November Bonus Book Review: Capote In Kansas
Ande Parks and Chris Samnee's "drawn novel" is really great...at half of that phrase
the true crime that's worth your time
The crime
Just about 61 years ago, Dick Hickock and Perry Smith descended on the Clutter farmhouse in Holcomb, Kansas and murdered the entire Clutter family. This sordid waste might have passed into local history more or less unremarked, had it not become the subject of Truman Capote’s “nonfiction novel” — considered by many the sine qua non of true crime — In Cold Blood.
The story
Capote In Kansas: A Drawn Novel describes itself on the back cover as an “emotionally charged graphic novel illustrated by talented newcomer Chris Samnee”; Ande Parks, writer of “true crime hit” Union Station and half of the Green Arrow art team, handles the writing. That writing clearly comes from a place of longtime interest in the topic, but thanks to a tendency towards telling over showing, it isn’t a success. Which is ironic, I guess, in a graphic novel, but as far as the structuring, Parks engineers a handful of very striking “cuts” in and out of flashbacks that really show Samnee’s art to good effect — and Samnee is the real deal. The art isn’t terribly flashy, but it creates a suitably chilly and somber atmosphere.
But overall, it’s just not great. It’s fine; it’s a fast read; I’m not angry that I spent the time, and making notes on aspects of the story that don’t work led to some processily enjoyable wool-gathering on why they didn’t work and what alternatives were really available to Parks instead. The damp dialogue in which Capote anguishes over whether he’s the right one to write the story and how it will end, that needed a writer (and/or an editor) with a better ear for Capote’s raconteur delivery…or just to get cut. I’m sure Capote did feel grave self-doubt over the course of learning, living with, and recounting the case; what I don’t buy is the locution. With whom the anguishing is shared is another matter, because the ghost conceit is both a bigger failure and a more forgivable one. I can see ways for Samnee to execute on emotional beats in the panels instead of having Parks put Capote’s feelings in his own mouth; the exposition the book is using a ghost listener to get in is harder to find a substitute for. From there, I wondered why Capote In Kansas needed exposition at all — who it thought it was for, who would pick up a graphic story with that title and not already know the central narrative.