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Furious Hours

Page 33

by Casey Cep


  The Correct, Full, and Impartial Report: McDade, Annals of Murder, 14.

  “Journalism is the most underestimated”: Plimpton, “Story Behind a Nonfiction Novel,” 1.

  “Truman Capote made a similar request”: Patrick Smith, “Sisters, Family: Surviving Clutter Daughters Hope to Preserve Their Parents’ Legacy,” Lawrence Journal-World, April 4, 2005.

  “Do you remember telling me”: Capote to Alvin and Marie Dewey, Aug. 16, 1961, in Capote, Too Brief a Treat, 326.

  “Truman’s having long ago”: Lee to Windham and Campbell, Sept. 28, 1984, YCAL MSS 424, box 11, Beinecke Library, Yale University.

  “For over five years”: Lee, “Truman Capote,” 7.

  “Truman did not cut me”: Lee to Windham and Campbell, Sept. 28, 1984.

  “the most important literature”: Wolfe, preface to New Journalism, by Wolfe and Johnson.

  “Of all the people”: Capote, In Cold Blood, 85.

  “There’s a black boy dead”: Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, 369.

  “are transfixed by a process”: Trillin, Killings, xv.

  “died and gone to Hell”: Mary Ann Karr, interview by author, Feb. 13, 2017.

  “You wouldn’t think”: Ibid.

  “The Stable Club became”: Alison James, “Local Store to Become Walgreens,” Alexander City Outlook, Dec. 1, 2012.

  “If the Reverend was alive”: Vern Smith, Telefax reporting notes.

  “Around town the talk”: Rheta Grimsley, “At His Own Murder Trial: Many Expected Maxwell,” Theopelika-Asburn News, Sept. 27, 1977.

  She complained: Lee to Madison Jones, June 5, 1987, box 12, folder 2, Madison Jones Papers, Rose Library.

  “enough rumor, fantasy, dreams, conjecture”: Ibid.

  | 21 | COMING BACK UNTIL DOOMSDAY

  In addition to those already acknowledged, I am grateful for the assistance of Faye Fox and Sheralyn Belyeu. I had the opportunity to review Tom Radney’s files, as well as some additional materials from Harper Lee’s investigation of the Maxwell case; these are cited when quoted, and also informed my account of her reporting. Not only did some subjects recall her using a tape recorder, but a warranty for a portable cassette tape recorder was found among her Maxwell files; so was a catalog from the Samuel Weiser Bookstore. The archives of The Monroe Journal and The Alexander City Outlook were helpful in contrasting the politics of Tom Radney and A. C. Lee; I relied on Isabel Wilkerson’s Warmth of Other Suns for the account of the Great Migration. For the account of Lee’s writing on race, I am indebted to some of the criticism of her work inspired by the publication of Go Set a Watchman, including that of Roxane Gay, Adam Gopnik, Michiko Kakutani, Kiese Laymon, Diane McWhorter, Jesmyn Ward, and Isabel Wilkerson. Thanks to Scotty Kirkland for letting me review Judge Coley’s archives at the Alabama Department of Archives and History, and to Evelyn Puckett for sharing memories of her father.

  “shy, reserved, matronly”: Jubera, “To Find a Mockingbird,” 21.

  “the communist threat”: “Tom Radney’s Personal Background” on Radney campaign brochure, 1966.

  “We the Jury find the defendant”: Handwritten verdict slip from State of Alabama v. Willie J. Maxwell (Indictment No. 1494, Tallapoosa County Circuit Court, Fall Term 1971). From the files of Nelle Harper Lee.

  “He seemed”: Lee to Madison Jones, June 5, 1987.

  “Never forget from whence you came”: Appeared in various speeches by Tom Radney as recounted by Madolyn Radney.

  “I never read anything by you”: Jubera, “To Find a Mockingbird,” 21.

  “just sitting back”: Madolyn Radney, interview by author, Feb. 25, 2015.

  “nonfiction novels”: Jim Earnhardt, Montgomery Advertiser “ ‘Literary Journalists’ Goes Beyond Reporting the Facts,” Nov. 18, 1984, 4B.

  “politely correct a young man”: Earnhardt, email to the author, May 18, 2017.

  “My friend, an Alabamian”: James Earnhardt, “Dust of Others Stirs Imagination,” Montgomery Advertiser, Feb. 12, 1983, 1B.

  “This is the way I like”: Harper Lee to Earnhardt, Feb. 16, 1983.

  “up to my neck”: Lee to Rheta Grimsley Johnson, Feb. 21, 1978.

  “mean to her”: Lena Martin, interview by Nelle Harper Lee, Jan. 16, 1978, from Lee’s unpublished reporting notes.

