TRUE STORY WEEK : IN COLD BLOOD

What is it about modern life that stops us reading? This doesn't happen everywhere, evidently, or to everyone but I was at a party just last night and everyone says they read a lot less than when they were students. I guess it's because we have to concentrate actively on one thing or the other for work for so long every weekday, we don't have the energy in our spare time... Then of course we get out of the habit... Being in possession of slightly more spare time I'm trying to break myself back into the habit... For the purpose I decided to go for something good quality and gripping. Not too taxing - remember I, like a lot of wage slaves haven't read a complete book in a good while - but not too much of a soap bubble either. When one is also naturally picky about what one reads, the task of choosing a book becomes tougher than you might think... I was staring intently at my library for inspiration and I alighted on the Truman Capote novels I have previously written about (Summer Crossing and Breakfast At Tiffany's). Actually there was one more Capote lying around that I hadn't read. It was a true crime novel to boot - and I know this isn't very ladylike but I have always liked true crime novels... It is the book that gave birth to the blockbuster starring Philip Seymour-Hoffman; Capote. I am talking about "In Cold Blood". I had actually seen the film but of course the film was basically about how the book was written not an adaptation of the book itself so I thought why not... Good thing I did, too... No wonder Truman Capote was obsessed with the event...
Now the event that gave birth to this book is quite well known but let's go through them again just to make sure everyone's on the same page... One fateful November evening in 1959, four members of a prominent family in a small town in Kansas were brutally murdered. Herbert and Bonnie Clutter along with their two children Nancy and Kenyon were loved and respected, religious and hard working, in short an example held up and respected by all who knew and loved them...The murder, in its brutality and its seeming lack of motive stunned the entire country; the Clutters had literally no known enemies at all and nobody could think of any reason for this bloodshed. The discovery of the culprits took a good many years and would not have happened if a man in jail at the time had not heard the news, put two and two together and in the end given way to his conscience... The culprits were Richard Eugene Hickock and Perry Smith; they were caught (albeit a good few years after the murders) and accordingly dealt with in accordance with Kansas law (I guess I don't need to spell out how, yes?). In his novel Truman Capote gives us not only a memorial of an upstanding Kansas family and town but also of two men who could murder four people "in cold blood" and then get on with their lives as if nothing had happened. We see their thoughts, their hopes, the way they think... And while their acts and demeanors cannot be sympathized with, one thing is painstakingly clear. These men were not "monsters" but very, VERY human indeed...
I can see why you would not like true crime as a genre, generally speaking... These days a lot of it is gore, sensation; a superficial yarn, nothing more. You may wonder what else there is to it. But think about it. The act of killing is, to me, the single most horrific thing a man /woman can do to his/her fellow man/woman. (And just for disambiguation this for me includes capital punishment, as far as I go killing is killing and unless it's self defense there is nothing to justify it). I'm sure a lot of you would agree with me at least up to a point if not completely. But doesn't this make you curious as to what kind of being actually can do this with such ease and then go on living? Aren't you the least bit curious what went through their minds? Are they monsters? Were they born this way or did something happen to change them? If so, what? Compelling questions, no? Capote does not sympathize with the killers in the least. And there is nothing in this deadly duo's actions that makes it "forgivable". However the portrait painted of them is a clear and objective snapshot of both sides of this sad event thanks to long interviews with everyone from the Clutter family's friends and relations to the two assassins themselves. I assure you this book will compel you to think... Not necessarily happy thoughts, but deep ones and important ones...