WRITTEN IN COLD BLOOD, BY TRUMAN CAPOTE- CAPT AJIT VADAKAYIL

TRUMAN CAPOTE- THE NOVELIST WHO SOLD HIS SOUL— CLASSIC MASTER PIECE AND TRAIL BLAZING NOVEL --

“ IN COLD BLOOD”

I read the non-fiction true account book IN COLD BLOOD , by American author Truman Capote at the tender age of 11.  I had just come out of the Enid Blyton stage , and this was my first big novel.

This book was in my school library and I was impressed by the fact that it got rave reviews and sold half a million copies in the first two weeks after it was published. To be frank this book should be banned from school libraries.

Since then I got several opportunities to read this book again, but something inside me stopped me every time . Much later in life , I got hold of a E-book copy. I still hold this in my pen drive, but have never read this.  At the same time I should say categorically - Capote has breathed in such realism into this superbly crafted classic, that it can hardly be surpassed ever.

Three years ago I saw the Hollywood movie Capote by DVD while at sea.  Truman Capote is acted out by Phillip Seymour Hoffman, who made the character come alive—and how!.  

Hoffman  truly deserved whatever accolades came his way, including 2006 academy award and Globe award for best actor. Looks to me that he was born to do this once in a lifetime role, to portray a openly gay and attention craving complex character, with a high pitched voice and grotesque mannerisms ..the ultimate consummate self publicist. It is NOT an easy role to do justice to.

The shallow thinking common Yank has NOT figured out what happened at Herb Clutter’s ranch in Holcomb.  Two drifters , out on parole murder Herb Clutter, his wife Bonnie and his two teenaged children Nancy and Kenyon.  Capote biased approach in the book paints  Perry Smith as the wronged angel, and portrays the other man Dick Hickock as a diabolical killer.

If you are objective as a crime detective, or even a journalist , it is simple to see that all shootings and throat slittings were done by Perry, the homosexual.  Dick has NOT killed anybody, though it is claimed that he was the brains behind the would be robbery of a safe which always held more than 10000 dollars, that went awry.

It is common knowledge that Truman Capote went regularly to jail for 5 years , to have a tete e tete  and sex with Perry, facilitated by lead detective Alvin Dewey , whose wife was a great fan of Capote. Capote bribed the jail warden too.  He was indeed in true love with killer Perry and this small village in Kansas in the heartland of America had just 250 inhabitants,  probably with NIL homosexuals to give him release while on the job.

Joseph John Maloney, a convicted murderer , on his release in 1972, had spilled the beans. Both Perry and Dick were homosexual partners in prison. JJ Maloney became an investigative reported at Kansas City Star, and he was nominated for Pulitzer prize 5 times. He says that Dick was hetero-sexual, and probably had a homosexual relationship in jail with Perry , usual in American prisons , where there are no women.  JJ said that Dick tried to rape the attractive 16 year old Nancy Clutter. In a fit of gay jealousy passive gay partner Perry did the shootings and the throat slittings, to show that he is a man’s man..  Dick’s role was to attempt to rob them after tying and gagging the victims.

Just before Perry was hanged he kissed Truman Capote on the cheek, and Capote fled tears streaming, without waiting to watch the hanging .

He stood stoically and  watched Dick hanging, just before that.

The reason why Capote had a relationship with Perry , who was in prison was two fold. This is where I say that he sold his soul.  He extracted maximum juice by way of classified information about the killings, from Perry –getting him to feel that a famous man like Capote had the clout to delay the hangings.  

And the diabolical  part is that Truman Capote delayed releasing his book till both Dick and Perry were hanged. 


Dead men tell no tales, after reading no book, right?  

The book brought Capote fame and riches, and more importantly a guaranteed top perch in the American literary canon, but no peace of mind.  He wasted his life on drink and drugs , and did not write any other novel, till he died in 1984 at the age of 59, though he was so gifted in playing around with words. 

"No one will ever know what In Cold Blood took out of me," Capote once said.  "It scraped me right down to the marrow of my bones. It nearly killed me. I think, in a way, it did kill me." 


Why not?  Such poor ethics,  where he USED a lover on the death row, incapable of defending himself, -- a man, who had put his full trust in him and reposed in him , his entire faith.

This book which was the first attempt to merge journalism with novelistic devices , to create a new literary art form -- is dishonest to the core. 

Think over what I said.  

