When the ghosts of the Clutter family from In Cold Blood literally come calling, a near-death Truman Capote reaches out to estranged writer pal Nelle Harper Lee for help in Capote in Kansas.

Vérité Moment
At one point, Kim Powers plausibly implies that Capote himself started the rumors that he was the real author of Lee’s venerable To Kill a Mockingbird.

Lowdown
Powers astutely summons the intense sorrow behind a life-long friendship gone awry.

Library Journal, 10/15/2007 (starred review)In his exceptional first novel, Emmy and Peabody Award winner Powers presents us with Truman Capote in the last year of his life. Addled by drugs and alcohol and despairing the wreck his shining life has become, he is plagued by the ghosts of the people whose deaths he chronicled in his greatest book, In Cold Blood. The now-old Harper Lee, or Nelle as she calls herself, is the only one who has a shot at understanding Truman—his childhood friend, she served as companion and researcher on the trip to Kansas that produced In Cold Blood. But Nelle has her own ghosts to exorcise having to do with why she never wrote a second book. In Kansas, Powers speculates, Truman exposed Nelle to her own sexuality, which she continues to suppress. And at his famous 1966 Black and White Ball, green with envy over Nelle’s having won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, Truman spreads the rumor that it was he who wrote To Kill a Mockingbird, not she. Powers, whose 2006 memoir, The History of Swimming, was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick, succeeds brilliantly in blending fact and fiction to produce a sensitive portrait of two lost souls. Heartily recommended for public collections.—David Keymer, Modesto, CA  

Capote in Kansas: A Ghost Story, by Kim Powers. Carrol & Graf, 256
pages, $23.99 hardcover.As this fantasia rooted in reality opens, Truman Capote is weeks away from dying, despondent that his friends have deserted him, drowning in drink and drugs (fact), and haunted by nightmare visits from the Clutters (fiction) - the Kansas family whose massacre inspired Capote’s true-crime triumph, _In Cold Blood_. In his delirium, he reaches out (fiction) to Harper Lee, author of _To Kill a Mockingbird_, who accompanied Capote to Kansas as he researched the Clutter family’s slaying and the lives of their killers (fact). The childhood friends have been estranged for years (fact), Lee long embittered by rumors that Capote really wrote the book that brought her fame - a pivotal bit of fiction in this terrifically intense meshing of imagination and truth. Powers folds his fiction seamlessly into facts; the result is a riveting, offbeat what-if novel. His heartfelt depiction of a Capote in tragic decline - but with flashes of crafty self-awareness - is haunting; his portrayal of Lee as a lesbian _manque_ - though she’s still alive, and as reclusive as ever - is heartrending. –Richard LaBonte

“Through fiction, [Powers] intriguingly focuses on the end of Capote’s self-absorbed life, exploring the demons that haunted his final days…An engaging narrative that sensitively explores the intricacies of transgression and forgiveness within friendship.”—New Orleans Times-Picayune

 “[A] thrilling new novel…[An] unusual tale, which combines elements of historical fiction with a classic ghost story.”—The Advocate 

http://www.advocate.com/exclusive_detail_ektid49625.asp

October 08, 2007

A Fictional Take on Famous Frenemies

Writer Kim Powers imagines an early-’80s reconciliation between former friends Harper Lee and Truman Capote in his fascinating new novel, Capote in Kansas.

By Regina Marler

The germ of Kim Powers’s dark and captivating first novel, Capote in Kansas, was “one of the most exquisite movies ever made — To Kill a Mockingbird.” Powers saw the film as a boy in Texas before reading the Harper Lee novel. Not long after, he watched the movie of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. “I grew up with these two things in my head,” the writer recalls. “The beauty of Mockingbird, of playing outside of night, of being scared of the strange person in the neighborhood and the different fear that murderers were going to come into my house at night.”

