Two Writers
There are many cliches about the artist/writer’s life; one of them is that artists are basically very screwed-up people. In fact, it’s been raised into something of a romantic myth. This seems to have been proven by the fascinating Academy-Award nominated film Capote. Truman Capote, a rejected child who became a flamboyant and outsized character, always begging for attention and recognition. After becoming fascinated by the story of accused killers Perry White and Richard Hickock, he made it the basis of his most famous book In Cold Blood.
Capote felt a real kinship with White because of their abused childhoods. But in pursuit of his story, he was drawn into moral compromises that made him even more akin to his subject. He lies, makes promises he doesn’t keep, and manipulates his the two killers, pretending friendship while planning to let them die, as long as he has his account of the murders.
Finally White confesses to the writer that the moment he saw fear in his victim’s face, recognition that he could become a killer — he quickly proved him right. Capote, listening, seems to become at least partly aware that his own seeking for recognition has made him a monster. The titles at the end tell us that he never wrote another book.
Critics (who are writers) are naturally fascinated by this aspect of the film — the Faustian bragain that a writer can make in the name of art. But Capote actually portrays two writers. Fascinating as Truman Capote is, the other writer is even more fascinating to me. I first read her book as a young girl, when my father was assigned to an Air Force base in North Carolina in the late 60’s. I read it to pieces; I practically memorized it. It taught me things about the South (a new place to me), about racism and about humanity that I couldn’t have gotten so well in any other way. A kind of radiance always hung around the author for me - I’ve always longed to meet her. She is, of course Nelle Harper Lee, the author of To Kill a Mockingbird. I’ll never forget my amazement when I learned that the character of Dill, the childhood friend of the heroine Scout, was none other than Lee’s own childhood friend Truman Capote.
Beautifully portrayed in the film by Catherine Keener, Lee is as clear-eyed and self-effacing as Capote is self-deluded and narcissistic. When her first and only novel is published, she isn’t yet the famous literary figure that Capote is. People mistake the title of her book, speak patronizingly to her, and ask questions like “Its a children’s book, isn’t it?” She winces, but replies politely, “Well, yes, it’s about children.” Yet when her book becomes world famous, wins the Pulitzer Prize for literature, and is made into an award-winning film, she doesnt change. She always gives the impression of being more concerned with her friend’s decline than with her fame, which she never speaks about. She doesn’t try to be the center of attention at parties with talk of the writing life. At the gala party for the film version of Mockingbird, Capote stands as though posed for a photograph, while being igored by everyone, while Lee speaks with her friends, seemingly ingoring the cameras. And yet when she asks Capote, someone whose ideas she truly values, for his opinion of her work, he is too absorbed in his own trouble to answer.
Few critics have written as much about Lee as a character in the film — and of course she is a supporting character. One thing we’re not told at the end of the fim is that Lee also never wrote another bok after her best-selling novel. She seemed happy to return to obscurity. Perhaps because she saw what seeking for fame did to her friend. We also never learn anything about her writing process, or what facing racism did to her.
It’s something of a shame that the true sacrifices made for art aren’t quite as exciting on film as the ruinous temptations. As for myself, I’d rather be more like Harper Lee.
