Capote in Kansas: A Ghost Story

Truman Capote is being haunted by the Clutter family. Aging and isolated in Florida after losing his New York society friends once they saw that he would use their own histories in his stories, he's spiraling downward in a haze of pills and booze. He does have two friends, his housekeeper, Myrtle and the ac repairman. He begins to send his childhood friend, Harper Lee, tiny coffins in decorated boxes. Nelle is also living isolated and not writing, but for different reasons. Now estranged, they were once so close that they worked together in Kansas to research Capote's masterpiece.

This is an atmospheric look at the lives of both Harper Lee and Truman Capote. Moving back and forth between their shared childhood, to their time in New York show more and Kansas, to their self-imposed exiles where they no longer write, Powers digs into their motivations and fears and into the reason they stopped being friends.

This was a lot of fun. I enjoy the exercise of imagining the lives of authors and Powers handled these two Great American Novelists with empathy and humor. show less

Capote in Kansas: A Ghost Story by Kim Powers is a fictional account of the relationship between Truman Capote and Harper Lee. The book opens over twenty years after the publication of In Cold Blood with Truman being haunted by the ghost of Nancy Clutter. Even though he hadn’t spoken to Nelle (Harper Lee) in twenty years, he calls her in the middle of the night. From there, the book explores their relationship from childhood to Truman’s death. It also delves into the affect writing and researching the book In Cold Blood had on their relationship and on them individually. At one point, Nelle wondered, “What had happened to them in Kansas? Had those murders so sapped them they didn’t have anything left over to put on the page?” show more Capote in Kansas also examines the controversy surrounding the authorship of To Kill a Mockingbird.

Of course, this is a work of fiction. In an author’s note at the back of the book, Kim Powers explains how he came to write the book and the research he undertook in preparation for writing it. So, while this book is fiction, much of it is based on real events. The thoughts and emotions of the characters are all imagined, though.

I am a fan of both Truman Capote and Harper Lee and their writing, so I found this to be a fascinating, page-turning read. I do wonder if someone who is unfamiliar with them would enjoy the book as much as I did. show less

There are times when fate conspires to bring two people together only to tear them apart. This is true of Nelle Harper Lee and Truman Capote. Truman’s mother, who had no time or interest in her eccentric son, sent him to live with his family in Monroeville, Alabama. Nelle grew up next door. She was not blind to his idiosyncrasies. in fact, she understood and cared for him like no one else. Nelle was there for him to type up his stories when they were children and to help him connect with people in Kansas while he worked on In Cold Blood. Their bond, however, was not indestructible. Although they complement each other in many ways, it is the ways in which they are alike that drives a wedge between them. It was a distance that might show more only be bridged by the ghosts from their past.

There is much to love about this novel, but what struck me the most was the impact that writing about another person can have on both the author and the subject. Truman Capote was most definitely in search of fame when he made the decision to write about the Clutter family after their tragic and brutal murders in Kansas. He was haunted by their ghosts later in life because they did not want the attention In Cold Blood brought to them, even though they were deceased at the time. Lee, on the other hand, wrote her neighbor into To Kill a Mockingbird in the form of Boo Radley as a tribute to him. His family never understood her intentions and blamed her for the disruptions her fans made in his life. Whether a depiction is fictional or biographical, putting a person down on paper proved to be the equivalent of stealing that person’s soul. That Lee was sensitive to this from the beginning while Capote didn’t start confronting it until his work became responsible for his being ostracized from New York society - and even then not fully until it was forced upon him as his life was in a downward spiral - that fleshes these characters out fully. By choosing to explore this theme within a novel about two of the most famous and influential American authors in recent time makes this novel fresh, engaging, and memorable.

Although I had read To Kill a Mockingbird prior to reading Capote in Kansas, I knew very little about Lee or Capote when I opened this novel. I did not know about their friendship or that there was a rift tore them apart. In the novel, Capote and his actions were responsible for their estrangement, but it wouldn’t have happened at all were it not for the personal and professional insecurities of they both shared. I found this story fascinating, especially as Powers told it from within the context of the midnight phone calls, the memories, and the ghosts who visited them both in the middle of the night. Whatever the reality of their friendship may have been, I left this novel hoping that they were able to make peace with each other before Capote’s death.

I read this novel over the course of a single day. It was interesting and compelling throughout. It was with satisfaction that I finished the novel and closed the back cover. It’s clear from his writing that Powers’ respects his characters and is compassionate yet honest when dealing with their flaws. I found that it was not necessary to have much knowledge of Lee and Capote to be swept up by their star crossed friendship and to experience their pain as life, love, and childhood loyalties do not work out as they had planned. Despite some potential spoilers about the Clutter family and their killers found within Capote in Kansas, I’m now genuinely interested in reading Capote’s most famous work. I typically avoid books about real-life murders because they get under my skin and give me nightmares. Now, I am curious to see what more it might reveal about him. I have no regrets.

http://literatehousewife.wordpress.com/2008/10/28/113-capote-in-kansas/ show less

Capote in Kansas by Kim Powers takes a lot of chances. Recreating the lives of not one but two well known and well respected American writers and dealing with subject matter that has not only been covered by others, but covered very well. It is to Mr. Powers great credit that he pulls it off, giving readers an entertaining and haunting experience by telling us a story we already think we know.

Capote in Kansas is the story of Truman Capote and Harper Lee, their difficult lifelong relationship, their time together in Kansas researching In Cold Blood and how the subject of their research continued to haunt them long after the book was published.