Now I shall talk about the gripping book IN COLD BLOOD—a non-fiction book , which sold half a million copies in the first week ( something hard to beat ) . It is now available in 30 languages.

Check out the extravagant and evocative prose of the opening page --

“The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call "out there.".  The local accent is barbed with a prairie twang, a ranch-hand nasalness, and the men, many of them, wear narrow frontier trousers, Stetsons, and high-heeled boots with pointed toes.  The land is flat, and the views are awesomely extensive; horses, herds of cattle, a white cluster of grain elevators rising as gracefully as Greek temples are visible long before a traveler reaches them”.

Now check out how he finished his book-

"And nice to have seen you, Sue. Good luck,"  he called after her as she disappeared down the path, a pretty girl in a hurry, her smooth hair swinging, shining -  just such a young woman as Nancy might have been.  Then, starting home, he walked toward the trees, and under them, leaving behind him the big sky, the whisper of wind voices in the wind-bent wheat”.

The story has a fictionalized ending with a visit of Susan , Nancy’s friend to the Garden City graveyard ,  4 years after  the Clutters were laid to rest, when detective Dewey bumps into her .  Life goes on— it comes full circle— cries have become whispers  .

This extraordinary sangfroid  , playing around with the nuances , is what makes the book so haunting—the work of a genius.

The readers know the outcome of the book right from the start, yet Capote manages to build suspense. Capote allows characters to tell their own story, in a seamless manner, creating a relationship between the reader, the killers ,the victims—literally all, whipping up sympathy for the wrong guy. Readers feel empathy for Perry, the gruesome killer.

He tries to make Perry , his gay partner for 5 long years smell of roses all the while. On the other hand he runs down Dick at the drop of a hat and it is clear that he has no time for him. Dick is portrayed as a child rapist , a cold hearted , hard core criminal without a moral compass, and a cruel man who deliberately drives over dogs—all figments of his skewed imagination.

According to him Perry was in jail just because of Dick.  Dick Hickock's face was "composed of mismatching parts . . . as though his head had been halved like an apple, then put together a fraction off center'’. 

While Smith’s stocky weight lifter's torso with dainty feet that "would have neatly fitted into a delicate lady's dancing slippers" .  Probably he had a footsie gay fetish .  Capote tells Harper Lee , that when he first saw Perry he found his puppy dog eyes irresistible and found his short dangling legs ( injured in a motor bike accident ) hanging off a chair without touching the floor absolutely charming.

Capote has a warped sense of judgement and humor when he suggests that Perry slit the throat and blew off the head of 16 year old Nancy, on moral grounds ( sic!)  to prevent Dick from raping her, and thus preserve her honour.  Clearly Capote has a intense connection with Perry which did NOT exist with Dick. It is obvious that Truman Capote had ulterior motives in covering the truth.  

Capote may have been unwilling to admit that a much-respected Kansas family could have been murdered as a side effect of a bisexual-gay relationship gone horribly awry, or even to admit that Perry with whom he had a gay relationship was, at the end of the day, responsible for his own actions and crimes.

And then Capote croons a white lie, all to show Perry as an angel.   Perry told him about how he killed Herb Clutter “ I didn’t want to harm the man. I thought he was a very nice gentleman , soft spoken,  right up to the time I slit his throat!”  And then he plods on with his diabolical bullshit.   Perry told him “ I placed a cushion under his head before I shot the head off “. 

Sniff-  soo sweeet!! ( with a lisp )

It is obvious that Capote  wrote about Perry as if he was really writing about himself rather than the real Perry Smith. Perry was  born of two rodeo performers, he had a difficult childhood, served in the military, and became permanently disabled during a motorcycle race. At the same time, he was an avid reader, and liked to draw.  

In researching Smith's back story he discovered disturbing echoes of his own past life: they both had promiscuous, alcoholic mothers and incompetent, largely absent fathers; they were both brought up in foster-homes; they were both ridiculed as children – Capote for his effeminacy, Smith for his Cherokee blood and his bed wetting.

Capote clearly identified with this "chunky, misshapen child-man".  In Perry he recognised his shadow, his dark side, the embodiment of his own accumulated angst and hurts.  Though he craved objectivity, Capote found it impossible not to reveal where his sympathies lay. When he claimed that Smith could have stepped right out of one of his stories, it was because Smith resembled Capote's imaginative projection of himself-- they were both outsiders, unacceptable to society -- freaks.

