![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Capote-an Readings
In my review of the film “Capote” I mentioned that one of its many virtues is that it makes you want to read books. Having now read Capote’s In Cold Blood, Gerald Clarke’s biography Capote (on which the majority of the film is based) and Capotes letters, I also think it’s a great illustration on how you distill various textual sources into a new text, and in another medium to boot.
Capote the movie took astonishingly little liberties – there are no “composite” characters, though of course Capote’s incredibly huge social circle, as well as the various townsfolk described in In Cold Blood, are ruthlessly edited to which ones were actually important for the story the film wanted to tell. (Hence, for example, no pointless Cecil Beaton cameo or something like that, for which I’m profoundly grateful. It is the curse of biopics that they often try to squeeze in too much.)
Moreover, I’m even more impressed by the cinematic restraint. I mentioned that Capote the film couldn’t care less about whether or not you like Truman Capote, that isn’t the point; having delved into Clarke’s biography, I could see how very easily this could have been different. Say a flashback or two to the ghastlier scenes of Capote’s childhood (or for that matter Perry Smith’s) as an easy way to induce audience sympathy. But no, the script confines itself to letting Capote mention some of the eerie parallels between them briefly in conversation, and then in a way that leaves the audience uncertain as to whether or not he uses this as a manipulative tool to create an emotional bond between them. We the audience aren’t being pandered to that easily.
Reading Gerald Clarke’s account, though, it occurred to me that it could have been written by Joss Whedon and assorted ME scribes, because my, do we have an overabundance of lousy parents here. There are Capote’s own (alcoholic mother who in modern terms would qualify as emotionally abusive with her mixture of total neglect and negative attention in the form of trying to make her son more “manly”, absent and utterly unreliable father), Harper Lee’s mother (tried to drown her twice – “when they talk about Southern grotesque, they aren’t exaggarating”, Clarke quotes Capote on this), and Smith’s (alcoholic mother, who died choking on her own vomit, absent and unreliable father). (Bit player Marlon Brando, whose portrait Capote published in The New Yorker in what was in some ways a trial run for In Cold Blood, also has the alcoholic mother, and one quote from Capote’s profile of Brando – about watching his mother break apart in front of his eyes like a piece of porcelain until “one day I could just step right over her, her lying on the floor, and not feel a thing, or give a damm” – seems to sum the attitude of the children once they made it into adulthood up.) , Interestingly, Capote’s own In Cold Blood is a stark contrast to this – the only bad parents who show up there are Perry Smith’s, otherwise you have the Clutters (Herb Clutter as a benevolent if strict pater familias who also helps out other families like the Ashidas, the Deweys (model parents), post mistress Myrtle Clare and her mother (unsentimental yet very affectionate relationship), Dick Hickock’s parents (nice, gentle, heartbroken about what became of their boy – btw, the fact that one of the killers has loving parents and a good relationship with them excludes the possibility this was because of the overall contrast between the townsfolk and the killers)), and so on.
Something else the film Capote could have traded on to demand sympathy for its main character but didn’t, in another example of cinematic restraint, is the “homosexual in 50s and early 60s America” factor. Reading Capote the biography, it occurred to me that it overlaps somewhat with Brokeback Mountain in terms of era. Different social setting, of course, but then Truman Capote wasn’t born “Truman Capote” (not even in the literal sense, he was Truman Persons until his mother’s second husband adopted him), and considering his mother dragged him to psychiatrists and even sent him to a military school (St. John’s Military Academy) before he was twelve in an effort to induce “manliness”, it’s amazing that he actually never tried to conform at all but instead developed the flamboyant Truman Capote persona, complete with open gayness. Clarke says that if there was one good results all the drunken maternal “you’re a fairy, you’re going to wind up in jail, you’re going to wind up on the streets!” accusations had, it was that Capote never went through a period of doubt and guilt, trying to figure out his sexual orientation, but was clear on it from the start and never made any attempt to hide it. This biographical assertion contrasts somewhat with one of the very few letters of Capote’s to Perry Smith which survive (Clarke says that nearly all were destroyed, though Smith’s and Hickock’s letters to Capote are all still in existence – some get quoted in both the biography and the movie Capote), and in which he writes:
Dear Perry – Last night I woke up and suddenly thought: Perry says he doesn’t know anything about me, not really. I lay awake thinking about it and realized that, to a certain extent, it was true. You don’t know even the surface facts of my life – which has a few certain similarities to yours. (Quick mini autobiography ensues where he gets the date of his parents’ divorce and the number of his father’s subsequent remarriages wrong but otherwise is accurate.) I was always intellectually and artistically precocious – but emotionally immature. And, of course, I always had emotional problems – largely because of a ‘question’ you yourself asked me on our last visit and which I answered truthfully (not that the answer isn’t obvious)! This is a very sketchy resumé. But I am not in the habit of making such confidences. However, I do not mind telling you anything. Always, Truman.
