In Cold Blood

This book is by far my favorite book. It isn't my first book that I read by Truman poodie. I wrote a paper about him in junior high. Then again in high school, then again in college I became obsessed with him and his life. His writing style is so unique and magnificent and makes you want. To just dive into the book and live there. He's a magnificent person in this book. Basically, lets you into his imagination and how he views the world on how he views this killer with kindness and with humanity. He doesn't look at him like cold-blooded. Like the book says. I've always said if there's one famous person I can have to dinner. You know who it is. It would be truman He always puts on a great show. But I wonder what's behind those feelings. Well, maybe in the sky. He'll be my famous guest to dinner.

When a book like IN COLD BLOOD reaches the level of being a classic, there has to be a reason. Consider the following two excerpts:

"The land is flat, and the views are awesomely extensive; horses, herds of cattle, a white cluster of grain elevators rising as gracefully as Greek temples are visible long before a traveler reaches them."

"Then, starting home, he walked toward the trees, and under them, leaving behind him the big sky, the whisper of wind voices in the wind-bent wheat." The former excerpt is from Capote's opening paragraph; the latter cointains his closing sentence. Both are extraordinary, especially for their time, in capturing the mood and poetry of a place in the middle of a true-life story of a horrific mass murder.

As is certainly well known, IN COLD BLOOD is Truman Capote's magazine-article-turned full-length-docu-novel about the murders of four members of the Clutter family in their Holcomb, Kansas, farmhouse in November 1959. The two killers, Dick Hickock and Perry Smith, were ultimately caught, tried, sentenced, and executed, factual matters that are still commonly known today thanks to two recent movies about Capote's life and his efforts to write the book. Even at its publication, IN COLD BLOOD was not a detective story in the traditional sense, since everyone already knew the perpetrators and the case's eventual disposition.

In an era when such incidents were reported either factually (newspaper style) or sensationally (crime magazine style), Truman Capote effectively created an entire new genre: journalism as art form. Writing with a level of descriptive detail about places and events that create a strong sense of immediacy in the reader's mind, he begins his story with a re-creation of the Clutter family's last day of life. The effect is profound and eerie, since these pages are read with a foreknowledge of death not shared by the real-life characters on the page. Capote builds his suspense masterfully, alternating between the movements of Hickock and Smith and those of the Clutters (husband and father Herbert, perennially sick wife and mother Bonnie, intelligent, tinkering son Kenyon, and All-American sweetheart daughter and town darling Nancy.

As he brings the two parties closer and closer together, Capote continues to fill in background on their respective lives. By the time his orchestrated characters have reached their mutual, bloody crescendo, the reader is intimately acquainted with them as individuals and their respective life stories. Thus, the author gives us individuals with whom we are intimate as characters in a novel, yet they are real people about whom he is reporting in a senseless, horrifying mass murder story. This is Capote's genius and the source of his book's classic status - factual reporting that reads like a novel, displaying the intimacy with its characters that is normally reserved for the so-called "omniscient author," the one who can hear, share, and express his or her characters' most private thoughts and motivations.

Capote's pacing and remarkable eye for detail never relent as the story moves from crime to investigation, arrest, and trial by jury. He maneuvered himself into a situation where he was privy to every detail of the police investigation; it is equally clear he had extended access to Hickock and Smith throughout their ordeal, up to and including their ultimate disposition. While it was doubtless a level of access no longer available to reporters or writers, Capote took maximum advantage of it in crafting his story. What comes out of it, surprisingly, is a tale of two socially maladjusted young men of above-average intelligence whose trial was of questionable fairness, particularly as regards the mental health of one of them (who was probably more criminally insane than scheming murderer). In one of the book's most telling moments, Capote recounts the reports that the court-appointed psychiatrist would have rendered had the judge (and Kansas state law at the time) allowed them to do so.

IN COLD BLOOD is truly a master work by an effete, East Coast reporter who beat the odds (and prejudices, no doubt) and entwined himself in his story and the lives of its actors to an unheard-of degree. The result was, and is, more than just a gripping account of a horrendous crime. It is a study in criminality: its victims, its effect on their families and community, its perpetrators and their families, even on the law enforcement personnel involved in the investigation. One can hardly imagine a more finely drawn study of a single crime and its all-too-human impact, presented in a form that remains to this day a page-turner in the very best sense of that phrase.

