In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

At the time not a soul in Holcomb heard them-four shotgun blasts that, all told, ended six human lives.

Truman Capote’s ground breaking novel In Cold Blood is accurately subtitled A True Account of a Multiple Murder and its Consequences.  Not just a murder story, In Cold Blood introduces us to the victims: four members of the Clutter family, the killers: two pathetic losers, and scores of other people whose lives briefly intersected with the events of November 14, 1959 in Holcomb, Kansas.  Capote’s gift as a writer allows him to show every person introduced as truly human...the farmers, the investigators, the fellow convicts, even the killers are as real as people you know.  Much of this was made possible by Capote’s countless interviews and unprecedented access to the major and minor actors of this drama.  Of course, four lives had to be reconstructed without direct help.  Here, Capote shows his genius and gives them voice as if they too sat for his interviews.

Capote writes about Mr. and Mrs. Clutter:  he a successful farmer and public; she, a loving mother and wife crippled by mental illness. "And so, along path bordered by tender regard, by total fidelity, they began to go about their semi-separate ways-his a public route, a march of satisfying conquests, and hers a private one that eventually wound through hospital corridors."  He is able to reconstruct almost every minute of the Clutter’s last day in a way that chilled me to read.

Like the recently-read Schindler’s List, In Cold Blood is a novel based on actual events.  Unlike Schindler’s List it reads like a novel.  It is a gripping read with so much emotion that you feel as if you are there when the family is discovered dead, on the road back from Las Vegas in the cars of the detectives, at the auction of the Clutter farm and on the evening of the executions.

Almost as fascinating as these stories is the story of how Truman Capote wrote it.  While still shrouded in controversy, Capote’s methods of placing himself into the lives of the Holcomb community, the investigators and the killer result in a seemingly accurate if not entirely factual account.  It took him six years to complete the book.  (Capote was accompanied through part of this effort by his childhood friend Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird.)  The 2005 film Capote gives a telling of these efforts with illuminating insight.  I recommend you read the book In Cold Blood and then watch the film “Capote.”  In Cold Blood was twice made into a film but I really don’t know anything about either version. [Sandra's note:  the 1967 version with Robert Blake is well worth seeing.]

Truman Capote is credited by many as being a pioneer of the “true crime” genre.  I believe he is a pioneer of the “micro-history” genre.  Sure, I made up that term.  To me a “micro-history” is an extreme, in-depth look at a short moment in history and how it impacts many lives within and without that moment.   Mark Bowden’s Black Hawk Down and American Gunfight by Stephen Hunter and John Bainbridge, Jr. are both excellent examples of this “genre” that apparently didn’t exist until 1966.  Like In Cold Blood, these are written less as histories more as novels.

In Cold Blood tries to explain the actions of the two killers and shows them as flawed human beings but without defending or justifying their behavior.  While trying to make sense of the crime and the criminals, Capote spotlights their contradictory natures.  As one of the killers confessed to killing Mr. Clutter, “I didn’t want to harm the man.  I thought he was a very nice gentleman.  Soft-spoken.  I thought so up to the moment I cut his throat.”

You really need to read In Cold Blood.

Next week:  Ernie and Sandra both read Kim by Rudyard Kipling