The book talks about the brutal 1959 murders of Herbert Clutter, a successful farmer from Holcomb Kansas, his wife and two of their four children. The elder daughters, Eveanna and Beverly, had moved out of their parents' home ( flown the nest in Yank parlance ) and started their adult lives.

The two younger children, Nancy, 16, and Kenyon, 15, were high school students living at home. Clutter's wife, Bonnie, a member of the local garden club, had been incapacitated by clinical depression and physical ailments -- basically mid-life syndrome which ALL women pass though.

Holcomb  was a small, closely knit, god-fearing town located in the west of Kansas State. Comprising principally of blue-collar, middle-class American citizens who lived by the religion, were proud of who they were, and knew most of their fellow-residents in person, the existence of the place was however largely unknown to most Americans.

Herb Clutter, the father, takes out a forty-thousand-dollar life insurance policy, and the family does not lock the doors to their house.  Herb Clutter, the father , was the pillar of the town, honest and good, caring for a disabled with, with children as promising, sweet and hopeful as any parent could wish for..

Kenyon is a boy's boy, not interested in girls yet at fifteen years of age but a talented carpenter.  He was self-conscious, nerdy, and socially awkward.  He the youngest Clutter, was building a cedar chest to present to his oldest sister.

Nancy is the town sweetheart, helpful, generous, attractive, and accomplished.  A straight-A student and award-winning pie-maker was the most popular girl in her school . She is dating Bobby Rupp, the hunk school basketball star, who is also the last to see the family alive. Mama Bonnie had a problem with depression , and Herbert was very busy with his farming business and did not have much time to tend to her.

Two ex-convicts on parole from the Kansas State Penitentiary, Richard "Dick" Hickock and Perry Edward Smith, committed the robbery and murders on November 15, 1959.  While in jail, a fellow prisoner, Floyd Wells, had told Richard Hickock about a safe at the farmhouse where Herb Clutter supposedly kept enormous of cash. Hickock soon hatched the idea to commit the robbery,  and start a new life in Mexico with the moolah.

Hickock described his plan as "a cinch, the perfect score." Hickock later contacted Smith, his former cellmate, about committing the robbery with him.

Even as Herb, the rural wheat growing patriarch, consumes his usual breakfast of an apple and a glass of milk, "unaware that it would be his last",  and his daughter Nancy lays out her velveteen dress for church, "the dress in which she was to be buried", the two ex-cons are racing across the wheat plains of the Midwest in their black Chevrolet sedan, Hickock high on Orange Blossoms, Smith crunching handfuls of aspirin to ease the pin of his grotesquely injured legs.   Smith and Hickock symbolised the feckless, degenerate underbelly of the country, the absolute antithesis of Holcomb's God-fearing and law-abiding citizens

After driving 300 miles across the state of Kansas on Saturday, November 14, 1959, Hickock and Smith located the Clutter home and entered while the family slept.

After they roused the family and discovered that there was no money or safe to be found, Smith, notoriously unstable and prone to violent acts in fits of rage, slit Herb Clutter's throat, and then shot him in the head.  Kenyon, then Nancy, and then Bonnie were murdered, each by single shotgun blasts to the head. There were no signs of a struggle, and nothing had been stolen. The telephone lines had been cut.

Not a cent is found , or the safe the killers had heard, from a jailbird, which held millions. Perry finds himself chasing a rolling silver dollar on the floor, a souvenir of Clutter's just killed daughter. All they get is 40 dollars and a pair of binoculars.
 

The dead bodies of the father, 48-year-old Herbert W. Clutter, was found in the basement with his son, Kenyon, 15. His wife Bonnie, 45, and a daughter, Nancy, 16, were in their beds.

The crime  rocked the nation because it happened in such a small town, where people were presumably more safe than in big cities. . The peaceful community was in utter turmoil.  No one could explain why anyone might have wanted to kill a whole family in Holcomb, a small, poor, rural community in the mid-West Bible belt.

Richard ("Dick") Eugene Hickok and Perry Edward Smith were identified as suspects and arrested in Las Vegas about six weeks after the crime. Apparently Dick had leaked his plans in jail to someone else, and this man snitched, to curry favour for himself.

The hunt for their killers - parolees Dick Hickock and Perry Smith - mesmerized the American nation, drawing journalists from across the country to this rural outpost on the Kansas prairie.

