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Furious Hours

Some people believe that an artistic career should become easier with time: Why would it be hard to walk out on stage if you had witnessed yourself do this, with success, over and over again? But the opposite is often true. If you move people, then you (maybe) feel compelled to pull off the same magic trick repeatedly, and you get stuck in your head. Witness the story of Amy Winehouse.

I think stage fright is (also) what happened to Harper Lee. I think, if she hadn't had such a tremendous impact with "To Kill a Mockingbird," she might have produced more. There was a sense that the next work had to be a magnum opus, and it's hard to produce anything under those conditions.

Some thoughts on "Furious Hours," a new book about Lee:

*The murder trial Lee ultimately failed to cover might have been one good, compelling article. It maybe didn't need to be a book. If only Lee had freed herself to try something small. The trial concerns a voodoo preacher who very clearly murdered at least one wife. He's someone you have seen in other news stories: The guy in mid-life who feels liberated by slaughtering another person, and then begins slaughtering again and again. (I sort of think this is like Michael Peterson, in "The Staircase," but Peterson has stopped at two corpses, or at least two corpses we are aware of.)

*I'm thinking the murder would have been a fine subject for a Calvin Trillin-ish piece, like the ones you see in "Killings." If only Trillin had spoken with Harper Lee!

*Almost twenty years passed between "Mockingbird" and Lee's attempt to reinvent herself as a true-crime writer. In that time, Lee had assisted Capote on "In Cold Blood." It's not yet clear (to me) what else had happened to Lee. The genius of "Furious Hours" is that it blends a murder story with the story of a failed, famous would-be chronicler: A Lee biography meets a lurid horror tale. Why hadn't anyone thought of this earlier?

I'm noticing that "Furious Hours" is not just a favorite of the NYT, but also a favorite of Vulture, at the least. This will continue to be a big book; David Grann, of "Lost City of Z" fame, has contributed some breathless praise. Happy reading!
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