In Cold Blook, Capote (1965)

The true crime genre is, in general, the pig-swill of American popular culture. Whether Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood is the exception that proves the rule—or not—it does demonstrate that it need not be this way.

There is broad consensus that the writing is good; that the work merits reading. And one can find smug satisfaction in holding a dissenting view. But (alas) I concur with the crowd. And it’s hardly worth echoing what so many already agree upon.

This story is centered in rural Kansas just as the 1950s are giving way to the 1960s. This is Americana—a very American sort of America. But, like America itself, it stretches from coast to coast, north and south, and reaches into Mexico. Its story doesn’t really begin at the end of the 1950s nor does it end there. And, like America itself, there are two realities, each alien to the other, that are superimposed. When they connect, there is tragedy.

True crime is, in general, a four-color comic strip that invites the public to be afraid—to fear the monster, to cheer the hero. Sheep. Wolf. Shepherd. Not to say that Capote’s monsters aren’t monstrous. They are. But that’s not all they are. Everyone in this story is a three-dimensional, flesh-and-blood human. No one is an NPC. But the author himself is unseen.

Truman Capote’s work sits on a shelf titled New Journalism, among other writers such as Joan Didion and Hunter S. Thompson. Such of Didion as I’ve read left me feeling that I knew her. The author was clearly present on the page. Thompson was not so much on the page—as he WAS the page. Capote, we know, is present at the scene. But he writes as if wearing latex gloves, leaving no visible trace of himself for the reader to see.

Ours is an era dominated by the industry of “look at me” influencers and a spirit of “we have nothing to fear but … Everything!” In reading this book today, the author’s effort to bring each of his subjects fully to life while standing silently in the cold shadows is refreshing.