  “She ain’t had no wreck”: Ibid.

  died “from sickness”: “Death Claim Notice” on Policy 529744 with Crown Life Insurance Company of Illinois, signed by Willie J. Maxwell.

  an “elusive” figure: Lee to Johnson, Feb. 21, 1978.

  “always paid his debts”: Jim Stewart, “ ‘Voodoo Priest’ Buried, but Whispers Live On,” Atlanta Constitution, June 24, 1977, 23A.

  “Whether he’s in the courtroom”: “Radney: Good Choice for Man of the Year,” Alexander City Outlook, Jan. 23, 1978, 4.

  “She knew all her stuff”: Burns, interview by author, Feb. 13, 2017.

  “Before I remembered”: Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, 80.

  “all that voodoo stuff”: Stewart, “ ‘Voodoo Priest’ Buried, but Whispers Live On,” 23A.

  “I was disappointed”: Lee to Madison Jones, June 5, 1987.

  “I do believe that”: Ibid.

  “You simply can’t beat”: Lee to Louise and Patricia Cribb, June 11, 1978.

  “It was not good-bye”: Letter from Harper Lee to Louise and Patricia Cribb, June 11, 1978.

  | 22 | HORSESHOE BEND

  It was an odd thing at the start of my reporting to go to 433 East Eighty-Second Street and stare at Harper Lee’s name on the door buzzer. I benefited from Drew Jubera’s recounting of his earlier experience at that building; thank you to Kate Richardson of Richlyn Marketing, LLC, John Oates, Dr. Michael Tanner, Bruce Higgison, Beth Forman, Sonya Bentley Logan, Alec Bentley, George and Elizabeth Malko, and Sylvia Shorris for their own memories of the building, its occupants, and their neighborhood. For the account of Lee’s time in Eufaula, I relied on her letters from that period, the recollections of the Reverend Marcus Smith, Ann Smith, Jerry Elijah Brown, and others who do not wish to be named. For Lee’s fears about litigation, I relied on her correspondence, the recollections of some who do not wish to be named, and the oral history of Marie Hubbird. I am honored to have been allowed to review and study the draft chapter that Harper Lee presented to Tom Radney, and am extremely grateful to his family for letting me do so; that unpublished manuscript informs my account of her turn from nonfiction to fiction. For the account of Albert James Pickett, I relied not only on his history but also on Lee’s “Romance and High Adventure” and Owen’s “Albert James Pickett, a Sketch.” I am also grateful to Ari Schulman; Patrick Cather; Matthew Robinson of the Horseshoe Bend National Military Park; Betty Uzman of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History; Ashley Young and Sara Seten Berghausen of the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke University; Kristine Krueger of the Margaret Herrick Library of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.

  “abyss”: Malcolm, The Journalist and the Murderer, 69.

  “a dilapidated bed”: Lee to Earl and Sylvia Shorris, Nov. 20, 1993.

  “psychological processes”: Ibid.

  “If accuracy is what you are after”: Ibid.

  “picking out the nut”: Joseph Deitch, “Harper Lee: Novelist of the South,” Christian Science Monitor, Oct. 3, 1961, 6.

  “I work very slowly”: Ramona Allison, “ ‘Mockingbird’ Author Is Alabama’s ‘Woman of the Year,’ ” Birmingham Post Herald, Jan. 3, 1962.

  “paper, pen, and privacy”: Lee to Leo B. Roberts, Jan. 26, 1961, Archives and Information Center, Huntingdon College Library.

  “You depend entirely”: Vivian Cannon, “ ‘Mockingbird’ Author Wants to ‘Disap
pear,’ ” Mobile Register, March 21, 1963, 1.

  “If the Lippincott editors”: Crain to Bonner McMillion, Jan. 1962, as quoted in Ari N. Schulman, “The Man Who Helped Make Harper Lee,” Atlantic, July 15, 2015.

  “the loveliest town in the state”: Lee to Gregory and Veronique Peck, Jan. 6, 1981, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

  “My baby sister that we thought”: Louise Conner to Anna Coine Cravey, Sept. 22, 1961, Huntingdon College Library.

  “Louise guards my privacy”: Lee to Gregory and Veronique Peck, Jan. 6, 1981.

  “poaching on my literary preserves”: Carr, Lonely Hunter, 433.

  “a child’s book”: O’Connor to “A.,” Oct. 1, 1960, in O’Connor, Habit of Being, 411.

  “willingness to talk”: Lee to Gregory and Veronique Peck, Jan. 6, 1981.

