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Capote in Kansas: A Ghost Story

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There have been a bevy of films and books within the last couple of years revolving around Truman Capote and his seminal work, In Cold Blood. It's his oft recognized masterpiece, a blend of fiction and fact previously never done before, setting the literary world on fire. And his eventual downfall. Same might be said for literary legend Harper Lee, who also reached the peak of her success, publishing what arguably could be considered the best book in American history, To Kill a Mockingbird (slipcased edition).
These two authors, former best friends and confidants, come together in Kim Powers new book, "Capote in Kansas: A Ghost Story".

Power recreates the lives of these two authors by reflecting on the things that haunt both of them. For Truman, he is pursued by his imaginative ghosts of the Clutter Family, as well as the two killers, in his drunken hallucinations. Frightened, with no one really to turn to, he calls up Nelle, who speaks with him but fails to chase the ghosts away. Nelle herself has her own ghosts to contend with. She is pursued, not by spiritual beings, but by the fame that came with writing her masterpiece. She is the object of someone stalking her, who sends her a dead mockingbird in a box, along with pictures to show that she has been tailed in the past.

Powers magically strings both of these stories along, with a sparse prose reminiscent of the elegance of Le''s writing. At first, I was dubious to the plot, wondering how he would handle these two greats, but more importantly, how could he possibly shed any more light on this topic, which by now is starting to feel a little bit overdone. But, because this ultimately is a work of fiction, he is able to bend realities enough to make these ghost stories real enough, and compelling enough, to add to the current stream of knowledge. Both authors are brilliantly realized, and fit into their perspective slots in American Literature.

But perhaps my favorite was getting closer to one of my favorite authors, Harper Lee. A recent book written about her life, Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee only made me long for more information about her. This story appeased that somewhat, as we as readers were invited into her closed world, if only in our imaginations. Perhaps Harper has one more book inside of her that she hasn't written yet. Perhaps she could write about Truman, and her days during this time. What a book that would be.

This book is a classic example of an author failing to follow through on an interesting and original premise.

Powers uses the real life relationship between Truman Capote and Harper Lee to create what amounts to a silly, not very entertaining "ghost" story. While there is no secret of Capote's eccentricity in real life, here he is portrayed as nothing more than a comic book character. Powers is a little more sympathetic to his portrayal of Lee, but even that falls flat.

The whole story is based on the unfounded rumor that Capote actually wrote TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. If that's the case, than considering how much work Lee did for Capote in his fact finding mission for IN COLD BLOOD, one could easily argue that Lee "wrote" that book. Powers offers nothing here other than an attempt to put an end to that rumor, and he fails miserably.

This book is about 250 pages long and I had to force myself to finish it. Truly disappointing.

Being a devoted fan of Truman Capote and Harper Lee, I loved receiving this book as a birthday gift. I wasn't sure what more I would learn of the two's unusual friendship, but discovered several interesting tidbits. The time they spent in Kansas has been documented in "Capote" and "Infamous" but this tale takes creative license to suppose what happened in much more detail. Why did Harper and Truman end a life-long friendship of 20 years shortly after "In Cold Blood was published? How deeply were they both affected by their extensive research on the Clutter family.(The four victims of "In Cold Blood.") How does it still "haunt" them? Also discussed is the fact that neither Capote or Lee published any works after their time in Kansas. Why?

I liked the fictionalization of this novel. It makes a grander tale while educating the reader on true facts about both of these geniuses. Written with suspense and ghosts the books clips along while pages turn themselves.

Interesting and creative read.

Kim Powers' "Capote In Kansas: A Ghost Story" is simply dreadful. One is tempted to recall Capote's own alleged words about Jack Kerouac: "That's not writing. That's typing."

The book purports to treat the authors of two great pieces of American literature, Truman Capote and Harper Lee, and to delve into their lifelong relationship, with a focus on an imaginary hallucinatory period before the end of Mr. Capote's life. If, as others have asserted, this book is an imagining of a very Southern relationship, then one wishes Mr. Powers had applied a bit of Southern wisdom and minded his own business.

One may suppose that Harper Lee's perceived reclusive nature is naturally fodder for speculation, but to build a novel around it AND to have the unmitigated gall to fictionalize a living person verges on libel. It is one thing to imagine the lives of the already deaceased; to do that to a very private, living person who gave America perhaps the greatest literary treasure of the 20th century in the form of "To Kill A Mockingbird" is on the same violative level as Atticus' admonition never to kill a mockingbird: some things are simply wrong and ought not be done. "Capote In Kansas: A Ghost Story" is one of those.

From lurid allusions to Miss Lee's sexuality to asserting the very private feelings that must surely be attendant on the death of one's family members to creating a literary character out of Miss Lee's sister, to creating a story of a non-existent small town animus, nothing is apparently out of bounds to Mr. Powers. That he does all this without displaying any creative talent only adds insult to injury.

