The Clutter family consists of parents, a son, and a daughter. They were Methodists. The farm is beautiful and perfectly maintained, and there is no shortage of cultivated land. It is a discreet family but essential in the small community.
On the other hand, we have two young boys, we would rather say "bad boys," who have made their way to this farm, convinced that money is hiding there. Richard Hickock and Perry Edward will savagely kill the whole family and find nothing!
Truman Capote tells us about an actual news item that shook America. Bennett Miller made an excellent film of it in 2005: "Capote."
Hickock and Perry will already be far. But unfortunately, the Kansas police don't have a clue. So the two young people circulate from state to state, sowing a few deaths in their path.
This book is wonderfully well-written and very thoughtful. It is fascinating to read.

Truman Capote - image from the NY Post

This is one of the great ones. Capote blankets Holcomb, Kansas with his curiosity. The root of this work is a ghastly crime. Two recently released convicts, seeking a fortune that did not exist, invade the Clutter family home, tie up the four family members present and leave no witnesses. It takes some time for the perpetrators to be identified, then tracked down. Capote looks at how the townspeople react to this. Many, fearful that one of their own was responsible, become withdrawn. How do people mourn? He looks at the sequence of investigation that leads ultimately to the capture of the suspects, focusing on one of the chief investigators. He looks in depth at the criminals. What makes them tick? How could people do such awful things? In reading this I was reminded of some of the great panoramic art works of a bygone age, works by Bosch, or Breughel, in which entire towns were brought together into one wide-screen image. This is what Capote has done. But even with all the territory he covers there is considerable depth. I was also reminded, for an entirely different reason of Thomas Hardy. Capote has an incredible gift for language. He writes beautifully, offering descriptions that can bring to tears anyone who truly loves language. It has the power of poetry. This is truly a classic, a book that defined a new genre of literature. If you haven’t read it, you must.


Murderers, Dick Hickock and Perry Smith - image from ABC Australia

In case you are in the market and in the neighborhood, this 10/24/19 item from SF Gate by Clare Trapasso, might be of interest - The Untold Story Behind the Infamous 'In Cold Blood' Murder House—and Why It's for Sale

There is no doubting Truman Capote is a writer extraordinaire. For those of you who haven’t read this classic piece (I think I was the only person on this planet not to do so - oh, and Antoinette, Annie, Jonathan, Rebecca, Lori et al) – it’s really an excellent work of journalism. Capote spent six years researching the brutal murders of four members of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas back in 1959. During this time he got to know the two murderers Perry Smith and Dick Hickock.

One aspect of this work I really like is the fact Capote humanises these two characters. It is always so easy to label the likes of Perry Smith and Dick Hickock as monsters and be done with it. But, as heinous as their crimes are – and they are – they still have stories to tell. Capote manages to do this with a very fine brush, he strikes a balance of not being supportive and not being hostile to these two men. It is a fine example of objective storytelling.

On that, Capote does present this as a story. It could easily have been written as a gruesome piece of fiction. There is no need to describe the murders in this review, but for two guys to commit such acts just goes to show, these kinds walk amongst us.

In Cold Blood comes in at a relatively underweight 340 pages, but it reads like a morbidly obese 800-page chunkster. You know the type of book? Every page jam-packed with text, small font, each paragraph gorged with intricate detail. No skim reading here, as each word is important. If you are tired and want to ‘flick’ through a paragraph or two, you’ll be found out – GOTYA!! I did have to re-read some sections again.

The reasons I didn’t give this 5-stars are twofold:

1.tI am going to be stingier with my stars in 2022. I’ve been throwing around stars like a drunken sailor – thus devaluing the currency.

2.tThere were some sections of this book I found to be much too heavy going. Capote did go off on several historical tangents, these contained incredible detail – and sometimes, usually after a long day – I just thought ”Enough Already”. But it’s more me than Truman – perhaps I wasn’t up to his writing?

There is plenty here for one to go researching these murders, the Clutter family and the perpetrators. The physical descriptions of Smith and Hickock in this book are really accurate. There’s plenty of other details to cross reference too if you enjoy that sort of thing – and who doesn’t?

I did watch a Johnny Carson interview of Capote on YouTube yesterday where the latter explained that watching the hanging of the two murderers was enough to put anybody off Capital Punishment. Apparently it can take up to twenty minutes for the heart to stop beating. Gruesome stuff and this observation in no way mitigates the severity and brutality of the crimes that took place in Holcomb, Kansas back in 1959.

If you do take the time with this one, you will find out it’s worth it.

4 Stars (maybe a bit stingy but 2022 is the year of Miser Mark)

Question : IS THERE SUCH A THING AS FATE?

