Knowt
Context:
American dream:
Anyone can achieve success as long as they work hard.
America is viewed as the ‘land of opportunity’
Herb clutter is a ‘self-made man’ who is viewed to have achieved the American dream (Dick and Perry as jealous of that)
Spectator article: “The American dream turning into the American nightmare”
Capote in Kansas: Stanley Kauffman’s original review of Truman Capote’s ‘In Cold Blood’
Capote’s writing style is depicted as cinematic with him using intercutting of different story strands, intense close-ups, flashbacks, travelling shots, background detail (shifting scenes e.g Dick and Perry in Mexico to Al Dewey in Holcomb)
Kauffman says, "The mechanisms creak here because the hand of the maker is always felt pushing and pulling and arranging.”
Kauffman says the best parts of the book are the vivid character descriptions we receive as well as the flavourful dialogue (e.g Perry describing Clutter)
Kauffman describes the novel as an amplified magazine crime-feature; Criticising how it has been elevated to that of serious literature
There was also criticism over the vastly oversupplied facts, “congenital inability to write straight forward English”
“little fusion between the insights of art with the powers of fact” Kauffman
Truman Capote’s Non-fiction novel and the backstory behind it:
Blurb: “A remarkable synthesis of journalistic skill and powerfully evocative narrative”
Real crime: “An experiment in journalistic writing”
Capote: “More often than not numerous interviews conducted over a considerable period of time”
The Beginning
inspired by a newspaper article Capote read in the New York Times - started with the murder and some background on the victims (Capote reversed this)
Holcomb is described in the present tense and the crime is described in the past
The name ‘The last to see them alive’ creates a level of tension as we read towards the Clutter Family’s deaths; with Capote regularly using analepsis (past event is narrated at a later place than its chronological order) and prolepsis (the representation of a thing as existing before it actually does or did so)
A voice to the Villains:
Capote often depicts similarities between Perry and Herb in order to portray Smith as two dimensional and as the novel goes in he tries to curate sympathy for him (telling us about his childhood)
Tries to get us to understand Smith’s crime rather than describe it
Voices and verification:
Capote used his journalistic experience from the New Yorker, and took no notes relying on his memory for precise quotes
Claimed he could do this with 90% accuracy
Specific details of the story we can’t be certain are facts (e.g Mr Clutter taking his apple outside and we’re told “it was ideal apple-eating weather” as Capote wouldn’t know what Herb said and wasn’t there himself) therefore details embellished
blurring the lines between fact and fiction
fiction helps build the narrative and details make for more convincing characters
not just about the deaths, but the whole town, murderers
The ending:
Capote providing stories on other convicts delays the conclusion and creates more tension (Capote also had to wait many years for the men to be hung and for him to publish)
True crime writer Jack Olsen, “Capote made true crime an interesting, successful, commercial genre but he also began the process of tearing it down”
George Plimpton interview New York Times 1966:
Capote intrigued by nonfiction novels and viewed journalism as most underestimated and least explored literary medium
Capote says narrative reporting skills require: imagination, technical skills, eye for detail, and above all a reporter must be able to empathise with personalities outside his usual imaginative range
hard to choose a promising subject that doesn’t age too quickly (can still be successful years later)
chose the Clutter murder after seeing a New Yorker article on it and thought murder wasn’t a theme that would be likely to darken and yellow with time (always present in society)
Spontaneous decision to go to Kansas not long after the murders, went with his friend Harper Lee (had just written to Kill a Mockingbird) who went as his assistant researcher
Harper Lee helped to make the towns people co operative by attending interviews (made her own notes) and making friends with many of the towns people and wives
Collected so many interviews and completed months of comparative research on murder, murderers, and the criminal mentality (to provide perspective on Dick and Perry)
In the first part of the novel Capote uses the school teachers narration of going to the Clutter’s house and finding the bodies with the sheriff, as well as a scene that he took from interviews between the postmistress and her Mother and the rest is from direct observation, events he saw himself (the trial, executions)
trained for not note taking by having a friend reading passages from a book then Capote having to recall and see how close he could get to the original. did this because he believes note-taking artificializes the atmosphere of an interview
Believes Perry committed the murder because of an, “accumulation of disillusionments and reverses and he suddenly found himself (in the Clutter house that night) in a psychological cul-de-sac”
The narrative puts across Capote’s beliefs without including him directly in the novel
Perry came to trust Capote incredibly in the last 5 years of his life, totally and absolutely honest with him
The murderers knew about the book, Capote explained to Perry how it was because he wanted to make a work of art and Perry remarked how ironic it was that all his life he had wanted to do that and now he had murdered four people and Capote was no producing a work of art. Perry was desperate to see the book and Capote let him however his main objection was the title as he said how it wasn’t committed in cold blood.
Dick’s initial reaction to the novel was to switch and change his story in order to serve him legally. However, due to the first few months of him interviewing them and them not being able o speak to one another, Capote realised when they weren’t telling the truth
Dick was so dedicated to the crime due to wanting to rape Nancy (had serious perversions), and he could plan the murder but not commit it
Some details left out of the book (In Mexico they had an awful falling out where Perry wanted to kill Dick, two other murders planned, Mr Bell offered Dick a job in the meat packing company and he worked there for 2 days on the pickle line)
Capote believes Perry never meant to kill the Clutters but that he had a brain explosion and Dick knew Perry was going to do it even if Perry didn’t showing Dick had an awfully shrewd instinct
The lst to see them alive is all reconstructed from the evidence of witnesses
Capote describes Perry, “quite a little moralist”
He wrote to the murderers twice a week, but had to be careful not to be repititious as Perry was terribly jealous of Dick
Capote believes that Perry could have been an entirely different person had it not been for his abysmal childhood, he had extraordinary qualities that weren’t channeled properly