Tuesday, September 17, 2013

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Originally published January 1966 by Random House
Source: this one is mine

Publisher's Summary:
On November 15, 1959, in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas, four members of the Clutter family were savagely murdered by blasts from a shotgun held a few inches from their faces. There was no apparent motive for the crime, and there were almost no clues.

Five years, four months and twenty-nine days later, on April 14, 1965, Richard Eugene Hickock, aged thirty-three, and Perry Edward Smith, aged thirty-six, were hanged for the crime on a gallows in a warehouse in the Kansas State Penitentiary in Lansing, Kansas.

History of the Book:
When The New York Times published a piece about the murders in November, 1959, Capote was interested enough to investigate the murders. Capote brought his  friend Harper Lee ( To Kill a Mockingbird) to help gain the confidence of the locals in Kansas. After the criminals were found, tried, and convicted, Capote conducted personal interviews with both Smith and Hickock.

In Cold Blood was first published as a four-part serial in The New Yorker before it was published as a novel. Capote insisted throughout his life that every word of the book was fact but, over the years, many people have disputed this. Capote may not have been the first to write a non-fiction novel but it certainly seems to have changed the way we think about them.


My Thoughts:
In Cold Blood is Omaha's 2013 selection for a community read. It's a book that's been on my nightstand for a long time, a book I felt like I "should" read. For some reason, though, it just never seemed to be the right time to pick it up. Until everyone else was reading it. Now I'm looking forward to discussing it with others, Capote's writing style, the way he portrayed two cold-blooded killers as complex humans, the veracity of the details.

I'm not hung up with whether or not every bit of what Capote wrote as fact is, actually, fact. But then, I'm not reading it in 1966 believing it to be a complete work of nonfiction. I'm far more interested in the way Capote portrayed Holcomb, Kansas, its denizens and their reactions to the crime.
'The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call "out there." Some seventy miles east of the Colorado border, the countryside, with its hard blue skies and desert-clear air, has an atmosphere that is rather more Far West than Middle West. The local accent is barbed with a prairie twang, a ranch-hand nasalness, and the men, many of them, wear narrow frontier trousers, Stetsons, and high-heeled boots with pointed toes. 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."
I'm more interested in the relationship between the two killers, their relationships with their families and the impact those relationships had on both men, and the way Capote takes the reader deep into Smith's and Hickok's minds. Smith, in particularly, comes off as both a sympathetic and heartless person who, despite his hard-scrabble life, might still have made something of himself but chose not to, preferring instead to play the victim. It's rare to read a book, fiction or nonfiction, where the "bad guys" are so nuanced.

Richard "Dick" Hickok and Perry Smith
These days we have grown hardened to crime; it takes a lot to shock us collectively. If the Clutter murders occurred in 2013, it would make the national news for about one day and then disappear in the wake of a more heinous crime. But it would still stun and terrify a community as small and isolated as Holcomb and that may be one of the reasons this story still resonates with so many readers more than fifty years after it happened.

Banned Books:
The book was banned for a time in Savannah, Georgia when a parent complained about the sex, violence and profanity but the ban was reversed when other parents complained. In 2011, when a Los Angeles-area Advanced Placement English teacher tried to add the book to her curriculum, it was again challenged for the same reasons but the school board ultimately approved its use.

I had planned to read this one a little more slowly but when Sheila of Book Journey had to move up her annual Banned Book Week coverage, I decided to read this one sooner so I could help start to get the word out early about banned books. The official Banned Book Week is next week but to get yourself fired about to read a book for that week, check out more of the posts at Book Journey!

16 comments:

  1. Fantastic review Lisa! Thanks so much for being a part of Banned Book Week!

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  2. I read this one during the summer in grad school and I really liked it. He did portray the killers as actual people which surprised me. I was impressed with the book and Capote's writing overall.

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  3. I enjoyed parts of this one a lot more than other sections. Some aspects of the book were tedious. But I do love the descriptions of the town and how the reader can visualize it through Capote's prose. I must admit that I didn't read it until after the movie Capote came out...and I enjoyed the movie more than the book. What does that say about me? lol

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  4. I've been meaning to read this one for years and it has remained elusive (I can't find it). I had no idea that it was a banned book. Great review!

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  5. I read this many years ago. I thought it was so good that, even now, I prefer nonfiction over fiction.

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  6. I found In Cold Blood to be fascinating. I have yet to read more of Capote's work.

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  7. This book scared the peepers out of me when I read it in high school! I still think about it, when I spending the night somewhere remote; the country gives me the chills now! It was my decision to read it, and look, 20 years later it still is as powerful in my mind as it was when I first read it. I never read it thinking it was pure nonfiction, and I was blown away by Capote's abilities to write from inside the minds of these two killers.

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  8. I remember the chill I got while reading this book. The way he described the scene... We read it for book club and to be honest, my old club was a bit fussy and hard to please. If it was a dark subject, of there was blood, or if there was anything that could offend someone in any way, sometimes it wouldn't make the list. But this one did and everyone complained until they finished it. You can't deny the fact that it's so well done. In the end, they couldn't either but man, what effort it took to get them to that point.

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  9. This has also been on my shelf for a long time. I should pick it up. Fascinating, I hear. Didn't know it was also a banned book!

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  10. Well-thought review! You are right - this kind of crime would just show up for a day and then disappear. Today, it's mass killings or crimes by other races that take precedence.

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  11. I've been wanting to read this one for years but like you, it just hasn't seemed to be just the right time.....

    those guys appear to be just your average every-day joe not cold-blooded killers ~ no wonder the small community this occurred in was in an uproar! Thanks for sharing!

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  12. Thanks so much for your review. I have this book on my shelves for reading at some time in the future (eek). Isn'y it amazing how much we actually read that is technically banned/challenged without even knowing. Thanks so much for your post!!

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  13. I read this "classic" about five years ago and you are absolutely right... if this crime occurred in 2013 it would be a sensational news story for a day, and then disappear. Sad...

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  14. Great review of this one Lisa! I read it years ago and remember reading it with a mixture of horror and fascination. I don't know how accurate the movie Capote is but it adds another layer of depth and complexity to the story (behind the story). Would be curious to sit in on some of the community discussions of this one!

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  15. Wonderful review! I absolutely loved this book.

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  16. I've been wanting to read this for awhile, but haven't yet. Your review was wonderful, and the passage you quoted is marvelous. There is no doubt that Capote created a genre with this book, and it is an American classic.

    It's so interesting to see which books are banned or challenged and why. Often, it seems the best ones are challenged because they challenge us--they are uncomfortable, but growth usually does cause some discomfort.

    Really great review--thanks!

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