Capote In Kansas (Paperback)

~ (Author), Chris Samnee (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

It's 1959 and Truman Capote is looking for a challenging project. A story about an unsolved crime in Kansas sends him and assistant Harper Lee (author of To Kill a Mockingbird) on a transforming journey. This graphic novel gives a fictionalized account of Capote's time in Kansas researching the Clutter family murders for his groundbreaking In Cold Blood. Once at the crime scene, the flamboyant Capote must learn to fit in with the locals and find a way to get inside the crime. Writer Parks's last book, Union Station, was another true crime tale, and he has done his research for this, but he also introduces several unreal elements, including the ghost of 16-year-old murder victim Nancy Clutter, who becomes a confidante for Capote as the tale goes on. The book attempts to deal with the writer's ambivalence over his involvement in the aftermath of the crime, but the sometimes flat script isn't done any favors by the art, which has a good sense of place but a poor grasp of likenesses, making the characters often difficult to identify. Capote was a complicated, colorful figure, but this book only scratches the surface of the demons that drove him. (Aug.)
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From School Library Journal

Grade 10 Up–Cleverly reprising the genre blur that Truman Capote created when he wrote In Cold Blood as a nonfiction novel, Parks and Samnee present and represent the author's fact-gathering trip to the Midwest in the early 1960s, traveling with his soon-to-become-famous friend Harper Lee. There he dealt with locals who found his New York City flair and personal foppishness either silly or offensive, interviewed the Clutter family's murderers, and struggled with memories of his own awkward childhood. Samnee's black-and-white art captures both the internal and external lights and shadows of small-town America–its diner, prison cells, neighborhhoods–and Capote's own psychology–his admiration and jealousy of Lee, his memories of boyhood, his loneliness far from his adult home. In keeping with the more-than-fact angle of this graphic novel, a sweet girl ghost floats through these pages as well, a reminder of the humanity behind the story that increased its author's stature in the world of letters.–Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley Public Library, CA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 136 pages
• Publisher: Oni Press; illustrated edition edition (July 27, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1932664297
• ISBN-13: 978-1932664294
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #731,747 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Capote Classic!, August 16, 2005

By	Denny M. Haynes (Lexington, KY United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Capote in Kansas is a perfect companion piece to In Cold Blood. Ande Park's graphic novel parallels Capote's work providing interesting details and the inner most thoughts of the main character(s) while developing the supporting characters, showing how their lives are touched and how their lives touch the main character, yet carves its own path along the way.

This is a gorgeously illustrated novel with an eye catching cover. How Ande was able to get Chris Samnee is beyond me, I'm thinking he lost big to Ande in a poker match and this was the only way he could pay his debt.

Ande Parks has provided his readers with a hundred and twenty pages of solid writing with no wasted page or panel leaving the reader wanting another hundred and twenty.

I highly recommend Capote in Kansas. This graphic novel and its creators are definitely worthy of an Eisner nomination.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Eisner-Worthy? Maybe. (Warning: Contains Some Spoilers), August 17, 2005

By	EisigEyes (St. Louis, MO USA) - See all my reviews

Murder, ripped straight from the pages of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, begins Capote in Kansas, the engaging work from writer Ande Parks and illustrator Chris Samnee. Based on the research period of Capote's "non-fiction novel," the story introduces the reader to Capote, the flamboyant, arguably-overconfident, writer who steps into a world of brutal homicide, centered around the deaths of four members of a prominent Holcomb farming family-Kansans Herb, Bonnie, Nancy, and Kenyon Clutter.
In his story, Parks takes the reader cyclically from death to death, filling it in with what perhaps is his strongest talent, the ability to create telling human relationships. It's not the believability of Capote as a socialite character that draws readers in, but rather his vulnerability. While it becomes difficult to believe some of Capote's actions (the naïve waltz into the police station, the expectation of assistance from the police) one does not question the more intimate moments of his life, especially not Capote's childhood. Capote's solid friendship with Harper Lee only reinforces the strength of this scene creating a relationship that foreshadows Capote's later one with Perry.
Still, for all the success of Parks' characters, one cannot help but find fault in Nancy Clutter, the ghost who seems no more than a device for sentimentality. While she might have been a powerful illustration of Capote's psychological struggle to unravel the history of the Clutter family, Nancy comes off more as a confidante and a contrivance to humanize Capote. It appears, at times, that Parks' may have intended Nancy to be something closer to the illustration of the struggle, but it never quite settles into that. This sentimentality goes on to haunt Parks' narration, especially in the scenes with Capote and Nancy in the rain, and Capote hugging Perry in prison.
Still, applause should certainly follow Parks' depiction of homosexual relationships. Not only does he shy away from overt stereotype, but in the letters and back-and-forthing between Capote and Jack, readers have the opportunity to see love. Parks does not dwell on Capote's infidelity either, acts which may not make for a likeable character, but nevertheless a believable one (Capote having had several relationships with arguably-heterosexual men). That he treats homosexuals as people, however, and not types exploitable for comic value is a testament to Parks' maturity as a writer.
And accompanying Parks' tale, Samnee lends his talents for stunning illustration. With careful attention to negative space, and a degree of control that would make Frank Miller proud, Samnee creates highly-detailed images with particular expertise at group scenes (the funeral, arrest of the suspects), parties, banquets, and landscapes. His depictions of anticipation, remorse, happiness, and sly wit are unquestionably authentic with his management of sequencing tracking the progression of emotion beautifully in scenes like Capote's childhood, Capote's advance at Perry, and at the story's conclusion, Nancy's beautiful dance into oblivion.
One encounters trouble, however, in scenes like Capote's seduction of the teacher, where, arguably, it would seem that Capote is making love to himself. The character differentiation simply isn't clear enough, as opposed to other points in the novel, which are crystal (Capote inspecting the Clutter home, the beginning murder scene). Though, Samnee should receive no fewer congratulations than Parks on his depiction of homosexual relationships, especially in the scene between Capote and the teacher. The kissing appears natural with the teacher showing just enough shame and apprehension one might expect from a small-town person concerned about the discovery of a secret. Only in a few places does the sequencing seem shaky, most notably when Capote attempts to demonstrate a handstand to Nancy, which results in him falling over, and knocking a phantom chair to the ground-a chair that seems to appear out of thin air just for the sake of one panel.
Overall, though, the work is successful, conveying powerful images to compliment the grim tale. Parks keeps the reader focused upon Capote without overloading them with information. Background history works smoothly into the plot, and Samnee is there to keep the horrors on the page bound in ink.

1 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Quite Bizarre, April 11, 2006

By	Cecilia Sheppard (Atlanta, GA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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As an avid fan of the book "In Cold Blood" and the movie "Capote", I looked forward to reading this. I should have stuck to Gerald Clarke's biography. This was okay, although I don't think it advanced my knowledge of Capote, the crimes, the Clutters, or the killers. Nancy Clutter's utilization as a plot device was odd--I kept wondering what her two surviving sisters would have thought of this.