The “question” Perry Smith had asked was whether Capote was homosexual. Again, could be that T.C. is consciously trying to build a bridge to the, to put it mildly, emotionally disturbed Perry here, but it’s still an assessment that contrasts with that of his biographer.
Something the movie consciously downplayed was the extent to which Capote befriended Alvin Dewey (the lead detective in the Clutter case) and his wife Marie. We do see Capote and Harper Lee present at the dinner where Dewey gets the phone call from the Las Vegas police about the apprehension of Smith and Hickock, but afterwards there is only more scene between Capote and Dewey shown, and one where Dewey is shown as angry about Capote still talking to the killers at that. I can see why – the movie concentrates on the relationship that builds between Capote and Smith and Capote’s simultanous need for Perry and Dick to die so his book will be complete and need to be close to them so he can get their story, and a secondary focus on the degree to which Capote was adopted by the Deweys would have distracted. They are, however, very present in the collected Letters, and the tone towards them is rather intimate even for the effusive Capote (the couple is usually “dearhearts”, Alvin D. alone is Foxy or later even Pappy);
The letters also throw a light to how Capote constructed his non-fiction novel while removing himself entirely from the story. This is him writing to Don Cullivan, an army aquaintance of Perry Smith’s who had befriended when he was in jail:
Now, here is my problem, which is a technical one: no part of the book is narrated in the first-person – that is, “I” do not, and technically cannot, appear. Now, toward the end of the book, I want to include a long scene between you and Perry in which I will use some material from my own conversations with Perry – in other words, substitute you for me. This specific scene will revolve around the quail-dinner Mrs. Meier served you in his cell. What I need from you is a detailed physical description of the scene – what did Mrs. M. serve, how was the table set etc. all and anything you remember. Also, it is during this scene that Perry will tell his last and final version of what happened in the Clutter house.
Not so coincidentally, Perry Smith’s narration is one of the few genuine liberties the film Capote takes. Firstly, said letter to Cullivan is dated 20 June 1960, which means Capote had already had this final tale from Smith at that point, years before the execution, whereas the film doesn’t let Perry Smith talk about the murder night to Capote until its narrative climax. Secondly, the dialogue the film uses is actually taken from what Perry says to Alvin Dewey in In Cold Blood, i.e. his official confession, down to the lines “I thought he was a very nice gentleman. Soft-spoken. I thought so right up to the moment I cut his throat”. Whereas what Perry Smith tells Don Cullivan in In Cold Blood - and presumably Capote in real life – later is:
“See, Don – I did kill them. Down there in court, old Dewey made it sound like I was prevericating – on account of Dick’s mother. Well, I wasn’t. Dick helped me, he held the flashlight and picked up the shells. And it was his idea, too. But Dick didn’t shoot them, he never could’ve – though he’s damm quick when it comes to running down an old dog. I wonder why I did it.” He socowled, as though the problem was new to him, a newly unearthed stone of surprised, unclassified colour. “I don’t know why,” he said, as if holding it to the light, and angling it now here, now there. “I was sore at Dick. The tough brass boy. But it wasn’t Dick. Or the fear of being identified. I was willing to take that gamble. And it wasn’t because of anything the Clutters did. They never hurt me. (…) Am I sorry? If that’s what you mean – I’m not. I don’t feel anything about it. I wish I did. But nothing about it bothers me a bit. Half an hour after it happened, Dick was making jokes and I was laughing at them. Maybe we’re not human. I’m human enough to feel sorry for myself. Sorry I can’t walk out of here when you walk out. But that’s all. (…) Why? Soldiers don’t lose much sleep. They murder, and get medals for doing it. The good people of Kansas want to murder me – and some hangman will be glad to get the work. It’s easy to kill – a lot easier than passing a bad cheque. Just remember: I only knew the Clutters maybe an hour. If I’d really known them, I guess I’d feel different. I don’t think I could live with myself. But the way it was, it was like picking off targets in a shooting gallery.”
