August 7, 2013
I'm simply going to note here that I was offered the job that I had interviewed for last week, and have accepted it. There, no more bitching about that particular subject, so on to the book review.
I pushed up my reading of In Cold Blood because of those goodreads.com forums that I mentioned in my last post. I had responded to a topic under To Kill a Mockingbird regarding allegations that Capote (who was infamously a close lifelong friend of Harper Lee) had written some of the book, had more than "helped" the author. Several people on the discussion board concluded that Capote had made these claims at the end of his life, when he was a drunk mess. It has been acknowledged, however, that the character Dill was based on Capote as a child, something that I've always found interesting.
Anyway, Truman Capote was a pretty interesting guy. So interesting that in the last decade, at least two films about his life have been produced. Philip Seymour Hoffman won an Oscar for portraying Truman Capote (I'd been rooting for Heath Ledger to win for Brokeback Mountain that year, though I'll admit, I had never seen any of the Capote biopics). As far as I know, his two most famous works are Breakfast at Tiffany's and this particular text. I've seen the film version of Breakfast at Tiffany's, of course (Audrey Hepburn had some charm, to be sure, but she makes me think of Zooey Deschanel, another "woman-child" cutesy type), and I can safely say that these two works are very, very different from one another (though I can't speak of the writing style of Breakfast...).
I thought that In Cold Blood was structured and paced almost perfectly. This is a great book; Capote clearly did his research, and spent a lot of time with the subjects (and not just the killers, Perry and Dick, but also with the people of Holcomb and Garden City, and the investigators working the case). He presents the killers as human beings, not as monsters, but at the same time does not try to make them seem sympathetic (well, Perry definitely is easy to sympathize with at times, especially since even the leading investigator, Dewey, felt some pity for him). He also honors the victims, the Clutter family, by presenting them in an honest way. Herb Clutter was a prominent farmer, a hard-working, with very rigid moral values. His wife Bonnie suffered from an unidentified mental illness (there is much on mental illness in this text, from a criminal standpoint but also when Capote described what he knew about Bonnie, and actually presented some of the story from her perspective; it seems to me like these would be innovative ideas at the time, the early-to-mid '60's); she was in and out of hospitals for years, seemed to suffer from what we today would call Postpartum Depression and some sort of anxiety disorder, and would isolate herself from her family and friends. Nancy Clutter was the town sweetheart, everyone's friend, who was talented and bright and had a shining future ahead of her. Her younger brother Kenyon, a quiet boy, wanted to be an engineer.
Why did Perry and Dick kill this family, who were highly regarded in their little Kansas community, who seemed to have no enemies (even as the townspeople speculated as to who may have "had it in" for Herb), who indeed went out of their way to be helpful to others? Well, as the story is unfolding, it would seem that they didn't really have a reason for it. Dick's original plan had always involved killing them, "leaving no witnesses." Simple as that: take the money and run. But there was no money to take. As the details unfold from various perspectives, told before and after the crime took place (it is only later, when Perry and Dick have been caught and are making their confessions, that the reader finally sees what happened on the infamous night), it looks like things were not as simple as they originally seemed.
Capote's text presents many interesting questions with regards to our criminal justice system. This is especially so in regards to Perry. Throughout the book, the reader becomes acquainted with his difficult life. His story is harrowing, to be sure, and it's easy to sympathize with Perry; moreso than Dick. In fact, Dick, the spoiled son of poor farmers, who was always indulged by his parents, who had a tendency to do what he wanted to do without regard to morals or consequences...he reminded me of someone that I know very well. Other characters (like Dewey, or the deputy's wife Mrs. Meier) point out that they didn't take to Dick, but they formed some kind of bond or attachment to Perry. I would speculate the same for Capote, who infamously became close to the killers as he interviewed them. But he still attempts to show Dick in an accurate, fair light. The fact that he reminded me so much of a particular individual made me resent him; perhaps we all know someone like Dick.
However, Perry is not always easy to sympathize with. He seeks out praise from others; his often-described relationship with Willie-Jay, a man with whom he'd been incarcerated in the past, seems to stem from the fact that he liked Willie-Jay stroking his ego, helping Perry to justify his feelings and actions with intellectual-sounding language. But then again, knowing his terrible childhood, it would be no wonder that a guy like him, so physically and emotionally damaged, would seek out such companionship.