For Powers, these potent ingredients fueled a fascination with Capote, who died in 1984, and Lee, a fiercely private woman still living part of the year with her older sister in Monroeville, Ala. Capote and Lee had been childhood friends and neighbors — Capote was the model for the small, imaginative boy, Dill, in Mockingbird, and Lee went to Holcomb, Kan., to help Capote research his groundbreaking “nonfiction novel.” Soon after the publication of In Cold Blood, though, the writers had a major falling-out. Powers believes there was “a degree of evil they saw in Kansas that took them the rest of their lives to deal with.” But he thinks something else may have happened between them. Capote in Kansas teases out the possibilities.

“It’s speculative, of course,” Powers says. Set in the early 1980s, when Capote was despondent and irrational, washing down rainbows of pills with alcohol, the novel opens with Capote calling Lee in the middle of the night after years of silence. Soon ghosts — literal and figurative—are haunting both of them, and Lee starts getting anonymous packages in the mail from someone who knows a lot about her.

Powers, who was a writer for ABC’s Good Morning America and is now at Primetime, was almost finished with his novel when he learned about the film Capote. “It was like a knife in the heart,” he says. “I thought I was the guardian of the greatest story ever told.”

He felt better after seeing Capote — and its lesser-known rival, Infamous. Capote in Kansas is more Lee’s book than Capote’s. Like the movies, and like Capote’s depiction of the Clutter family in In Cold Blood, Powers’s book bends the truth in the name of art. These aren’t inaccuracies, Powers argues, but “willful creations.” An author’s note explains where he veered from the known facts.

Capote in Kansas, not to be confused with a 2005 graphic novel of the same name by Andre Parks and Chris Samnee, appears just three weeks before the paperback release of Powers’s gorgeous writing debut, 2006’s The History of Swimming, a memoir of his relationship with his troubled twin brother, who died of AIDS complications in 1991. (Powers had another brother, who like the twins was gay, who died of AIDS that same year.) Both Swimming and Kansas are suspenseful, with quick-moving plots. “This might come from my years writing for TV,” Powers says. “Or it could be that my literary influence is Nancy Drew.” 

Washington Blade Interview - Dec. 7. 07

Upending the past   Gay
Gay author Kim Powers explores Truman Capote and Harper Lee in a new light

KATHERINE VOLIN [Email address: editor #AT# washblade.com - replace #AT# with @ ]
Friday, December 07, 2007

Kim Powers didn’t publish his first book until a year ago but he quickly received accolades for the memoir, “The History of Swimmin,” from sources that ranged from Diane Sawyer to the New York Times. Last month he was named one of the Out 100.

The gay author’s second book joins the number of Truman Capote works that surfaced over the past few years, which have included two films from 2005 and a new book of essays that was published this month.

“I started this book long before the two Capote movies came out,” Powers, 48, says. “I almost threw it away. I thought, ‘You know, this is done.’ I thought I had wandered into this miraculous story no one knew about.”

But Powers didn’t throw it away, realizing that “Capote in Kansas: A Ghost Story” doesn’t bang the same tired drum. In it, Powers relates his fictionalized rendering of the relationship between gay writer Truman Capote and “To Kill a Mockingbird” author Harper Lee — a relationship he has been “ravenously reading” about since his childhood.

Capote and Lee grew up together in Alabama and worked together in Kansas while Capote explored the real-life Clutter murders that would become the subject of his most prominent book, “In Cold Blood.” After its publication, however, their relationship took a nosedive, a phenomenon Powers set about exploring in “Capote in Kansas.”

“I think he was sort of jealous that he didn’t win the Pulitzer Prize for ‘In Cold Blood’ and Harper Lee did win it for ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’” Powers says. “That was one of the beginnings of the fractured relationship between them. He certainly trusted her enough to invite her to be his assistant in Kansas. He knew that because he was so eccentric, he needed someone a little more salt of the earth.”

Powers suggests that the friends’ opposite approaches to fame and notoriety may have eventually separated them.

 “She ran from fame as fast as Truman sought it, and I thought, based on my reading and research, that kind of sums them up.”

