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If you want truth in your true crime, this prolly isn't going to fit the bill. This despite the fact that Smith brutally, and 'in cold blood' murdered the family.
So when I found out that this book was hardly true, it soured me on it. If it was a fictional account, it would be good reading, but it's not so it isn't.First, Capote took no notes when he interviewed the men, yet he chronicles highly detailed conversations.
I like honesty in my books, and when one purports to tell the truth, I have high standards. And his book is filled with an effort to make Smith likable and sympathetic, and make Hickok into the evil one.
I guess he must be special, unlike the 99.99 of journos who take notes. Moreover, Capote fell in love with Smith.
Capote also tried to make one believe that Hickok killed two of the people, even though Smith confessed after his last appeal was rejected.Anyway, the story just doesn't ring true and given the background of Capote's involvement with Smith, and the pains he goes to to make smith likable, I just cannot trust Capote's integrity here. But if you just want a decent read and don't care about veracity, this might be your book.
Capote has painted a vivid picture of a brutal murdering of innocent and wholesome family. Also at some parts Capote goes into length on the background of the killers and that got a little dull. Yes, he does show up who they were and that necessarily humanizes them but does not show admiration for them and their dirty deeds.
The book jumps around to different characters showing their perspective. Capote is a masterful storyteller with great descriptions of the people, places, and times in which these heinous acts were committed. It is creepy to read at parts.
If anything, Capote shows an admiration for the people of Holcomb - for their decency and lack of desired vengeance. Including the murderers. Some reviewers have said Capote is very sympathetic to the killers but I did not read that into the text.
I think he does slightly overstep his bounds near the end where he seems to be making a case against the death penalty but for at least one of the perpetrators this can be very well argued. Overall a great work.
What a story - still grim but exciting after all these years. This was my third copy - thanks to lending and forgetting to reclaim. Every so often I re-read it, making it my own "cult classic". This time around, I also had to re-purchase "To Kill a Mockingbird" - lost from the same causes as "In Cold Blood". I enjoyed a week of reading both books and delving into more research regarding the long relationship between Capote and Lee.
Murder in small town, homosexual overtones, graphic descriptions - must have really shook up the world in 1966. Even today is a captivating read. Capote has a way with words and that makes this story probably more entertaining than it should be. He paints the time very well and as the reader you go back to a much different time.
Antipathy based on P.S.Hoffman's character in the movie is one reason. It is a brilliant piece of borderline writing, mixing 'fiction' and journalism. I would feel so much better liking it. My recent reading of Gore Vidal's two volume memoirs yet another: these two guys hated each others' guts.I started reading this with the intention to give it away afterwards for a charity second hand book sale. Real life can never be that plausible.I had picked the book up from a corner of a shelf that I wanted to re-arrange. My failure to like Capote's short stories yet another.
The killer seems to have actually confessed to Capote. He befriended them, including unclear levels of personal attraction,and made one of them open himself up to him. Then Capote published the book in a rush before the legal procedings were over, thus cementing the death sentence for his 'friends'. (Somehow Heisenberg with his uncertainty principle, das Unschaerfeprinzip, comes to mind - I just happen to have read something about it yesterday - : observations and measurements will influence the object of the observation. .if it only were one. The book claims early on, that the killers had singled out this specific farm, following hints from an informer, and that they went there with the intention to rob and kill.Capote crawls into the minds and lives of the protagonists and witnesses in an uncannily believable way. This is so well constructed that it should be a novel.
I started to read it and much against my expectations, I found it good. My expectations were different for various reasons. But still.The book describes life and death in Western Kansas in 1959. Unfortunately it also seems to have done something highly immoral, if the story as told by the movie 'Capote' is correct: it seems that Capote deceived the killers, who are his subject of observation, into seeing him as 'on their side', ie supporting their defense. My recollection that I was bored by a German translation 35 years ago is another.
Not quite meant in the same context of course).While I am in principle against the death penalty, I can't quite manage to regret that these two mass murderers were hanged. Two jailbirds kill 4 members from a wealthy farmer's family 'in cold blood'. (Could have been a bad translation or could have been a bad reader). Can't do that now.
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