In True Blood ends this scene with Perry Smith asking Don, challenging, after this confession “Do you like me?” and continues:
”Yes, I like you.”
Cullivan’s soft empathic answer pleased and rather flustered Perry. He smiled and said “Then you must be some kind of nut.” Suddenly rising, he crossed the cell and picked up a broom. “I don’t know why I should die among strangers. Let a bunch of prairiebillys stand around and watch me strangle. Shit. I ought to kill myself first.” He lifted the broom and pressed the birstles against the light bulb that burned in the ceiling. “Just unscrew the blub and smash it and cut my wrists. That’s what I ought to do. While you’re still here. Somebody who cares about me a little bit.”
Due to Capote’s letter to Cullivan, we can’t know whether this last exchange took place between Smith and Cullivan or between Smith and Capote, but the question of just what Capote felt for Perry Smith is of course at the core of the film and is dealt with extensively in the biography. In Cold Blood is careful not to have an authorial voice convey judgment on either killer, and they get nearly the same amount of “page time” – but nearly isn’t quite. Moreover, point of view is more often given to Perry. Still, both portraits are stunning with their mixture of random violence and sheer ordinariness (Dick running over dogs on the street, and of course, the before and after of the murders themselves, mixing the buying of ropes to tie up the family with plans taken straight out of The Treasure of the Sierra Nevada for a rich life afterwards; side note for Jossverse aficiniados – at those momements, you feel reminded of the trio.) The physical descriptions of both have a common theme, missing proportions, fragmentary natures:
But neither Dick’s physique nor the inky gallery adorning it made as remarkable an impression as his face, which seemed composed of mismatching parts. It was as though his head had been halved like an apple, then put together a fraction off centre. Something of the kind had happened; the imperfectly aligned features were the outcome ofa car collision in 1950 – an accident that left his long-jawed and narrow face tilted, the left side rather lower than the right..
And Perry:
While Perry sang, Otto sketched him in a sketchbook. It was a passable likeness, and the artist perceived one one not very obvious aspect of the sitter’s countenance – its mischief, an amused, babyish malice that suggested some unkind cupid aiming envenomed arrows.
(Capote has a thing for faces as a starting point for pen-portraits. This is Bonnie Clutter, one of the victim: Even in Jolene, a very childlike child, Mrs. Clutter’s heart-shaped, missionary’s face, her look of helpless, homespun ethereality arounsed protective compassion. And Perry Smith’s mother: Liquor had blurred the face, swollen the figure of the once sinewy, limber Cherokee girl, had soured her soul, honed her tongue to the wickedest point, so dissolved her self-respect that generally she did not bother to ask the names of the stevedores and trolley-car conductors and such persons who accepted what she offered without charge (except that she insisted they drink with her first, and dance to the tunes of a wind-up Victrola.)