CAPOTE’S GAY SEXUAL ORIENT-ation is well-known, but Lee’s life has always been more private. In his book, Powers lightly touches on the subject of Lee’s orientation, although he’s careful to point out that he’s not trying to claim she is a lesbian. His book is fiction, even if it does have roots in fact.

“I’m by far not the first person to speculate whether she’s gay or not,” Powers says. “In the book, I really meant to represent it as something Truman is exploring and forcing Harper to do more or less to get a reaction from her, and she refuses to give him what he wants. He thinks he can shake anybody into answering him and she doesn’t. She holds that part of her life back. I was fascinated by that.”

Although still alive at age 81, Lee has long been a recluse. Powers’ choice to turn her into a fictionalized character may meet with some resistance from her fans, as he knows.

“I don’t know if people think I’ve done a very audacious or daring or taboo thing by digging into her the way I have,” he says. “The thing that’s always missing has been the emotional heartbeat underneath all of that, and I tried ,maybe somewhat audaciously, to tap into that.”

I’ve got a dozen or so radio interviews coming up for Capote in Kansas over the next week, so if you’re in any of these areas, listen in. Listening to me is better than books on tape! 

Sunday, Dec. 9, 07 - 6:30 a.m. - Philadelphia WIP-AM “Conversations with Peter Solomon”

Monday, Dec. 10, 07 - 10:15 a.m. - East Prairie, MO - KYMO Morning Show with Reid Howell

Tuesday, Dec. 11, 07 - 8:30 a.m. - Miami - WAXY-AM - Sid Rosenberg Show 

Wednesday, Dec. 12, 07 - 9:25 a.m. - Columbia, MO - KFRU-AM - David Lile Show

 Wednesday, Dec. 12, 07 - 4:00 p.m. - Myrtle Beach, SC - Jim Morgan/Easy Book Club 

Monday, Dec. 17, 07 - 10:00 a.m. - Toledo, OH - WABJ-AM - Tami Frye Morning Show 

Tuesday, Dec. 18, 07 - 9:10 a.m. - Detroit - WPHM-AM - Paul Miller Morning Show 

Thursday, Dec. 20, 07 - 12 noon - San Francisco - KVON AM - Jeff Schectman Morning Edition

Friday, Dec. 21, 07 - 9:45 a.m. - Colorado Springs - KCMN-AM - Tron in the Morning 

Friday, Dec. 21, 07 - 11:10 a.m. - Bloomington, IL - WJBC-AM - Ron Ross Show

Wednesday, Dec. 26, 07 - 12:05 p.m. - Huntington, WV - WRVC-AM - Jean Dean Viewpoint

Thursday, Dec. 27, 07 - 5:44 p.m. - Nashville - WKCT-AM - Drive Time with Roy Brassfield 

Saturday, Jan. 5, 08 - 10:30 a.m. - Wisconsin - WXXM

Tuesday, Jan. 8, 08 - 3:15 p.m. - Champaign, IL - WDWS-AM - Gary O’Brien and Friends  

Fans of In Cold Blood and To Kill a Mockingbird will welcome this off-beat novel from Powers (The History of Swimming) about the odd relationship between Truman Capote and Harper Lee. In an intriguing opening, Capote calls Lee late at night to relate his fears that he’s being haunted by both the victims and the killers featured in his true-crime account of a brutal Kansas killing spree. Those calls trigger Lee’s recollections of the twist and turns in their association, as well as the real-life antecedents for her novel about racism and justice in the South. 

There was Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. There was Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. There was the film Capote. And now Kim Powers (The History of Swimming) has conjured a narrative that resolves some and speculates on other features of the Capote/Lee friendship and some of the odd directions it took. Powers also gives voice to the murdered family of whom Capote wrote. It’s an odd hybrid tale, made compelling by the two offbeat protagonists and the surreal crime story in which they were to become embroiled. - Roger Birnbaum