Answer : no, but there are things that happen that could convince a person that there was.

Like this…

In 1959 two guys doing short stretches in Lansing (aka Kansas State Penitentiary) are sharing a cell and like all cons they talk about their lives and maybe cook up a plan or two for some future malfeasance. This one guy, Floyd, is telling Dick, the cellmate, about maybe the best job he ever had, which was working on a big old wheat farm in Kansas for a real rich farmer. He particularly remembers this farmer because he was such a kindly employer. Farm was way out in the middle of nowhere. Oh says Dick, rich? Oh yeah, maybe every week they did ten thousand dollars of business. Hey, says Dick, did you happen to see a safe in that farm house ever? Well, says Floyd, I kind of sort of remember there was something. All right, says Dick, I will rob this farmer, and I will shoot all the witnesses. Well, in jail, everybody brags on the great deeds they will do, what else is there to yap about. Floyd discounted this big talk.

In fact there was no safe at all, there was no cash kept in the farmhouse. Floyd got that part wrong, what a shame. So when Dick and his good friend Perry crept into the said farmhouse a few months later, all they found was thirty bucks. But they’d already agreed there would be no witnesses left, whatever happened, so they shot all four members of the Clutter family that night and left. And they were careful and there were no clues.

Imagine Floyd’s surprise when a couple of days later, him being still in the jail, he hears on the radio about this terrible crime. He about jumped out of his skin. Dick and his pal actually did it! At this point he realised that aside from the criminals he was the only person in the world who knew who’d done it. What to do? As every con knows, snitches get stiches. But on the other hand, there was a thousand dollar reward for information. Hmmm.



WAITING IMPATIENTLY FOR THE HANGMAN

Truman Capote did more than interview the two killers once they were caught. He visited them dozens of times, spent many hours with them, particularly liked Perry Smith, sent them the maximum allowed letters and gifts of books and candy. The book was finished by 1963 – all except for the last chapter, when the death penalty would be finally applied.

He could not finish his book until he had an ending, but neither could he put it aside and go on with something else. …His frustration was made worse by his knowledge that, lying in front of him, missing only thirty or forty pages, was the best-seller that would alter his life irrevocably, that would make him rich… the success of In Cold Blood was as predictable as the future movements of the planets.

Imagine the bizarre mixture of hopeful anticipation and agonised disappointment as Perry and Hickock went through appeal after appeal, their damned busy lawyers petitioned for a new trial – this nearly gave TC a heart attack – he liked these miserable malformed murderers but why didn’t they just go ahead and hang them so he could get his book done and become rich and famous as was his destiny? Why are they torturing me like this with their endless appeals and delays? I’m only human!

A MASTERPIECE

This is a great but strange book, a non fiction novel, I can see where that odd phrase came from, it veers between reportage and entirely novelistic recreations of some scenes with dialogue and characters and all, in this way it’s the exact literary version of the “re-enactments” they do on some true crime shows – I hate those, but in Truman’s hands it never comes across as tacky.

Not everyone was attentive; one juror, as though poisoned by the numerous spring-fever yawns weighting the air, sat with drugged eyes and jaws so utterly ajar bees could have buzzed in and out.

So good is TC in this book that it becomes a real shame that this book made him and destroyed him at the same time. He spent the next 20 years dithering, writing bits and pieces, but there was never another novel or much of anything after this one. Then he died.



IN COLDER BLOOD

Three movies :

In Cold Blood (1966) – the film of the book, really excellent

Capote (2005)
Infamous (2006)

Both these biopics concentrate on TC’s weird relationship with Perry Smith, both are worth it

And Gerald Clarke’s biography of TC is really excellent.

Aweosme true crime story. There's a reason this book comes up on like every list of "the best true crimes stories" cause it's one of the best. Super easy story to follow, not bogged down with too many facts and details. You get to know the characters (mostly the killers) and get to feel like you know them a little.

Spoilers to follow

It was pretty easy to feel bad for the killers in this book. I feel bad for the family that got killed, but it was more about the killers and their story. It makes you wonder. People always say I wonder what happened to that guy,b why is he the way he is, or what made him do what he did. Well perry had a pretty jacked up childhood. Drunk mom, abusive father, and no access to education. No wonder he did what he did. At some point, the parents are to blame for this one. At least perrys parents are. Yes, Perry and Smith deserved to hang, but maybe if Perry was shown the love and attention he needed or got the education he craved, then maybe the Clutters would still be farming river vally.