Towards the end of his life, Truman Capote, who spends most of the novel at his home in Palm show more Springs with only his maid,- Myrtle and a plumber he is infatuated with, has begun to fell the presence of Nancy Clutter's ghost. (Nancy Clutter was one of four family members whose vicious murder became the subject for Capote's non-fiction novel In Cold Blood.) Capote never wrote anything of substance again and ended up isolated from most of his friends and acquaintances. In Mr. Powers' novel, he seems to regret this situation which is probably what causes him to think Nancy Clutter's ghost is haunting him. Capote calls Harper Lee in the middle of the night, frantic with fear convinced that Nancy Clutter has come back from the dead to seek revenge on him for exploiting her life and her murder.

Harper Lee, Capote's childhood friend, currently lives with her sister in their family home in Mississippi. She also never published anything after the success of her first novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, which come out shortly after In Cold Blood, and has only recently begun to appear at public functions. In Mr. Powers' novel she is also haunted, by the Clutters, by memories of her deceased brother whom she writes letters to, by the real man Boo Radley was based on, and by her now failed friendship with Truman.

Both people emerge as fully formed, believable characters in Mr. Powers' novel. I was initially skeptical about this, I usually avoid fictionalized stories like this one, but after a few chapters I was hooked. Truman Capote was nothing if not interesting, and Harper Lee continues to fascinate if only by her absence, so Capote in Kansas can easily give the reader a sense of gaining insider knowledge. Some of this is a bit prurient at first, but by the end of the novel, I felt that I had come to understand the situation and the characters. The attempt to reconcile a long lost friendship, to apologize for things said and left unsaid, gives the book a human touch that would have otherwise been lost in the somewhat sordid details of Truman Capote's end as interesting as those details are. Mr. Powers' book serves as an attempt to bring both Capote and Lee back into the fold, so to speak. I think he succeeds.

It certainly must be said that the story of In Cold Blood and its creation is simply a fascinating one. Two effete southerners from New York City head off to the Kansas prairie and try to meet and interview just about everyone in town. I still find it difficult to believe that they pulled it off. Through both character's flashbacks we see several scenes of their time in Kansas including the night Truman took several locals out to dinner and then dancing at what must have been the only drag bar in Kansas much to Harper's chagrin. The fact that it's so hard to believe only makes it more believable. show less

This seems like a development of fan-fiction, only it's really an alternative history of Harper Lee and Truman Capote with a twilight zoneish twist. It didn't shed too much new light on Capote other than I was not aware of his collaged "snake boxes". Powers attempts to blend them into some possible meaning. It was an enjoyable read and made me want to find out more about Harper Lee.(Nellie).
I might add that if you are not familiar with Capote's life much of it won't make sense.

* library borrow.

So far hauntingly familiar. Have I read this before? or just read enough of Capote for it to be familiar.

Fans of Truman Capote and Harper Lee would have probably found Capote in Kansas to be irresistible even before the two recent movie treatments of Capote’s life and Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee, the unauthorized biography published last year. But since the book and movies have raised public interest in Capote and Lee to its highest level in the last two decades Kim Powers could not have published his novel at a more perfect time.

Capote in Kansas is set in 1984, just a few weeks before Capote’s death from liver disease in the home of his longtime friend Joanne Carson, Johnny’s second wife. Through flashbacks to 1959 Kansas, when the pair did the research for Capote’s In Cold Blood, and to their childhood days in rural show more Alabama, Powers explains the powerful bond between the two, imagines what may have caused them to stop speaking to each other for so many years, and unfolds a devastatingly sad version of what their lives became after each was visited by relatively sudden fame and fortune.

Powers imagines a time shortly before Capote’s death during which Capote suddenly telephones Lee in the middle of the night, after years of silence between the two, with a panicked plea for her help to rid his bedroom of Nancy Clutter’s ghost. Nancy is not happy about having been turned into a celebrity by Capote’s book and her ghost eventually visits even Nelle Harper. But this book is not really a ghost story. Rather, it is an unblinking look at two people who despite the powerful bonds of a shared childhood and so many years as best friends allowed themselves to drift apart for reasons the rest of us can only speculate about.

Neither Capote nor Lee ever published a book after the successes of their two masterpieces but they handled that fact very differently. Capote became a regular on the celebrity circuit of television talk shows, for years working hard to maintain the illusion that he was on the verge of publishing his next big book. Lee quietly moved back to Alabama to live with her older sister in the family home and has maintained her privacy and silence regarding Capote and any future writing projects ever since.

Capote’s inability to complete another book was compounded, if not caused outright, by his years of alcohol and drug addiction. Many, as Powers does here, have speculated that his behavior may also be the reason that Lee has never published another book. Capote is likely to have been responsible for the rumor that he, not Harper Lee, was the author of To Kill a Mockingbird. At the least, it was a rumor he encouraged by his refusal to ever deny it. Some think that Lee was so embarrassed and tormented by the rumor that she simply decided that she had had enough of fame and retreated to small town Alabama to live out the rest of her days.

Capote in Kansas is a nice blend of fact and fiction and, although they will be somewhat saddened by its contents, fans of Capote and Lee will enjoy it.

Rated at: 4.0 show less

This is a weird "ghost story" about Nelle Harper Lee and Truman Capote, and the break-up of their friendship. It's really quite sad and pitiful, and I actually got teary at the end. But I'm not sure who I would recommend it to; in fact I haven't recommended it to anyone.