smithsonian, Lee comes off "as charming and thoughtful as the novel that made her so famous" during the 11-minute interview. Listen to it here. (Note: The sound improves after a minute or so.) "I never expected the book would sell in the first place," Lee says of To Kill a Mockingbird. "I was hoping for a quick and merciful death at the hands of the reviewers." She's similarly modest about her goals, which include becoming the "Jane Austen of South Alabama." “I think I want to do the best I can with the talent that God gave me, I suppose," she says. Other topics include a new novel she's working on and her love of writing. "I'm afraid I like it too much, because when I get into work, I don't want to leave it," she says. "As a result, I'll go for days and days and days without leaving my house." In addition to possibly being the only recorded interview of Lee discussing To Kill a Mockingbird, it's also believed to be one of the final interviews she ever gave.