One cannot help but see a resemblance between Powers' treatment of Miss Lee and the treatment of J.D. Salinger in W.P. Kinsella's "Shoeless Joe." In both novels, the author displays a stunning level of gall in attempting to recreate an interior life for an actual, living person who is defenseless to the writer's intent. Kinsella is perhaps more forgivable for having at least not violated Salinger's life in the way Powers does Miss Lee's.

Like millions of other readers, I was forever touched by "To Kill A Mockingbird" and stricken by "In Cold Blood." So, too, he confesses in the mercifully-reached end note, was Mr. Powers. Mr. Powers, however, seems bent on attempting to cash in on those books' deserved fame with his own piece of dreck. The back cover of Mr. Powers' book says he's a producer for Good Morning America. With that in mind, I encourage him: don't quit your day job.

In an era when a musician can sue a person for doing nothing more than sharing a song with another, it is a pity Miss Lee didn't lawyer up and make sure not a penny of the proceeds of this book went into Mr. Powers' pocket. With more wisdom than I have, perhaps she thought better of giving this miserable tome more publicity than it had already received. See how easy it is to ascribe motives and intent to a person one has never met? Mr. Powers does that for an entire book, and with far less reason.

I've just finished "Capote In Kansas: A Ghost Story," and I was saddened by the shameless profiteering and unutterably bored by the writing. I don't even want this thing on my shelf. I can't give it away to the library, however, for I refuse to participate in palming off Mr. Powers' libel on some unsuspecting library patron. I can't bear to burn a book (although this thing is as near as I've ever gotten to doing so), so I suppose I'm left with composting it for the garden.

I don't often say such things about a book. This thing was simply attrocious on any level at which it might be examined. I have yet to find any way in which it contributes to anything except Mr. Powers' bank account. For pity's sake, don't make the mistake I made.

CAPOTE IN KANSAS is like a good impressionist painting in that, once you have a chance to step back and consider the whole, you see an astonishing portrait. I have to admit that I was a little uncertain as I read through this book, made up of alternating chapters about the end-of-their-lives Truman Capote and Harper Lee, I wasn't so sure I liked what was going on. Was this supposed to be a mystery? A ghost story, as its subtitle promises? Or something else? After closing the book on its last page, I decided it was something else entirely. CAPOTE IN KANSAS is a beautiful, well-realized rumination on friendship and the ties that bind us throughout our lives. The book takes some fascinating detours into Lee and Capote's time in Kansas, researching the brutal murders of the Clutter family and travels back further in time to the childhood of the two protagonists, when their true bond with one another was cemented. In the end, this lyrical story wants to say, we are bound most firmly with those who helped make us who we are, for better or worse. And the real ghosts are the childhood Truman and Harper. Their potential was realized, yet the tragedy of realizing that potential so soon haunted both of them for the rest of their lives, connecting them in ways neither probably ever imagined, until they were confronted with the specter of their own and others' immortality in very real ways. Highly recommended.

Capote in Kansas is a ghostly story, in which a pair of childhood friends attain tremendous literary fame, only to have their relationship destroyed by their success. The novel opens as both Truman Capote and Harper Lee are nearing the ends of their respective lives. Each has been a "one book wonder" of a sort, each now long paralyzed by a form of writer's block. Both authors, who were simply human, after all, obsess over the choices they've made, struggling with enormous guilt and anxiety, somewhat existential in nature. Kim Powers takes the reader on an imaginary sojourn into their minds and hearts. Both are visited by ghosts and memories, unfulfilled wishes and waking dreams. How much of this plot is sheer, metaphorical fancy? Probably most of it. But it is based upon facts, and it might be interesting to revisit Capote in Kansas after reading some legitimate biography, to come to one's own educated conclusion.

I know it sounded like a good idea. The story of childhood friends and authors Truman Capote and (Nelle) Harper Lee has so many facets it is seemingly open to endless interpretation. In 1959, the two writers went to Kansas to research the murders that became the subject of Capote's legendary book, "In Cold Blood" (1966). The experience was so disquieting and traumatic; so powerful that it seems to have haunted their consciences and dampened their literary output forever. Almost 50 years later, the story has never been told nor dramatized so often as in the last several years. To fully enjoy "Capote in Kansas: A Ghost Story," the reader needs to know the backstory, and know it well. Kim Powers integrates real-life figures and events with fictional characters with some facility, but the novel falls short of casting the spell a novel of this subgenre should. A book like this really needs to effortlessly glide the reader into suspension of disbelief, and the ghosts need to appear to the reader, not just the characters. The reader who is unfamiliar with many of the books, historical works and movies that inspired Kim Powers to write his ghost story may find this a frustrating read to say the least. It seems to me to be pointless to pick up "Capote in Kansas" if the title doesn't ring an immediate, loudly pealing bell.

Powers creates a characterization of Nelle that seems plausible, but again, only if you have read other books ahead of this one. Both the fictional and real-life Nelles seem to have been so intelligent. Why did they let Truman get away with emotional blackmail for so long? Several of Capote's best-realized characters were emotional thieves, too, having been dreamed up by a master. The best of Capote's late short stories is "Handcarved Coffins" (which Capote always claimed was a true story) and it is dominated by such a manipulator. Unfortunately, Powers retells the entire story to set up a leitmotif, which would have been more successful had it not come across as "variations on a theme by Capote."

