Media advisory: Professor available to comment on Kansas' ties to 'In Cold Blood'

LAWRENCE – A University of Kansas professor can comment on Kansas’ ties to “In Cold Blood,” a subject of renewed interest after the decision of a Kansas judge to allow the publishing of field notes connected to the 1959 murders that inspired the book.

Earlier this month, a district court judge ruled that Ronald Nye, son of Kansas Bureau of Investigation director Harold Nye, could publish his father’s field notes as part of a book that is said to contradict details in Truman Capote’s iconic true crime novel.

Dave Tell, associate professor of communication studies, has researched Kansans’ reception of “In Cold Blood,” which he found varied in two different regions of the state.

While “In Cold Blood” became a sensation in the 1960s as the first nonfiction novel, Tell said those in Kansas, unlike the rest of the world, had little interest in debating its literary value. Instead, Kansans, especially those farther away from the Clutter family murders in southwest Kansas, were mostly interested in how Capote, a celebrity writer from New York City, portrayed the state. As for Capote, Kansas was turned into a rural, desolate state that made the violence of the murders all the more shocking.

“Because of this, Kansans were keenly attuned to Capote’s portrayal of the state,” Tell said. “More importantly, they used Capote’s presence in the state as a chance to refashion the meanings of Kansas as they saw fit.”

In 2012, Tell published an essay, “The Meanings of Kansas: Rhetoric, Regions and Counter Regions,” in the journal Rhetoric Society Quarterly. The essay won the National Communication Association’s 2013 Golden Anniversary Monograph Award. Since then, Tell has spoken throughout the state about his research on Kansans’ reception of “In Cold Blood.”

Nye has hinted that contradictions in his father’s field notes are over the role of chief investigator Alvin Dewey, whom Capote cast as a brilliant hero and lone actor.  

“It will be interesting to see how Kansans respond to the forthcoming volume,” Tell said. “If history is any guide, Nye will need to do more than provide factual corrections if Kansans are going to care about his work. He will need, like Capote, to link his story with the meanings of Kansas.”