Their killers came from as different a world as you could find in rural America at the time. Perry Smith's family was broken and violent. He'd lost two siblings to suicide, and a parent to alcoholism. Half-Cherokee, half-Irish, Smith had a "runty" build, thanks to a motorcycle accident that left him with disfigured legs and an addiction to dry chewing painkilling aspirin and glorified daydreams. 

Dick Hickock's ambitions were slightly less delusional; he just wanted to take the money and run off somewhere he wouldn't be found.  Hickock was also scarred,  A car accident had put an unnerving asymmetry into his otherwise handsome face. Ever since his face got disfigured he is a completely different person. Hickock's family was poor but relatively stable They pleaded temporary insanity at the trial, but local GPs evaluated the accused and pronounced them sane.

After reading a short newspaper account of the killings, Truman Capote decided to make the 1,700km journey from his home in New York to Holcomb to chronicle the impact of terrible violence on a small community. He takes his Alabama childhood friend Harper Lee along. They arrive in time for the funeral.  

Harper Lee, who within a few months will win a Pulitzer Prize and achieve fame of her own as the author of runaway best seller  "To Kill a Mockingbird.". This book will soon sell a mindboggling 30 million copies,.  The book deals with the issues of racism that were observed by her, as a child in her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama .

Capote's first few days in town were difficult.  Everyone gave the weird 5 feet 3 inches , squeaky voiced , high strung Truman Capote the royal brush-off.  Harper Lee was crucial in overcoming the initial hostility. She had agreed to accompany Capote to act as what he called his "assistant researchist".  

Her affable southern manner – she  made for a much happier connection with the plain-spoken rustic inhabitants of Holcomb.  Rupp recalls that in the one interview he granted Capote, most of the questions were asked by Harper Lee, so much so that "sometimes I wonder who really wrote that book".  Harper sort of managed Truman, acting as his guardian or mother hen. She broke the ice for him.

After five years on death row, Smith and Hickock aged 36 and 33, were executed by hanging by their necks , just after midnight on April 14, 1965, in Lansing, Kansas, at the Kansas State Penitentiary (now known as Lansing Correctional Facility).  It was only six years after he started writing , when the two drifters were executed , that Capote would finish his book.

The gallows from which they were hanged now forms part of the collections of the Kansas State Historical Society.

Today, tourists from as far as Japan come in droves to Holcomb, to get the feel of the place –nay— for a pilgrimage of sorts. . They visit the cemetery , where there are three neat tombstones, all bearing the date 1959: Herb and Bonnie together in the centre, Kenyon on the right and Nancy to the left.

The River Valley farm  still looks on the exterior largely as he described it.  It now belongs to its third set of owners since the Clutters, the Maders.   They used to give tours of the property but grew so hot and bothered by the endless inquisitive stream of “In Cold Blood pilgrims” that they posted the "NYET" sign.

In Garden City, the Wheat Lands motel where Capote and Harper Lee stayed, is still there, though a photo of Capote posing in front of the building has been stolen from the foyer. The courthouse where Smith and Hickock were put on trial still stands as imposing as it was then. Holcomb, population 270 in 1959, has grown tenfold and is now dominated by one of the world's largest meat-packing factories

Nancy’s friend Bob Rupp,who was her last date as a teenager upset  "They made a tremendous amount of money off our great tragedy".

The book has been loathed and reviled in its birthplace by residents because of its recreation of events (as per Perry cum Capote's morbid delusions ) that never happened,  and what they say is commercial exploitation of the victims. The subsequent Hollywood movies have also been very unpopular here. The town is all American with the distinctive spirit of revenge and the cowboy posse mentality to catch them outlaws.

"In cold blood" vividly portrays how the nice American dream turns into the scary American nightmare by juxtaposing and dovetailing the lives and values of the Clutters and those of the killers. Truman Capote elaborates the starkness of  the split image and deep doubleness of American life.

The two criminals with questionable mental dispositions have been brought forth with chilling effect, with all their hopes, aspirations, nuances, onion layers, secret desires, flaws, pathological tendencies, and criminal inclinations.  

Truman Capote explores the mindset of each, their respective backstories, their feelings about the crime, and their final eerie thoughts before execution.

In the Hollywood movie , Truman Capote talks to Harper Lee about the horrifying experience and laments that he couldn't have done anything to stop it.  

This intelligent woman counters  "Maybe not; the fact is you didn't want to."

This is the last line of the film.

CAPT AJIT VADAKAYIL

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