No prices, though, for making a guess which of the two gets that bit more of writerly attention. And in the last but one scene, the execution, where we are in Alvin Dewey’s point of view , you get as close an explanation as Capote the writer would ever offer as to why:
Dewey shut his eyes; he kept them shut until he heard the thud-snap that announces a rope-broken neck. Like the majority of American law-enforcement officials, Dewey was certain that capital punishment is a deterrent to violent crime, and he felt that if ever the penalty had been earned, the present instance was it. The preceeding execution had not disturbed him, he had never had much use for Hickock, who seemed to him “a small-time chiseller who got out of his depth, empty and worthless”. But Smith, though he was the true murderer, aroused another response, for Perry possessed a quality, the aura of an exiled animal, a creature walking wounded, that the detective could not disregard. He remembered his first meeting with Perry in the interrogation room at Police Headquarters in Las Vegas – the dwarfish boy-man seated in the metal chair, his small booted feet not quite brushing the floor. And when Dewey now opened his eyes, that is what he saw: the same childish feet, tilted, dangling.
Reading In Cold Blood, I wondered whether David Lynch or Scott Frost did, because some of Twin Peaks certainly carries echoes – the reaction of a small town shocked by a violent murder, not just in general terms but details – Nancy Clutter’s best friend Susan Kidwell spending all her time with Nancy’s boyfriend Bobby in the immediate aftermath of the murders, for example, brought to mind Donna and James somewhat. But of course the murderer in Twin Peaks is a member of the community, whereas Perry and Dick come from outside, and the murder victim, Laura, turns out to have had not just a double but a hellish life pre-murder, whereas the Clutters, while not presented as complete saints (Mrs. C. is depressed, Herb Clutter is somewhat unreasonable re: his daughter’s boyfriend) are described as a genuine loving family. But in a fictional narrative, you never wonder how on earth the author felt about his characters. Whereas any story describing the near-present confront both author and readers with the originals for said characters being partly or completely still around.
What contributes to the disturbing power of this particular story as rendered by Capote to this day is, I think, that it does not have a clear agenda in the way stories about murders and sentenced killers usually do. It’s not a book written against the death penalty. Its very premise is that Smith and Hickock were guilty as charged (Smith for the actual shootings, Hickock for the planning and aiding during the shootings). It doesn’t try to exonorate anyone, but it render them immortal – and this might only have been possible through that undefinable act of betrayal that consitutes getting close enough to learn their very dreams while needing them to die.
Capote the movie took astonishingly little liberties – there are no “composite” characters, though of course Capote’s incredibly huge social circle, as well as the various townsfolk described in In Cold Blood, are ruthlessly edited to which ones were actually important for the story the film wanted to tell. (Hence, for example, no pointless Cecil Beaton cameo or something like that, for which I’m profoundly grateful. It is the curse of biopics that they often try to squeeze in too much.)
Moreover, I’m even more impressed by the cinematic restraint. I mentioned that Capote the film couldn’t care less about whether or not you like Truman Capote, that isn’t the point; having delved into Clarke’s biography, I could see how very easily this could have been different. Say a flashback or two to the ghastlier scenes of Capote’s childhood (or for that matter Perry Smith’s) as an easy way to induce audience sympathy. But no, the script confines itself to letting Capote mention some of the eerie parallels between them briefly in conversation, and then in a way that leaves the audience uncertain as to whether or not he uses this as a manipulative tool to create an emotional bond between them. We the audience aren’t being pandered to that easily.
Reading Gerald Clarke’s account, though, it occurred to me that it could have been written by Joss Whedon and assorted ME scribes, because my, do we have an overabundance of lousy parents here. There are Capote’s own (alcoholic mother who in modern terms would qualify as emotionally abusive with her mixture of total neglect and negative attention in the form of trying to make her son more “manly”, absent and utterly unreliable father), Harper Lee’s mother (tried to drown her twice – “when they talk about Southern grotesque, they aren’t exaggarating”, Clarke quotes Capote on this), and Smith’s (alcoholic mother, who died choking on her own vomit, absent and unreliable father). (Bit player Marlon Brando, whose portrait Capote published in The New Yorker in what was in some ways a trial run for In Cold Blood, also has the alcoholic mother, and one quote from Capote’s profile of Brando – about watching his mother break apart in front of his eyes like a piece of porcelain until “one day I could just step right over her, her lying on the floor, and not feel a thing, or give a damm” – seems to sum the attitude of the children once they made it into adulthood up.) , Interestingly, Capote’s own In Cold Blood is a stark contrast to this – the only bad parents who show up there are Perry Smith’s, otherwise you have the Clutters (Herb Clutter as a benevolent if strict pater familias who also helps out other families like the Ashidas, the Deweys (model parents), post mistress Myrtle Clare and her mother (unsentimental yet very affectionate relationship), Dick Hickock’s parents (nice, gentle, heartbroken about what became of their boy – btw, the fact that one of the killers has loving parents and a good relationship with them excludes the possibility this was because of the overall contrast between the townsfolk and the killers)), and so on.