"In Cold Blood" is an iconic non fiction book that is authored by an iconic fiction writer, Truman Capote. The story is about a real life, hideous violent crime that occurred in the State of Kansas in 1959. Although non fiction, the book has the style of fiction and reads as a hard crime thriller, "page turner". In a case such as this, I don't wish to say that I "enjoyed" this book. The crime is disgusting. However the writing is excellent. As a retired police investigator of violent felonies, the entire work had the ring of truth and reality for me.

I had put off reading this book up until now for numerous reasons. As a student of literature and authors, I prefer to read books by authors in order of publication so that I can study the evolution, if any, of the author. Also, in this case, I am a retired police,officer suffering from PTSD. Therefore it was with a good deal of hesitation that I decided to finally read this work. I do need to report to you that I did indeed find it personally very painful. I have worked cases like this and they have stayed with me. In some ways, the old scars were opened To some extent. It was not as bad as I was afraid it would be. (I had asked others about this prior to reading the book.)

Obviously all I know about this case is what I have read. Presuming the work is accurate, I can tell you this is what is like to arrive at the scene of a hideous violent felony in which there are no witnesses and no obvious leads, To a conscientious lead investigator, it is almost impossible to convey the feeling of near hopeless, forlorn, desolation that may descend upon "The Lead" in a case such as this. Truman Capote does a really good job in describing all of this. It proved extremely realistic to me.

Of all the books that I have ever read, if I was instructing a course on homicide investigations, I am positive I could use this book as a core text. I know exactly how I would have worked this "job" after all of the primary work and leads had been run down. Often I was assigned cases such as this after the primary work was done, and the investigation had stalled. The police "caught a break" in this case. However the break came from exactly the type of source that I would have pursued. Believe me it is a complete pain to work a case this way, but it can be done proactively rather than waiting for a break. This is not "normal aberrant" behavior. This is a subset of aberrant behavior, that I refer to as "aberrant of aberrant". the very nature of which, that makes this job solvable...

In summary, this is an excellent work of non fiction. The only hesitation I have in recommending this work is the hideous nature of the crime. This crime fits my personal definition of obscenity. However if you are a young detective assigned to violent crimes, and really want to learn and not just "Mail it in" this is the one.... Thank You for taking the time to read this review.

I have lately been reading a number of books that inhabit the no-man's land between fiction and non-fiction, including works that seek to tell about real events with fictional techniques. I decided to go back and re-read one of the pioneers of the region: IN COLD BLOOD.

Capote explained that in writing IN COLD BLOOD he "wanted to produce a journalistic novel, something on a large scale that would have the credibility of fact, the immediacy of film, the depth and freedom of prose and the precision of poetry." Well, he sure succeeded. So much so that the book is not as startling, new, and different - as novel - as it was 45 years ago, because in its path there have followed a multitude of similar books - arguably, even, an entire genre (true crime). Indeed, a young reader of today might wonder why the book merits inclusion among the other classics of The Modern Library. I myself have some reservations about including IN COLD BLOOD in the same grouping as, say, "Moby-Dick" or "The Brothers Karamazov", though it certainly need not take a back seat to any of the four novels by John Irving enshrined in The Modern Library. Though no longer as stunningly fresh as it once was, IN COLD BLOOD still packs a considerable punch and the craftsmanship still shines.

The subject event of IN COLD BLOOD is probably familiar to most: Four members of an all-American ranch family in western Kansas were each trussed up and then shot to the head at close range with a .12-gauge shotgun by two young men alienated from mainstream society and psychologically off kilter. The killers, Perry Smith and Dick Hickok, had entered the house under the belief that they would find at least $10,000 in a safe and with the intention of leaving no witnesses. There was no safe, however, and all the killers garnered were $40, a transistor radio, and a nice pair of binoculars. Still, they left no witnesses.

