In Cold Blood Revisited

 In 1966, Truman Capote claimed to have invented a new type of writing, the non-fiction novel. The result was his seminal work, In Cold Blood. In it, he depicts the 1959 murder of a prosperous farming family in Kansas. The murder actually happened and baffled authorities for Dick Hickock and Perry Smith. The pair met in penitentiary, where a fellow inmate told them stories of working for Herb Clutter, the patriarch of the Clutter family. Specifically, he told them Clutter had a safe in his house holding $10,000. Which was not true as Clutter seldom carried cash.

The pair agreed they would rob the family once they were out of prison. They also agreed they would have to kill the witnesses to cover up their crime. But rather than simply walking in and shooting everyone in their sleep, Hickock raped the oldest daughter first, and the pair tortured Herb Clutter before killing him. The pair then fled to Mexico, pawning what they could take from the home (which did not include $10,000.) Smith had dreams of buying a boat and taking tourists out on deep sea adventures and finding sunken treasure. Hickock, stunted and slightly crippled from a car accident, just wanted to get high and debauch. The pair were cornered in Las Vegas two years later. Both men were hung in 1965.

Despite Capote's claims, In Cold Blood was not the first "non-fiction novel," or more accurately, true crime novel. There were others before it. But Capote's captured enough attention to be nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. It also paved the way for LA District Attorney Vincent Bugliosi's book about the Manson Family murders, Helter Skelter. One thing that sets both these books apart is they don't really sensationalize the murders. Hickock and Smith are a pair of career criminals and drifters who might have been at home in Kerouac's On the Road if they were just a bit smarter and more sociable (and less violent. Merry pranksters these two were not.)  Manson doesn't need sensationalized. He and his followers brought their own flair for the theatrics, which actually makes them scarier.

What struck me about the killers in In Cold Blood is they could not articulate their motivations, especially Hickock. He was a violent thug who had vague resentment against anyone who thought they were better than him. Never mind he'd never met or talked to the Clutters before killing them. Smith seems to have trapped himself in the life, hitching his star to a more charismatic and fierce Hickock and constantly regretting it even as he goes along with the next scene. The pair was doomed from the start. The Clutters became collateral damage, as the innocent often are in these cases.

Seriously, You Don't Think It's a Masterpiece Too?

I'm not sure how many times I've read Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, but I'm now teaching it for what's probably the fourth or fifth time—this round for my "True Crime" course at George Mason University. I almost didn't add it to this semester's syllabus, assuming that many students may have already read and studied it in other classes, but a quick poll of folks who registered early for the course showed that this wasn't the case; in fact, turns out only four of the 20 students have read it before. Even if more had, I might have included it anyway; In Cold Blood seems such a central, foundational text for this genre. How could you not?

Earlier this week, in our first class session discussing the book, I asked for initial reactions from students encountering it for the first time. One woman raised her hand. "It has a lot of details," she said—which immediately opened up in my mind so many directions for conversation: How did Capote amass all this information? What techniques from novel writing did he bring to this nonfiction work to weave that wonderful tapestry of details? How do all these details form a compelling portrait of the Clutters, of their community, of the killers?

Then the student added, "And a lot of commas too."

It was suddenly clear that her observation about details wasn't meant in a positive way.

When I pressed her about it, she added, "It dragged a little"—her tone saying that, really, for her, it dragged a lot.

There are many directions I could go with from this anecdote—including a discussion of those details and that pacing and why In Cold Blood remains such a masterpiece to my mind reread after reread. But instead I'm going to focus on that "in my mind" and the divide that sometimes opens up between my own enthusiasm for a story or book or film and my students' just as extreme lack of enthusiasm.

Early on in my teaching career, a fellow professor mentioned to me that she would never again teach Austen in her classes. Because she didn't care for Austen herself? That was my assumption and my question. But it was the opposite, in fact: This professor loved Austen so much that she couldn't bear to hear her students react negatively to the novels one more time. It was too heartbreaking. Better just to teach something else.

Despite that advice, I've assigned texts to my syllabi that are among my own favorites—and, as predicted by that other professor, I've struggled more than once with students' derision of them or dismissal of them. Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest comes to mind, and Stanley Ellin's "The Moment of Decision," and John McPhee's "Search for Marvin Gardens," and Nicholas Roeg's film version of Don't Look Now, and... There are many others—masterpieces all, I firmly believe this—but no matter how much I try to extol the virtues of each of them, endeavor to count out those virtues one by one, many students—too many—prove unmoved.

I don't take offense (well, not too much), but the disjunction here does pose some questions. When you're teaching students to analyze a text, does it matter whether you get them to appreciate it too? Certainly not everyone is going to like the same works of art as everyone else, but shouldn't you try to encourage a broadening of perspectives? ...which may circle back again from analysis to understanding to that question of appreciation. And then, what if there's simply a generational gap in some cases? A week ago today, I turned 50, and these kids... well, their tastes are different, the culture they grew up in is different, their aesthetics are a world away from mine, and....

Each to his own then? Surely that may be part of it, but even there....

As part of various small celebrations of my milestone birthday, my wife Tara and I were supposed to go see Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo in the theater Wednesday night—part of a 60th anniversary celebration of the film. It's one of my favorites—one of a handful of films that I remember watching absolutely mesmerized start to finish. (Others would include Raging Bull, Manhattan, Breaking the Waves, and Birdman—a list that might seem more eclectic at first glance than it really is.) Tara and I never made it to Vertigo. A combination of spring snow and sick child put an end to those plans. But I was reminded of one of the last times I've seen it on the big screen (four total, I'll admit) with a woman I was dating at the time. Partway through those beautiful sequences where Scottie follows Madeleine around San Francisco, that girlfriend leaned over and whispered, "This is so boring."

I guess I should've known then the relationship wouldn't last.

And speaking of Tara, I remember when we first started dating and she asked me if I'd read the Harry Potter books. When I told her I hadn't, she said, "Oh, you need to read them." So I told her that I would—as you do in situations when someone recommends books like that. But then she got very serious: "No. I mean it. You need to read them." Unspoken: Now.

I did, of course, and loved them, which seems fortunate for all of us. I still wonder where our relationship would be if I hadn't read them, hadn't liked them, had failed what was clearly a test of some kind.

The stakes aren't always so high, of course. I loved Birdman—loved, loved, loved it—but when I mentioned that to my writing group, a couple of them looked at me like I was insane. And I couldn't judge them too harshly for that, could I?

....

Several more questions here—this time for the folks reading this post: When have friendships been formed or cemented because of a mutual love for some book or movie? On the flipside, have relationships ever been strained because of serious disagreements on something like this? And how do you handle it when your enthusiasm for a story or a book or a film is met by a shrug of the shoulders or a wave of the hand from someone whose judgement or opinion you really value?

And if you really hate any of the favorites I mentioned above, I promise I'll try really not to think less of you. 😉