My last thought and my favorite part of the book. The very end when they are on death row. They see their "friend" walk down to the gallows, and he's laughing and joking right to the end. Then awhile later, and its their turn. According to ths book anyway they walked down to the gallows and said their last words and then got hung. No fuss. No fight. No animosity. Makes you wonder why they took it so lightly. Did they care? Were they just glad it was finally over? Makes you wonder how someone can face death so easily.

Obra maestra de la literatura.
Me impactó mucho. Siempre, siempre, siempre lo recomiendo en primer lugar a quién no lo haya leído.

Literature masterpiece.
It shocked me a lot. I always, always, always recommend it to anyone who hasn't read it first.

Every once in a while I feel the need to get a couple of IQ points back by reading something that is considered a "classic" or won prizes or whatever.



So, this book is based on a real murder that happened way back in the 1950's. A family was killed in a small town in Kansas and it was a big deal. Not like these days. We hardly flinch anymore when the weekly killing spree is on the news. Truman Capote was super obsessed with this case and took his buddy, Harper Lee, with him to Kansas where they interviewed everyone extensively in this small town. This book was the result and took him 6 years to get out. He insisted that it is completely factual even though he was called a filthy liar with pants on fire because "they" say he made some things up. Personally, I don't care. The book is good whether or not he exaggerated or gave "alternative facts." Again, sign of the times. We are so used to facts being spun that we don't even expect absolute truth anymore.



The only thing that was difficult for me with this book was the unbelievably descriptive writing. I have little patience for long flowing sentences with many many adjectives to describe a wheat field. I die of boredom really easily. It's a problem. But, I pressed through it because I am brave like that, and I found myself very immersed in the story. I don't know if it is because all of that purple prose got my mind envisioning the story better than others or what, but it worked. Still not a converted fan of the excess adjectives though. I made ONE exception. Can I go back to my vampire smut books now?


Cool! See ya!

I originally thought this book would be a page turner on hypothermia. Being that thermoregulation keeps human blood at about 100 degrees, and hypothermia sets in at the high 90's, I assumed "cold" blood would be around 60 degrees...meaning instant death.

However, I did completely misjudge the book and its subject. Well played, Mr. Capote...well played.

“I thought that Mr. Clutter was a very nice gentleman. I thought so right up to the moment that I cut his throat.” ― Truman Capote, In Cold Blood

So glad I finally got around to reading this classic…

You would never know that this ground-breaking true crime novel was written over 50 yrs ago. This story was constructed in a way that made me feel like I was reading fiction. The characters and the events/circumstances of the crime were very well developed. While there aren’t any ‘twists’, because we all know how this story plays out, I was surprised that I was really placing most of the responsibility of the crime on one individual over the other only to have my opinion completely changed upon finishing.

The biggest flaw in the writing was that there was some repetitiveness and a too much unnecessary detailing in events told at different points. I understand the desire to get the most fully developed view of the characters, however, it did make the story slow in places.

I chose to listen to this on audio and Scott Brick did an absolutely outstanding job with the narration. I would highly, highly recommend listening to this rather than reading a hard copy.

Again, I’m so glad that I finally read this and think that any fan of the true crime genre will enjoy. A true classic that I think has endured the test of time. 4 stars.

Hell, yeah...!!

Five stars!!

Five million stars!!

All the stars for this daring masterpiece!!

And a place right next to Nabokov’s Lolita on my bookshelf.

Yes, that would make perfect sense, I think. Why? Well, because both authors had some of the biggest balls ever in the literary universe. And if boldness isn’t a big enough reason for you, what about adding some good writing? And I mean really, really good writing? Hum?

Yeah, sounds good, I know...

But let’s leave Lolita to one side for now and focus on this one.

In Cold Blood.
Nice tittle, isn’t it?
I think it’s great: sharp and so appropriate. One needs a lot of it (cold blood) to get through four hundred pages of terror, madness, superstition and the nasty tricks of destiny (or whatever you want to call it).

I’m perfectly aware of how strange it might sound to say that I loved this book but Capote really ticked all my literary boxes: writing, “characterisation”, structure, pace... Everything. Amazing.
And besides I love a good old road trip (Lolita again. Sorry not sorry).

Oh, and the way Capote switched between an omniscient narrator (himself) and first person narrators and different timelines was completely outstanding. Genius.

Not to mention the dedication and love needed to come up with a literary work like this. Ah, if only I could... I would.

It’s been well over twenty years since I first became aware of this book but I can tell you right away that it’s not going to take me that long to read it again.

A masterclass in storytelling.

A classic till the end of times.