Out of that grim and (when you get down to it) tawdry fare Capote creates a gripping "nonfiction novel". No doubt much of the underlying attraction is voyeuristic in nature. But Capote, in his telling, deftly sublimates that base voyeurism with his clinically nonjudgmental renderings of western Kansas life, his character studies and psychological probings, and his discussions of such issues as capital punishment and the insanity defense. What most distinguishes IN COLD BLOOD - and separates it from almost all of its epigones - are the keenly observed and brilliantly described details. Here is one of my favorites:

"Among Garden City's animals are two gray tomcats who are always together--thin, dirty strays with strange and clever habits. The chief ceremony of their day is performed at twilight. First they trot the length of Main Street, stopping to scrutinize the engine grilles of parked automobiles, particularly those stationed in front of the two hotels, the Windsor and Warren, for these cars, usually the property of travelers from afar, often yield what the bony, methodical creatures are hunting: slaughtered birds--crows, chickadees, and sparrows foolhardy enough to have flown into the path of oncoming motorists. Using their paws as though they are surgical instruments, the cats extract from the grilles every feathery particle."

Likewise, one senses that Capote extracted from the Clutter murder case every literary particle. IN COLD BLOOD may no longer be "novel", but it still is a helluva read.

I must admit that I approached this novel with many a bias and preconceived notion. I was curious about the claims that the author, Truman Capote, had created a new type of book-- the nonfiction novel.

Let's use a word nerd alert to get down to the marrow of those two words: nonfiction |nänˈfik sh ən| prose writing that is based on facts, real events, and real people, such as biography or history. -and- novel |ˈnävəl| a fictitious prose narrative of book length, typically representing character and action with some degree of realism. How can a novel which is by definition a fictitious tale with realistic leanings be nonfiction? Can one possibly glean enough fact, setting, character descriptions, and plot to flesh out an entire novel worth reading? I suspected not. So how do I feel now that I have read the book? I have several thoughts... here a few. The tone of the novel is journalistic in nature with a sympathetic overtone interwoven towards the victims -- and also the killers. I'll admit that this was off putting for me. The title for the book is a duplicitous moniker. "In Cold Blood" refers to the way the Clutter family was brutally murdered, but it also reflects the opinion of the author regarding the judicial treatment and sentencing of the murderers Perry Smith and Dick Hickok. When reading a book about a horrific mass murder, one does not expect to cultivate tender feelings for the people holding the guns. And yet, Capote tries his darnedest to incite empathy for the tough, neglected, even abusive past of these two individuals.

A greasy, charming, sticky fingered ladies man -- Hickok is always at the ready with a dirty joke and a hot check. He is apparently ashamed of his tendency to rape young adolescent girls, but that doesn't seem to impede his impulse to do it... several times. He is classified as knowing right from wrong, but due to a car crash that could possibly have damaged his brain-- he now only lives on his impulses with no thought for the consequences. His parents are present but poor.

Perry Smith has a troubled past to be sure. His parents --former rodeo performers turned cross country impoverished gypsies-- separate after his mother turns to alcohol to assuage her anxiety. After a particularly bad fight, the mother sweeps off with the children. The father does very little to reclaim his children over the years. The mother finally drinks herself to death, but not before turning all of her children over to the state. Perry's sisters and older brother are reprimanded to an orphanage. Perry has a horrific experience at a catholic institution where a nun tortures him for wetting the bed. He later begins to act out his aggression and is sent to some sort of detention center where he is again abused. He becomes ill and hospitalized --only then does his father find him and take him in. (But they have a tumultuous relationship that ends in Perry nearly killing his father and abandoning him for the merchant marines.) Perry's character is the oddest combination of an uneducated intelligent poet type with an unchecked thinly veiled murderous rage. His demeanor is disarming, his crippled physicality mollifying, his internal dialogue is haunting. He truly scares me. A shrouded menace that beguiles it's prey into believing itself nurtured and safe...

Capote also gives us some psychiatric jargon to back up his feelings that these two praire-billy slaying thieves were simply overly vilified mentally inept victims themselves. However, this doesn't ring true-- with this reader at least. They had hard lives, physical and emotional trauma, and yet I couldn't find it in my heart to leap on the weep wagon for them after reading the descriptions --personal interview descriptions-- of what they meticulously did to the entire Clutter family. I will not go into those details here, but the level of callus premeditated apathy for human life is appalling.

The book is well written and does softly tread the line of novel and fact. I believe there to be several embellishments but none that detract from the horror or heart of the story set before you. I was held captive, suffered, and was sentenced along with the characters in the story. To put it lightly, I was enthralled and would read many a more book written in this style.

This book was a heavy hitter, and the actual facts made it that much more serious and engaging. I rate this book a 4 because I haven't stopped thinking about it since I put it down. Please follow my other reviews at ladyofliteraryleisure.blogspot.com