  “Writing is easy”: Lee slightly misquoted this line from Gene Fowler, which she had most likely encountered when it appeared in print a few months earlier in Randolph Hogan, “Writers on Writing,” New York Times Book Review, Aug. 10, 1980, 35.

  “nobody cared when”: Lee to Gregory and Veronique Peck, Jan. 6, 1981.

  “Of course I’ll probably be sued”: Lee to Gregory and Veronique Peck, March 4, 1981, Herrick Library.

  “coincidental”: This is from Tay Hohoff’s essay for The Literary Guild Review, which was reprinted as an editorial in various newspapers, including The Eufaula Tribune, May 26, 1960.

  “I think she’s fighting”: Jubera, “To Find a Mockingbird,” 21.

  “Anything worthwhile in my life”: Joe Patton, “Judge Coley: Active Life for ‘Semi-retired’ Banker,” Alexander City Outlook, May 4, 1978, 3.

  “since Eufaula reeks”: Harper Lee to Jim Earnhardt, Feb. 18, 1983.

  “It took all of Alice’s powers”: Ibid.

  “It gives me the greatest pleasure”: Lee, “Romance and High Adventure,” 15.

  “falls somewhere”: Ibid.

  “I do not believe that it was in him”: Ibid., 19.

  “My old friend”: Earnhardt, email to author, May 31, 2017.

  “I know that a book”: Thomason to Lee, May 10, 1987, box 12, folder 2, Jones Papers.

  “not interested in buying”: Lee to Thomason, June 5, 1987, box 12, folder 2, Jones Papers.

  she had learned five things: Lee to Jones, June 5, 1987, box 12, folder 2, Jones Papers.

  | 23 | THE LONG GOOD-BYE

  In thinking about Harper Lee’s later career, I benefited greatly from Posnock, Renunciation; Joan Acocella, “Blocked,” New Yorker, June 14, 2004; Jamison, Recovering; Laing, Trip to Echo Spring; Kelly, Book of Lost Books; Dick Schlaap, “22 Invisible Mockingbirds,” San Francisco Examiner, May 24, 1964; Lepore, Joe Gould’s Teeth; Malcolm, The Journalist and the Murderer; and the Unfinished show at the Met Breuer. Many friends and acquaintances of Harper Lee’s later years shared their time, memories, and letters with me. Some of them do not wish to be acknowledged, but I am grateful for the assistance of Sylvia Shorris, Sandy Mulligan, Hallie Foote, Cecilia Peck, Charles Kiselyak, Star Lawrence, Robert Weil, Claudia Durst Johnson, Marja Mills, Thomas Lane Butts, Cynthia Lanford, Kevin Howell, George Landegger, Wayne Flynt, Nancy Anderson, Penny Weaver, Fannie Flagg, Hugh Van Dusen, Deborah DiClementi, and Mary Higgins Clark. I am also grateful for the assistance of William Price, Drew Jubera, Alice Hall Petry, Mary McDonagh Murphy, Caroline Sparks, Michelle Dean, and Carolyn Waters at the New York Society Library.

  “Kansans will spend the rest”: Lee, “Truman Capote,” 7.

  “too sensitive a subject”: Allen J. Going to William T. Going, July 11, 1987, as quoted in Alice Hall Petry, “Harper Lee, the One-Hit Wonder,” in On Harper Lee, 159.

  “It’s my understanding”: Jubera, “To Find a Mockingbird,” 19.

  “She’s always working”: “Harper Lee, Read but Not Heard,” Washington Post, Aug. 17, 1990, C2.

  “the worst punishment”: Lee to Doris Leapard, Aug. 25, 1990.

  “lallapalooza”: Lee to “Dears,” April 3, 1963, Williams Papers.

  “Come Where the Booze Is Cheaper”: Lee to Sylvia Shorris, Oct. 20, 1993.

  “I know exactly why she did it”: Lee to Mel Yoken, May 22, 1976.

  “Some Sociological Aspects”: Harper Lee, “Some Sociological Aspects of Peculiarities of Pronunciation Found in Persons from Alabama Who Read a Great Deal to Themselves,” included with letter to Harold Caufield, n.d., Rose Library.

  “She continued to write”: Alice Lee, “Harper Lee: My Little Sister,” Guardian, July 11, 2015.

  “the jitters” and “the humbles”: Brown and Wiley, Margaret Mitchell’s “Gone with the Wind,” 11.

  “the mortgage on myself”: Lee to Claudia Durst Johnson, n.d.

  “Do / you still hang your”: Lowell, “For Elizabeth Bishop 4,” in Collected Poems, 595.

  “Self-pity is a sin”: Boyle, “Harper Lee Still Prefers Robert E. and Tom Jefferson.”

