In Cold Blood
For better or for worse Truman Capote started America's love affair with modern true crime in In Cold Blood. Writing the seminal work in the genera Capote weaves fiction story telling techniques with non-fiction journalism to create a blood chilling story of how two murders were found and executed for their slaughter of the Clutter family. It's a chilling book, Capote humanizes both the murders and the victims. It's less a story of shock and awe and more a story of how the senseless events happened. Though an extensive interview process, most of them conducted by Harper Lee (Yes, that Harper Lee.), a story is told that a tiny Kansas town like Holcomb was never as safe as it seemed.
While doing some background research on Capote and his novel I came across this interview. Capote talks about the book as a way for him to play with a specific literary device, and that the murders were incidental. He goes as far as saying that the murders are the least interesting part of the book. If that's true then Capote is responsible for far more that he's given credit. Non-fiction narratives by authors like Hunter S. Thompson, historical non-fiction by authors like Rick Perlstein and Manning Marable owe this book a debt. Capote primed the American conscious for their lyricism. Either way, reading this book as straight true crime, or reading it as a way to play with narrative the book is engrossing.
Moving on, I'm back to graphic novels for the rest of the month. Next up is Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. I absolutely can not wait to share this one with you.
For better or for worse Truman Capote started America's love affair with modern true crime in In Cold Blood. Writing the seminal work in the genera Capote weaves fiction story telling techniques with non-fiction journalism to create a blood chilling story of how two murders were found and executed for their slaughter of the Clutter family. It's a chilling book, Capote humanizes both the murders and the victims. It's less a story of shock and awe and more a story of how the senseless events happened. Though an extensive interview process, most of them conducted by Harper Lee (Yes, that Harper Lee.), a story is told that a tiny Kansas town like Holcomb was never as safe as it seemed.
While doing some background research on Capote and his novel I came across this interview. Capote talks about the book as a way for him to play with a specific literary device, and that the murders were incidental. He goes as far as saying that the murders are the least interesting part of the book. If that's true then Capote is responsible for far more that he's given credit. Non-fiction narratives by authors like Hunter S. Thompson, historical non-fiction by authors like Rick Perlstein and Manning Marable owe this book a debt. Capote primed the American conscious for their lyricism. Either way, reading this book as straight true crime, or reading it as a way to play with narrative the book is engrossing.
Moving on, I'm back to graphic novels for the rest of the month. Next up is Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. I absolutely can not wait to share this one with you.
(Image brought to you by: saporiti)
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