قتل عام کانزاس

  


در سال 1959، 4 نفر از اعضای خانواده‌ی کلاتر‌ها در حالی که با طناب بسته شده بودند به طرز وحشیانه‌ای با شلیک یک گلوله به صورت کشته شدند. قربانیان این جنایت، هربرت ویلیام کلاتر ( 48 ساله) ، بانی فوکس (45 ساله)، نانسی (16 ساله) و کنیون (15 ساله) بودند. یک سال پس از این، ریچارد هیککاک (ملقب به دیک) و پری ادوارد اسمیت به اتهام قتل درجه یک بازداشت و در دادگاه به اعدام محکوم شدند. این دو 4 سال بعد در سن 36 سالگی به دار آویخته شدند. در کمال خونسردی داستانی‌ست درباره‌ی چگونگی وقوع این جنایت

درباره‌ی کتاب

رمان‌های جنایی، بخصوص آ‌ن‌ها که جزء کلاسیک‌های این ژانر طبقه‌بندی می‌شوند (نظیر مجموعه پوآرو یا خانم مارپل آگاتا کریستی) ساختاری کلیشه‌ای دارند: وضعیت پیش از فاجعه اندکی توصیف می‌شود (مقدمه‌چینی)، آنگاه جنایتی معماگونه رخ می‌دهد (گره افکنی) و کارآگاهی به حل این معما مشغول می‌شود و در انتها راز جنایت فاش و قاتل به سزای عملش می‌رسد (گره گشایی). حال آنکه رمان‌های پیشروی جنایی، با ساختارشکنی روندی کاملا متفاوت را دنبال می‌کنند. در این گونه آثار مسئله‌ی اصلی حل معمای جنایت نیست، چه بسا گاهی معمای جنایت حل نشده باقی می‌ماند ( تابوت‌های دست‌ساز اثر کاپوتی، قول اثر فردریش دورنمات) یا آنکه داستان روی جنبه‌ی روانشناختی شخصیت قاتل پس از وقوع جرم متمرکز می‌شود ( آثار جیمز کین، در کمال خونسردی کاپوتی)
در کمال خونسردی اما نقطه‌ی قوت دیگری دارد و آن مستند و گزارش-داستان بودن روایت است، سبک منحصربه‌فرد کاپوتی. او سال‌ها روی این پرونده کار کرده و تمام جزئیات را از شاهدین و کسانی که در بطن ماجرا بوده‌اند استخراج کرده و سپس دست به خلق این اثر فوق‌العاده جذاب زده است. از این رو تمام شخصیت‌پردازی‌ها و وقایع این کتاب واقعی هستند. کاپوتی روی شخصیت‌پردازی و توصیف دقیق حالات روانی قاتل‌ها بسیار عالی کار کرده و تمام جذابیت داستان هم به همین ریزبینی نویسنده است، وگرنه پایان ماجرای قتل عام کانزاس از همان ابتدا مشخص است. مخاطب وقتی به خواندن این اثر مشغول شود، بیشتر از آنکه از قربانیان یا جنایت چیزی بخواند، با کاراکتر قاتل‌ها و افکار ‌آن‌ها عجین می‌شود، طوری که شاید در پایان ماجرا در وضعیت پارادوکسیکالی قرار بگیرد و با وجدانی شرمگین، از اعدام پری اسمیت، ضد قهرمان روان‌نژند و دوست‌داشتنی داستان غمگین شود

اقتباس سینمایی

بعد از دیدن فیلم درباره‌اش می‌نویسم

ترجمه‌ی فارسی

کتاب دو بار به فارسی ترجمه و منتشر شده، یکبار به ترجمه‌ی باهره راسخ تحت عنوان به خونسردی و یکبار به ترجمه‌ی پریوش شهامت تحت عنوان در کمال خونسردی. برای آن‌دسته از دوستانی که قصد خواندن این کتاب را دارند، ترجمه‌ی باهره راسخ بعلت ایراد‌های متعدد توصیه نمی‌شود

لینک دانلود در کمال خونسردی - ترجمه پریوش شهامت

n  n

PART 1: STEVE’S REVIEW

4.0 to 4.5 stars. Written over a period of 7 years and published in 1966, this novel, while not technically the first “true crime” non-fiction novel, is credited (correctly) with establishing the genre and being the progenitor of today's true crime novel. I would certainly agree that most of the other true crime novels that I have read followed almost the exact "blue print" laid out by Capote in this book. That is quite a testament to the technical excellence of this novel.

The book recounts the story of the brutal murders in Holcomb, Kansas of a farmer named Herb Clutter, his wife and their two children. The book spends the early pages going back and forth between introducing the reader to the Clutter family and also to the two murderers, Perry Smith and Dick Hickock. I thought Capote did a superb job of allowing the reader to “get to know” the Clutter family (and the killers for that matter) so that impact of the actual murders would resonate more deeply.