  “I am impatient with people”: Hal Boyle, “In the South We Are Still in the Victorian Age,” Pensacola News, March 15, 1963, 4A.

  “George Plimpton’s minions”: Lee to Donald Windham, Aug. 3, 1986, YCAL MSS 424, box 11, Beinecke Library.

  “Truman’s vicious lie”: Lee to Delaney, Dec. 30, 1988, as quoted in Shields, Mockingbird, 270.

  “Most of us in the Western world”: Boyle, “Harper Lee Still Prefers Robert E. and Tom Jefferson.”

  “Books succeed, / And lives fail”: Browning, Aurora Leigh, 243.

  “Please spare Mockingbird”: Mary B. W. Tabor, “A ‘New Foreword’ That Isn’t,” New York Times, Aug. 23, 1995, C11.

  “Fame was a four-letter word”: Kiselyak, Fearful Symmetry.

  “Her memory is fragile”: Lee to Gorman Houston, June 20, 2003, Alabama Department of Archives.

  “Daddy’s prized bill”: Alice Lee to Family and Friends, n.d., Huntingdon College Library.

  “After a long career of responsible”: Alvin Benn, “Memories of Me and Nelle,” Montgomery Advertiser, Feb. 20, 2016.

  “Of the screenwriter’s many”: Harper Lee, “Mr. Shawn and Ms. Lee,” New Yorker, April 10, 2006, 5.

  Around midnight on Saturday: Alice Lee to Jim Earnhardt, July 30, 2007.

  “a mountain of rumors”: Lee to Brasfield, Jan. 9, 2009, as quoted in Varicella, Reverend.

  “Nothing you have done”: Alice Lee to Sheralyn Belyeu, June 22, 2009.

  “The years are getting by”: Radney to Lee, Feb. 2, 2006.

  “It was a delight”: Lee to Radney, Feb. 17, 2006.

  “a lawyer and politician”: “The Reverend” unpublished manuscript, 3, Radney Family Archives.

  “happy as hell”: Statement provided by HarperCollins, relayed from Tonja Carter, Feb. 5, 2015.

  | EPILOGUE |

  I am grateful to Ellen Price for asking me to accompany her to Barnett, Bugg, Lee & Carter, and to Little Madolyn, Anna Lee, and Cason for letting me be the first to review the contents of Big Tom’s briefcase. As ever, they were generous and patient. I am especially grateful to the estate of Nelle Harper Lee for returning the briefcase in time for me to make use of it for my research.

  | Bibliography |

  In addition to countless articles from newspapers and magazines, I relied on the following books, journal articles, and documentary films.

  Agee, James, and Walker Evans. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Boston: Mariner Books, 2001.

  Allison, Thomas R. Moonshine Memories. Montgomery, Ala.: NewSouth Books, 2014.

  Asbury, Herbert. The French Quarter: An Informal History of the New Orleans Underworld. New York: Basic Books, 2008.

  Ayers, H. Brandt. In Love with Defeat: The Making of a Southern Liberal. Montgomery, Ala.: NewSouth Books, 2013.

 
Baldwin, James. The Evidence of Things Not Seen. New York: Henry Holt, 1995.

  Balleisen, Edward J. Fraud: An American History from Barnum to Madoff. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2017.

  Barr, Beryl, and Barbara Turner Sachs. The Artists’ & Writers’ Cookbook. Sausalito, Calif.: Contact, 1961.

  Bartram, William. Travels Through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West Florida. Savannah, Ga.: Beehive Press, 1973.

  Benn, Alvin. Reporter: Covering Civil Rights and Wrongs in Dixie. Bloomington, Ind.: AuthorHouse, 2006.

  Bentley, Charles A., Jr. “The Election of Tom Radney and the Transition Era of Southern Politics.” Unpublished term paper, Fall 1967, Auburn University.

  Berendt, John. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. New York: Vintage Books, 1999.

  Bloom, Harold, ed. Modern Critical Interpretations: Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 1999.

  Boynton, Robert S. The New New Journalism: Conversations with America’s Best Nonfiction Writers on Their Craft. New York: Vintage Books, 2005.

  Brown, Ellen F., and John Wiley Jr. Margaret Mitchell’s “Gone with the Wind”: A Bestseller’s Odyssey from Atlanta to Hollywood. New York: Taylor, 2011.

  Browning, Elizabeth Barrett. Aurora Leigh. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

  Bunch-Lyons, Beverly. “ ‘Ours Is a Business of Loyalty’: African American Funeral Home Owners in Southern Cities.” Southern Quarterly 53, no. 1 (Fall 2015): 57–71.

 

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