In fairness to Kim Powers, this is a tricky premise to master. E. L. Doctorow's "Ragtime" (1975) is the blueprint for all such novels that have appeared in the last 35 years; Doctorow set himself an ambitious task and fulfilled it magnificently. Some books, like Tracy Chevalier's "Girl With A Pearl Earring," succeed quite well. On the other hand, Chris Bohjalian's "The Double Bind," in which he attempts to weave characters from "The Great Gatsby" into a present-day story, doesn't work at all. "Capote in Kansas: A Ghost Story" is not a disaster. Powers may have simply been too caught up in the story to do it justice, even as fiction. He would not be the first.

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 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.

Truman Capote, Nelle Harper Lee, two illustrious Southern authors: one flamboyant, brazen and pretentious, the other seemingly sensible and resolute, once firm friends who haven't spoken in decades or have they? Did Truman really pen To Kill a Mockingbird? Why are the Clutter's (the murdered family from In Cold Blood) spirits haunting Nelle and Capote? Who is sending Nelle strange upsetting packages?

In the last year of his life Capote calls Lee one final time, rambling drunk (or scared stiff?) to declare in his tinny voice he is being haunted by the Clutters. Annoyed, yet still seized by Truman's sudden, startling news and intrusion into her still-life like life, Nelle is unbelieving until Bonnie Clutter pays her a visit late one evening.

What follows is a brutal, touching analogy of a friendship mysteriously gone astray only to be rediscovered amongst ghosts, memories and parcels. Set in 1984 and 59' and their brilliant depression era childhood, Capote and Lee's past and present are blended brilliantly by the visitations and Power's commanding imagery of words. Capote's life, an upheaval of drugs and booze, drags the mundane into high-flying drama which at times is both poignantly pitiful and delightfully funny. Whilst Nell's years have been a study of a stale existence, still it is her side of the story which is most compelling and moving.

Power's has fashioned an original touching story of friendship and 'what might have been.' An imaginative fabrication of ghosts and troubled souls, a story that lingers long after the last page has been read.

A number of prerequisite readings will make Kim Powers' novel 'Capote in Kansas' even more enjoyable than it is, and it is. They should include the "new journalism" classic 'In Cold Blood' by Truman Capote, 'To Kill a Mockingbird' by his longtime friend Nelle Harper Lee, and the various biographies and magazine articles about the two writers, who shared childhoods in the South, aided each other's bestselling efforts, but eventually parted ways as fame, fortune, and eventual creative failure interfered.

It also helps to be interested in just why these two celebrated authors seemed to have run out of gas at a certain point. A good reference would be finding a copy of the Merv Griffin or Dick Cavett shows of the 1970s, to once again witness Capote in his elegant decline.

Of course, the crib notes version of prepping for Kim Powers' touching and often hilarious (if you know his accuracy and contrasting playfulness with the subject matter) novel is simply to watch any of the various recent film versions of Capote's life and the tumultuous results of writing In Cold Blood. Rent 'To Kill a Mockingbird,' too.

Powers' creative rewriting of many events covered in the films goes a bit further into the "why" of Capote's motivation, unlike the dueling impersonations on film. (Interestingly, a graphic novel, 'Capote in Kansas,' written by Ande Parks, with art by Chris Samnee, has also been published by Oni Press this year.)

When Truman calls Nelle in a panic, claiming that the ghosts of the Clutters are visiting Capote nightly, both authors' lives are set off in a sort of unraveling. The murdered Kansas farm family's story compelled Capote's trek and subsequent bestseller. Lee served as Capote's assistant, typist and occasional go-between in Kansas, where his effeminate and eccentric comportment initially failed.

So what happened to the two writers? Why did they work so well together, then fall out as friends? What do the dead want? Did making them posthumously famous curse Capote?

The diminutive writer's latter days spent in Palm Spring are detailed, including escapades with a "trade" worker and romantic interest, as well as the conspiratorial activities told from the viewpoint of his maid when Capote seeks revenge against his conniving lover by pouring sugar into his car's gas tank.

Meanwhile, Harper Lee, known to friends as Nelle, spends a lot of time fending off her nosy sister, who wants to know if she's ever going to crank out another bestseller.

Nelle begins to receive a series of artful yet malevolently decorated boxes with tiny coffins. While she's sure they're from Capote (Powers offers a clever explanation for the writer's actual secret art project, a series of collage boxes), they frighten her as much as Capote's alleged ghosts.

Powers, whose own life became the subject of his first book, a memoir ('The History of Swimming'), weaves a deft and clever rewriting of what is known and fabricated about these two mysterious authors, both of whom became national celebrities in the 1950s, but both of whom failed to continue their success.

In a way, Powers enacts a sort of revenge on Capote, who was known to change details of 'In Cold Blood' to satisfy his own writing. Perhaps the Clutters are satisfied. Living readers will be satisfied as well.