Something else the film Capote could have traded on to demand sympathy for its main character but didn’t, in another example of cinematic restraint, is the “homosexual in 50s and early 60s America” factor. Reading Capote the biography, it occurred to me that it overlaps somewhat with Brokeback Mountain in terms of era. Different social setting, of course, but then Truman Capote wasn’t born “Truman Capote” (not even in the literal sense, he was Truman Persons until his mother’s second husband adopted him), and considering his mother dragged him to psychiatrists and even sent him to a military school (St. John’s Military Academy) before he was twelve in an effort to induce “manliness”, it’s amazing that he actually never tried to conform at all but instead developed the flamboyant Truman Capote persona, complete with open gayness. Clarke says that if there was one good results all the drunken maternal “you’re a fairy, you’re going to wind up in jail, you’re going to wind up on the streets!” accusations had, it was that Capote never went through a period of doubt and guilt, trying to figure out his sexual orientation, but was clear on it from the start and never made any attempt to hide it. This biographical assertion contrasts somewhat with one of the very few letters of Capote’s to Perry Smith which survive (Clarke says that nearly all were destroyed, though Smith’s and Hickock’s letters to Capote are all still in existence – some get quoted in both the biography and the movie Capote), and in which he writes:
Dear Perry – Last night I woke up and suddenly thought: Perry says he doesn’t know anything about me, not really. I lay awake thinking about it and realized that, to a certain extent, it was true. You don’t know even the surface facts of my life – which has a few certain similarities to yours. (Quick mini autobiography ensues where he gets the date of his parents’ divorce and the number of his father’s subsequent remarriages wrong but otherwise is accurate.) I was always intellectually and artistically precocious – but emotionally immature. And, of course, I always had emotional problems – largely because of a ‘question’ you yourself asked me on our last visit and which I answered truthfully (not that the answer isn’t obvious)! This is a very sketchy resumé. But I am not in the habit of making such confidences. However, I do not mind telling you anything. Always, Truman.
The “question” Perry Smith had asked was whether Capote was homosexual. Again, could be that T.C. is consciously trying to build a bridge to the, to put it mildly, emotionally disturbed Perry here, but it’s still an assessment that contrasts with that of his biographer.
Something the movie consciously downplayed was the extent to which Capote befriended Alvin Dewey (the lead detective in the Clutter case) and his wife Marie. We do see Capote and Harper Lee present at the dinner where Dewey gets the phone call from the Las Vegas police about the apprehension of Smith and Hickock, but afterwards there is only more scene between Capote and Dewey shown, and one where Dewey is shown as angry about Capote still talking to the killers at that. I can see why – the movie concentrates on the relationship that builds between Capote and Smith and Capote’s simultanous need for Perry and Dick to die so his book will be complete and need to be close to them so he can get their story, and a secondary focus on the degree to which Capote was adopted by the Deweys would have distracted. They are, however, very present in the collected Letters, and the tone towards them is rather intimate even for the effusive Capote (the couple is usually “dearhearts”, Alvin D. alone is Foxy or later even Pappy);
The letters also throw a light to how Capote constructed his non-fiction novel while removing himself entirely from the story. This is him writing to Don Cullivan, an army aquaintance of Perry Smith’s who had befriended when he was in jail:
Now, here is my problem, which is a technical one: no part of the book is narrated in the first-person – that is, “I” do not, and technically cannot, appear. Now, toward the end of the book, I want to include a long scene between you and Perry in which I will use some material from my own conversations with Perry – in other words, substitute you for me. This specific scene will revolve around the quail-dinner Mrs. Meier served you in his cell. What I need from you is a detailed physical description of the scene – what did Mrs. M. serve, how was the table set etc. all and anything you remember. Also, it is during this scene that Perry will tell his last and final version of what happened in the Clutter house.
