That she never capitalized on the book's success with another novel has long fueled speculation that it was not her production.
Capote, as good a friend as he was of Lee, would have been incapable of not taking credit had he, in fact, been the author. He drank enough so that he would have let the truth slip sooner or later, somewhere or other.
I take her at her word that the success floored her. That would be an awful thing to feel one had to equal or repeat.
There are other southern writers who have done the same....the guy who wrote Forest Gump....I believe has only written two books in his life.
I think doubts about Harper Lee’s authorship “because she never wrote anything else” are disingenuous at best. Plenty of good writers only have one good novel in them.
What people really mean is she couldn’t possibly have written an American masterpiece because she didn’t evolve out of the East Coast literati; she’s from Alabama. And she went to the University of Alabama. How... quaint. Poor thing must not have been able to get into Harvard.
When she was a struggling writer in New York, she didn’t intern at Doubleday or hang out with Andy Warhol at Studio 54. In short, she didn’t do any of the things successful writers are supposed to do.
Questioning whether Harper Lee wrote what she wrote is all a smokescreen for regional bigotry.
I agree with you completely. He never could have kept that a secret. Plus I think he was envious of the book.