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The book additionally invites questions concerning the limits and boundaries of journalistic integrity. This book is essentially a detailed and well-crafted piece of journalism with the level and quality of detail to bring it into horrific focus. When does the journalist step beyond his role as observer and become part of the story. One gets access to all sides of the murders of a family from the effect on the close relatives and friends to the emotional states of the murderers themselves and their final demise at the end of a rope. No one can escape this book without a large emotional wallop that will leave one's mind reverberating for some time. And.Should the journalist do so and thus change outcomes. Disturbingly provocative in many ways.
Capote instinctively tapped into this dialectic and became part of it himself as an upstart homosexual New Yorker in the middle of stable, secure and patriarchal Kansas. It strikes a chord with the American paradoxical character of "the new" versus "stability"; change versus safety; the search for frontier versus authenticity; the fear of anarchy versus the fear of authority; liberal versus conservative.
Although called the first "non-fiction novel" I don't consider it a novel. An excellent piece of investigative journalism.
The juxtaposition of Capote, a liberal New Yorker, among the conservative mid-westerners should not go unnoticed. To do so would suppose that journalism is objective, it is not, and anyway by most accounts Capote mostly got it right.
It's gripping journalism, extremely well researched, and very American. On the one side the ultimate in safety, security and authority is represented by the Clutter family - and on the opposite side the killers, younger and free, represent change, "the new" and anarchy.
This sort of "meta" author mirroring the story is the real aesthetic and creative achievement that has kept it a classic while later "new journalism" works, characterized by their use of literary techniques applied to non-fiction, have rarely if ever exceeded Capote's initial genesis.
Truman Capote arguably invented true crime, and still dominates with this spectacular classic. He took years to finish this book, his last book, and it shows in the brilliant prose. This is among my favorite books of all time. I recommend to everyone.
This is a great read, a great novel, and a great edition. When will publishers learn that in order to compete with Brittany Spears, life, death, taxes, and childbirth, they need to give readers beautiful editions with real cloth covers and heavy cream paper, something to treasure. Capote's work, his illuminating approach to life, exemplified by the contrasts of the killers, the victims, and the hunters of the killers, is a great work of art. The book reproduces the original 1965 edition and although the paper is not as heavy, it certainly beats the previous smaller Modern Library edition. Not some cheap cardboard edition such as, say, my collected Ginsberg, which already is turning brown and edging out of the binding. I'd rather pay another dollar for a $50 book and get something that will stay intact.
I was a child when In Cold Blood was first published but remember the adults in my life talking about this controversial novel. Relatives of the slain family wrote a letter published in the local newspaper asking that prosecutors not pursue the death penalty. The town's citizens are relieved that it was strangers who commited this attrocity and they no longer have to eye their neighbors suspiciously. I was surprised how much this 40+ year old book had to say about the anger, polarization and general lack of civility in today's society. What a fascinating view of our society on the cusp of the revolution of the 1960's and 1970's. A family is senselessly murdered in a small town in Kansas. After watching the two recent Truman Capote biopics (Capote and Infamous), I thought I should read it. And when the murderers are returned to Kansas and are walked into the jail for booking, the audience who has gathered for this spectacle stands nearly silent.
Everyone in the town of 6,000 knew this family. After the murderers are apprehended, each minister in this community of 21 churches stood at his pulpit and spokeout AGAINST the capital punishment. There is little talk of revenge or a sense of closure via the death penalty. READ THIS BOOK.
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