Not so coincidentally, Perry Smith’s narration is one of the few genuine liberties the film Capote takes. Firstly, said letter to Cullivan is dated 20 June 1960, which means Capote had already had this final tale from Smith at that point, years before the execution, whereas the film doesn’t let Perry Smith talk about the murder night to Capote until its narrative climax. Secondly, the dialogue the film uses is actually taken from what Perry says to Alvin Dewey in In Cold Blood, i.e. his official confession, down to the lines “I thought he was a very nice gentleman. Soft-spoken. I thought so right up to the moment I cut his throat”. Whereas what Perry Smith tells Don Cullivan in In Cold Blood - and presumably Capote in real life – later is:
“See, Don – I did kill them. Down there in court, old Dewey made it sound like I was prevericating – on account of Dick’s mother. Well, I wasn’t. Dick helped me, he held the flashlight and picked up the shells. And it was his idea, too. But Dick didn’t shoot them, he never could’ve – though he’s damm quick when it comes to running down an old dog. I wonder why I did it.” He socowled, as though the problem was new to him, a newly unearthed stone of surprised, unclassified colour. “I don’t know why,” he said, as if holding it to the light, and angling it now here, now there. “I was sore at Dick. The tough brass boy. But it wasn’t Dick. Or the fear of being identified. I was willing to take that gamble. And it wasn’t because of anything the Clutters did. They never hurt me. (…) Am I sorry? If that’s what you mean – I’m not. I don’t feel anything about it. I wish I did. But nothing about it bothers me a bit. Half an hour after it happened, Dick was making jokes and I was laughing at them. Maybe we’re not human. I’m human enough to feel sorry for myself. Sorry I can’t walk out of here when you walk out. But that’s all. (…) Why? Soldiers don’t lose much sleep. They murder, and get medals for doing it. The good people of Kansas want to murder me – and some hangman will be glad to get the work. It’s easy to kill – a lot easier than passing a bad cheque. Just remember: I only knew the Clutters maybe an hour. If I’d really known them, I guess I’d feel different. I don’t think I could live with myself. But the way it was, it was like picking off targets in a shooting gallery.”
In True Blood ends this scene with Perry Smith asking Don, challenging, after this confession “Do you like me?” and continues:
”Yes, I like you.”
Cullivan’s soft empathic answer pleased and rather flustered Perry. He smiled and said “Then you must be some kind of nut.” Suddenly rising, he crossed the cell and picked up a broom. “I don’t know why I should die among strangers. Let a bunch of prairiebillys stand around and watch me strangle. Shit. I ought to kill myself first.” He lifted the broom and pressed the birstles against the light bulb that burned in the ceiling. “Just unscrew the blub and smash it and cut my wrists. That’s what I ought to do. While you’re still here. Somebody who cares about me a little bit.”
Due to Capote’s letter to Cullivan, we can’t know whether this last exchange took place between Smith and Cullivan or between Smith and Capote, but the question of just what Capote felt for Perry Smith is of course at the core of the film and is dealt with extensively in the biography. In Cold Blood is careful not to have an authorial voice convey judgment on either killer, and they get nearly the same amount of “page time” – but nearly isn’t quite. Moreover, point of view is more often given to Perry. Still, both portraits are stunning with their mixture of random violence and sheer ordinariness (Dick running over dogs on the street, and of course, the before and after of the murders themselves, mixing the buying of ropes to tie up the family with plans taken straight out of The Treasure of the Sierra Nevada for a rich life afterwards; side note for Jossverse aficiniados – at those momements, you feel reminded of the trio.) The physical descriptions of both have a common theme, missing proportions, fragmentary natures:
But neither Dick’s physique nor the inky gallery adorning it made as remarkable an impression as his face, which seemed composed of mismatching parts. It was as though his head had been halved like an apple, then put together a fraction off centre. Something of the kind had happened; the imperfectly aligned features were the outcome ofa car collision in 1950 – an accident that left his long-jawed and narrow face tilted, the left side rather lower than the right..
