a smidgen of Mockingbird trivia

These quotes are from Mockingbird by Shields, which I love and have been recommending endlessly to anyone who will stand still long enough.

Nelle and Truman in childhood together:

Recognizing that his daughter read better than any of her classmates-- Truman, he may or may not have heard, was whacked on the palm with a ruler his first day of school for reciting the alphabet-- Mr. Lee gave them the 1930s equivalent of a word processor: a rugged, steel-chassised, black Underwood No. 5 typewriter. [. . .] They wanted to use it to write stories. (p. 50-1)

Later in life, when his first choice (old roomie Andrew Lyndon) turned him down, Truman tapped Nelle for the trip of a lifetime to Kansas... hoping to chase the ephemeral ghost of the Clutter family:

It sounded like an adventure that was poles apart from the drudgery of writing, and Nelle accepted instantly. "He said it would be a tremendously involved job and would take two people," she said. "The crime intrigued him, and I'm intrigued with crime-- and, boy, I wanted to go. It was deep calling to deep." (p. 133)

Fun KSU fact: then-President McCain (whom our auditorium and music building is named after) was Truman's hookup in Kansas. In exchange for enlightening the English department, Truman would be connected with McCain's contacts in Garden City. Kansas has always been a small world, so this should not surprise me. (p. 133)

It was Nelle who lubricated their relations with the standoffish folk in western Kansas, and most likely kept their project from coming to a screeching halt as Truman butted straight in on a community in fear and mourning. Together they produced something far greater than, perhaps, either one alone could have attempted.

It was the synergy of two writers at work in Garden City that gave In Cold Blood such verisimilitude. (p. 163)

Of course, the Kansas adventure came to its own conclusion for them (although Truman would return alone), and Nelle basked in the sun of success with Mockingbird. And at first Truman was quite puffed up about it all:

[. . .][I]t was immensely satisfying to him that his protege-- which is how he now regarded Nelle-- had written a publishable novel in which he was an important character. Obviously he loved the idea of being mythologized. [. . .] "In it [Mockingbird], I am the character called 'Dill'-- the author being a childhood friend." (p. 180)