Overall, I thought the job that Capote did of laying out the story in the sequence that he did was masterful. By following the structure that he did he was able to keep the narrative tension high throughout the entire novel. This is a difficult task to accomplish when both the nature of the crime itself and the eventual fate of the perpetrators are known before you even pick up the book. However, Capote pulls it off and for that he deserves much credit.

The novel is also much more comprehensive than just a detailed restatement of the murders. The book spends considerable time showing the effect the killings had on the Holcomb community and how different people responded to the event both postively and negatively. It follows the killers, both leading up to the murders and also during their time in hiding afterwards. Further, it recounts the actions of the police and the manhunt that eventually led to the capture of Smith and Hickock. Lastly, Capote spends considerable time on the trial of the two killers as well as the effect the trial and its aftermath had on the people most closely involved with the case.

Overall, I thought the book was just about perfect in its execution. The critical events are detailed and fully-fleshed out without excess padding over the book’s 400 pages. I thought it was very interesting to discover that Capote produced almost 8000 pages worth of transcripts, notes and commentary from which he then distilled the final product. This certainly highlights the painstaking research Capote did and the unprecedented access he was given to the events and people surrounding this tragedy.

An amazing achievement and one that I HIGHLY RECOMMEND people read.

PART 2: STEVE’S CONFESSION

I only gave this book 4.0 to 4.5 stars. I feel weird saying “only” when the rating means I more than really liked it (call it really, really, super duper liked it). It just wasn’t memorable enough for me to give it 5 stars. Sadly, I think this says more about me than it does about the merits of the book. The recounting of the killings just did not have the emotional impact on me that I think, in all fairness, they should have. I guess you could say that I was shocked to find myself “not shocked” by the recounting of the murders.

Unfortunately, having grown up in a world that has been witness to horrors so far beyond the tragic events described in the novel, the slayings did not evoke the kind of visceral reaction that I would have expected. A contributing factor to this may be that at the same time as I was listening to this book on audio, I was reading Jack Ketchum’s Off Season and DRACULAS by J.A. Konrath et al, two of the goriest books I have ever read. The horrors recounted in Capote’s novel came across as very PG to PG-13. Again, that is both a sad and scary thing to realize just how “comfortable” you can become reading, watching or hearing about crimes like this one. I think this last comment leads nicely into the next section.

PART 3: STEVE’S RANT

Have the horrors of the world today really become so fucking “over the top” extreme that they have numbed me to the point where reading about the pre-meditated, unprovoked murder of a family of four doesn’t quite have the requisite “shock value” to immediately cause bile to rise in the back of my throat. In all honesty, YES!! In fact, I believe that as horrific as the killings were they would barely be a two minute headline on the evening news today. When you really stop to think about it, how catastrophically and dementedly fucked up is that!!

The truth is that nowadays events like the Clutter family killings happen all too often. In fact, it's possible that if the murders happened today they might go completely ignored by everyone except the local news where they occurred. Sadly, when on any given day we might be hearing about some troubled teen going “Columbine” on his classmates because some douche bag tripped him in the lunch room or reading about some disgruntled worker deciding that the boss who fired him doesn’t deserve to live and so proceeds to kill a dozen of his former co-workers because they are in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Don’t take my comments as advocating the curtailment of ANY form of entertainment being made today whether it be books, movies, music, video games or TV shows. NO, NO, No and please NO!! I like and love my violent, over the top, blood-soaked books, graphic novels and even TV shows (pause for a big shout out to Dexter). Now I could do without most of the real gory, slasher type films but hey, to each their own.

So this is not about advocating change in what we watch or read (I certainly have no plans to change). I am simply recognizing the fact that as a society we have fallen down the “rabbit hole” and are living in a fucked up, violent, blood-soaked world that tears at our empathy on a daily basis. It is just something that many of us (myself included) seem to have become all too comfortable with it. Whether its loving us some Tony Soprano (and c’mon how can you not) or laughing as we shoot hookers during a game of Grand Theft Auto (I would note without further comment the current serial killings involving prostitutes) or hearing about another 5 dead American soldiers killed by a roadside bomb and then casually changing the channel to get back to the ball game so you can put it out of your mind.

This is us. We have become the world that Cormac McCarthy envisioned in No Country for Old Men and, like Sheriff Tom Bell in McCarthy’s novel, I think it would be impossible for the people of Capote’s time to imagine the world as it is today.

I am not sure what, if anything, all this says about us or me, but there you have it. Rant over, review concluded.