And Perry:
While Perry sang, Otto sketched him in a sketchbook. It was a passable likeness, and the artist perceived one one not very obvious aspect of the sitter’s countenance – its mischief, an amused, babyish malice that suggested some unkind cupid aiming envenomed arrows.
(Capote has a thing for faces as a starting point for pen-portraits. This is Bonnie Clutter, one of the victim: Even in Jolene, a very childlike child, Mrs. Clutter’s heart-shaped, missionary’s face, her look of helpless, homespun ethereality arounsed protective compassion. And Perry Smith’s mother: Liquor had blurred the face, swollen the figure of the once sinewy, limber Cherokee girl, had soured her soul, honed her tongue to the wickedest point, so dissolved her self-respect that generally she did not bother to ask the names of the stevedores and trolley-car conductors and such persons who accepted what she offered without charge (except that she insisted they drink with her first, and dance to the tunes of a wind-up Victrola.)
No prices, though, for making a guess which of the two gets that bit more of writerly attention. And in the last but one scene, the execution, where we are in Alvin Dewey’s point of view , you get as close an explanation as Capote the writer would ever offer as to why:
Dewey shut his eyes; he kept them shut until he heard the thud-snap that announces a rope-broken neck. Like the majority of American law-enforcement officials, Dewey was certain that capital punishment is a deterrent to violent crime, and he felt that if ever the penalty had been earned, the present instance was it. The preceeding execution had not disturbed him, he had never had much use for Hickock, who seemed to him “a small-time chiseller who got out of his depth, empty and worthless”. But Smith, though he was the true murderer, aroused another response, for Perry possessed a quality, the aura of an exiled animal, a creature walking wounded, that the detective could not disregard. He remembered his first meeting with Perry in the interrogation room at Police Headquarters in Las Vegas – the dwarfish boy-man seated in the metal chair, his small booted feet not quite brushing the floor. And when Dewey now opened his eyes, that is what he saw: the same childish feet, tilted, dangling.
Reading In Cold Blood, I wondered whether David Lynch or Scott Frost did, because some of Twin Peaks certainly carries echoes – the reaction of a small town shocked by a violent murder, not just in general terms but details – Nancy Clutter’s best friend Susan Kidwell spending all her time with Nancy’s boyfriend Bobby in the immediate aftermath of the murders, for example, brought to mind Donna and James somewhat. But of course the murderer in Twin Peaks is a member of the community, whereas Perry and Dick come from outside, and the murder victim, Laura, turns out to have had not just a double but a hellish life pre-murder, whereas the Clutters, while not presented as complete saints (Mrs. C. is depressed, Herb Clutter is somewhat unreasonable re: his daughter’s boyfriend) are described as a genuine loving family. But in a fictional narrative, you never wonder how on earth the author felt about his characters. Whereas any story describing the near-present confront both author and readers with the originals for said characters being partly or completely still around.
What contributes to the disturbing power of this particular story as rendered by Capote to this day is, I think, that it does not have a clear agenda in the way stories about murders and sentenced killers usually do. It’s not a book written against the death penalty. Its very premise is that Smith and Hickock were guilty as charged (Smith for the actual shootings, Hickock for the planning and aiding during the shootings). It doesn’t try to exonorate anyone, but it render them immortal – and this might only have been possible through that undefinable act of betrayal that consitutes getting close enough to learn their very dreams while needing them to die.
no subject
no subject