ICB Context quotes

Ed Pilkington

'Smith and Hickock were the other, darker side of Herb Clutter's America.'

argues that Capote doesn't shrink from exploring the brutality of the killers, but he equally places their wounded humanity at the forefront of the narrative.

Norman Mailer

writing on postwar America in 1960s 'Since the First World War, Americans have been leading a double life, (...) one visible, the other underground'

Capote about his book

'Sometimes when I think about how good my book can be, I can hardly breathe.'

according to Capote, many readers saw the book as 'a reflection on American life'

'for the non-fiction novel form to be entirely successful, the author should not appear in the work.'

Tony Tanner

it is 'the American dream turning into the American Nightmare'

argued that Capote subtly exploited the case (…) in order to maximise the appeal of his book.

Critic Kenneth Tynan

argued that despite being very intimate with the case, Capote remained suspiciously uninvolved when it came to helping them.

Stanley Kauffmann

'This isn't writing, its research'

'Capote's structural method can be called cinematic'

(He points out a 'continual strain for the unusual word.' and notes that Capote includes pages of irrelevant biography on minor characters simply because he gathered the data and couldn't bear to waste it.)

James Truslow Adams

'a dream of social order in which each man and woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable (...) regardless of birth or position'

Capote about him and Perry

Capote discusses writing ICB in an interview in 1968, said he had 'never known anyone as intimately as he knew those boys.'

Capote discusses having spent 'years, hundreds of letters and conversations' in order to move past Perry's 'facade'.

Capote about M'Naughten rule

criticised it as 'a formula quite color-blind to any graduations between black and white.'

Despite being very against the death penalty Capote said about people like Lee Andrews, 'The best thing to do with them is to just put them in their graves.'

Harper Lee

'Those people had never seen anyone like Truman - he was like someone coming off the moon.'

Noella Jeo

'Perry was ridiculed because of his race'

'In Cold Blood is a biased text that presents Perry Smith as a victim.'

Gerald Clarke

about Perry and Capote 'Each looked at the other and saw, or thought he saw, the man he might have been.'

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