This leads to some very essential questions. Nature vs. nurture; but also, who was really responsible for the crime committed? Who is to "blame" for Dick (certainly not his parents, it would seem, as they were depicted as loving, supportive, humble folks); who is to "blame" for Perry (the abusive nuns, his alcoholic mother, his negligent father)? It's clear that Perry is a product of his environment...was Dick just born as a sociopath? And even if Perry's behavior could be attributed to trauma from his past...does that mean anything? He was a grown man (well, not quite fully grown, with his misshapen legs), and as some characters argued, he knew right from wrong.
I had somewhat expected that the story would be more told from the killers' point-of-view, since I had already heard about Capote's time interviewing them. So I was impressed at how vividly he painted the other people in the story, including the Clutters, whom he never could have possibly met, of course. He couldn't have shown them more clearly if he'd created them himself, if this were a work of fiction. The fact that it's all true makes the story even more poignant. Considering the setting (rural Kansas, late fifties), this was on the cusp of a time of great change in America. Those changes had not yet hit this little farming community...but the murder changed everything. Yet when Perry and Dick were brought into Garden City to stand trial, the crowd of people there did not heckle them, but only watched them go by. Fear had not turned them into animals; they wanted justice, certainly, but they were not out to rip the killers apart (can't help but wonder, though, how the people would have reacted if the killers had been black, especially knowing that Dick had wanted to rape Nancy Clutter before killing her...).
In the last section of the book, after the killers have been tried and sentenced to hang, brings up questions about the justice system itself. Capote points out that some killers on death row can prolong their lives by hiring lawyers to keep appealing to the courts; they can go at this for years, and as far as I can tell, this process has not changed. While I have wavered on my opinion of the death penalty, and still do not hold a firm opinion, I do think that the questions raised in this book are important. Especially so with whether or not the trial that the killers received was lawfully fair. Now, I would naturally be inclined to brush off these ideas; after all, Perry and Dick had clearly done it, they had confessed to it, and they deserved to be punished, so what do all of the nuances matter? But at one point, a lawyer who chooses to defend Dick in an appeals case points out that while the deaths of these killers really wouldn't be an affront to justice, allowing them to die with any doubts that the system had given them what they had the right to would be a bad thing. Because what could stop the courts from treating you unfairly, if you were accused of a crime, and it was "certain" that you had done it, so let's just get it over with and get you to Death Row. I felt that this was a good point; it's important to keep that in mind when asking the question, "what is justice?".
This text is regarded as being innovative in the genre of "crime nonfiction" or whatever, with the way that it took the reader through the investigation process, while at the same time showing the perspective of the killers. Many nonfiction crime shows are structured in this way now. Capote was the first one to do it, or to do it with prominence, I guess. It makes me sad to think that this talent writer's life ended so horribly, with alcoholism, but then I think to what the postmistress of Holcomb, Mrs. Clare, would say about that. She had been annoyed at the gossip surrounding the murders of the Clutter family, and had said something to the effect that life is life, shit happens, and it doesn't really matter in the end how you go, because in the end, we all go. Perry had a thought similar to this, when he thinks about a saying that a man's life is brief, a speck in the universe, a nothing in the big scheme of things. This made him feel better, knowing that, even though he'd done something really horrible, it didn't really matter in the long run. But does it? It wasn't just lives that he and Dick took that night, but the innocence and security of a small community. They died horribly, by hanging, but they left a terrible legacy behind as well. Capote's death was not enviable, but he left a legacy, his written works. Is it possible to die without regret, without having made that kind of positive contribution? And, for the person who has done so, or has made even more of an influence in the world...do they die with regrets? And in the end, does it even matter?
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Truman Capote. There are many pictures of him looking serious and dreamy like this. What a ham. I can definitely see a full-grown Dill when I look at him. If I have the chance to teach To Kill a Mockingbird this year, I'd love to pair it with In Cold Blood (the text is dedicated to Harper Lee, for one, and she is known to have aided Capote in his research).
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