In Cold Blood is a non-fiction novel by American author Truman Capote, first published in 1966; it details the 1959 murders of four members of the Herbert Clutter family in the small farming community of Holcomb, Kansas.
When Capote learned of the quadruple murder, before the killers were captured, he decided to travel to Kansas and write about the crime. He was accompanied by his childhood friend and fellow author Harper Lee, and together they interviewed local residents and investigators assigned to the case and took thousands of pages of notes. The killers, Richard "Dick" Hickock and Perry Smith, were arrested six weeks after the murders and later executed by the state of Kansas. Capote ultimately spent six years working on the book. When finally published, In Cold Blood was an instant success, and today is the second-biggest-selling true crime book in publishing history, behind Vincent Bugliosi's 1974 book Helter Skelter about the Charles Manson murders.
Some critics consider Capote's work the original non-fiction novel, though other writers had already explored the genre, such as Rodolfo Walsh in Operación Masacre (1957). It has been especially lauded for its eloquent prose, extensive detail, and simultaneous triple narrative, which describes the lives of the murderers, the victims, and other members of the rural community in alternating sequences. The psychologies and backgrounds of Hickock and Smith are given special attention, as well as the complex relationship that existed between them during and after the murders. In Cold Blood is regarded by critics as a pioneering work in the true crime genre, though Capote was disappointed that the book failed to win the Pulitzer Prize. Critics have also noted that parts of the book, including important details, differ from the real events.
Overview of the crime
Herb Clutter was a prosperous farmer in western Kansas. He employed as many as 18 farmhands, who admired and respected him for his fair treatment and good wages. Two elder daughters, Eveanna and Beverly, had moved out and started their adult lives; Nancy, 16, and Kenyon, 15, were in high school. Clutter's wife Bonnie had reportedly been incapacitated by clinical depression and physical ailments since the births of her children, although this was later disputed.
Two ex-convicts recently paroled from the Kansas State Penitentiary, Richard Eugene "Dick" Hickock and Perry Edward Smith, committed the robbery and murders in the early morning hours of November 15, 1959. A former cellmate of Hickock's, Floyd Wells, had worked for Herb Clutter and told Hickock that Clutter kept large amounts of cash in a safe. Hickock soon hatched the idea to steal the safe and start a new life in Mexico. According to Capote, Hickock described his plan as "a cinch, the perfect score." Hickock later contacted Smith, another former cellmate, about committing the robbery with him. In fact, Herb Clutter had no safe and did all his business by check.
After driving more than four hundred miles across the state of Kansas on the evening of November 14, Hickock and Smith arrived in Holcomb, located the Clutter home, and entered through an unlocked door while the family slept. Upon rousing the Clutters and discovering there was no safe, they bound and gagged the family and continued to search for money, but found little else of value in the house. Still determined to leave no witnesses, the pair briefly debated what to do; Smith, notoriously unstable and prone to violent acts in fits of rage, slit Herb Clutter's throat and then shot him in the head. Capote writes that Smith recounted later, "I didn't want to harm the man. I thought he was a very nice gentleman. Soft spoken. I thought so right up to the moment I cut his throat." Kenyon, Nancy, and then Mrs. Clutter were also murdered, each by a single shotgun blast to the head. Hickock and Smith left the crime scene with a small portable radio, a pair of binoculars, and less than fifty dollars in cash.
Smith later claimed in his oral confession that Hickock murdered the two women. When asked to sign his confession, however, Smith refused. According to Capote, he wanted to accept responsibility for all four killings because, he said, he was "sorry for Dick's mother." Smith added, "She's a real sweet person." Hickock always maintained that Smith committed all four killings.
On the basis of a tip from Wells, who contacted the prison warden after hearing of the murders, Hickock and Smith were identified as suspects and arrested in Las Vegas on December 30, 1959. Both men eventually confessed after interrogations by detectives of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation. They were brought back to Kansas, where they were tried together for the murders. Their trial took place at the Finney County courthouse in Garden City, Kansas, from March 22 to March 29, 1960. They both pleaded temporary insanity at the trial, but local GPs evaluated the accused and pronounced them sane. The jury deliberated for only 45 minutes before finding both Hickock and Smith guilty of murder. Their conviction carried a mandatory death sentence at the time.
After five years on death row at the Kansas State Penitentiary (now known as Lansing Correctional Facility) in Lansing, Kansas, Smith and Hickock were executed by hanging just after midnight on April 14, 1965. Hickock was executed first and was pronounced dead at 12:41Â a.m. after hanging for nearly 20 minutes. Smith followed shortly after and was pronounced dead at 1:19Â a.m. Warden Official Greg Seamon presided over the executions in Lansing. The gallows used in their executions now forms part of the collections of the Kansas State Historical Society.
Hickock and Smith are also suspected of involvement in the Walker family murders, a notion which is mentioned in the book, though this connection has not been proven.
Capote's research
Capote became interested in the murders after reading about it in The New York Times. He brought his childhood friend Nelle Harper Lee (who would later win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her novel To Kill a Mockingbird) to help gain the confidence of the locals in Kansas. Capote did copious research for the book, ultimately compiling 8,000 pages of notes. Capote's research also included letters from Smith's Army buddy, Don Cullivan, who was present during the trial. After the criminals were found, tried, and convicted, Capote conducted personal interviews with both Smith and Hickock. Smith especially fascinated Capote; in the book he is portrayed as the more sensitive and guilt-ridden of the two killers. The book was not completed until after Smith and Hickock were executed.
An alternate explanation for Capote's interest holds that The New Yorker presented the Clutter story to him as one of two choices for a story, the other being to follow a Manhattan cleaning woman on her rounds. Capote supposedly chose the Clutter story, believing it would be the easier assignment. Capote later did write a piece about following a cleaning woman, which he entitled "A Day's Work" and included in his book Music for Chameleons.
Veracity
In Cold Blood brought Capote much praise from the literary community. Yet despite the book's billing as a factual account, critics have questioned its veracity, arguing that Capote changed facts to suit the story, added scenes that had never taken place, and manufactured dialogue. Writing in Esquire in 1966, Phillip K. Tompkins noted factual discrepancies after he traveled to Kansas and talked to some of the same people interviewed by Capote. In a telephone interview with Tompkins, Josephine Meier, the wife of Finney County Undersheriff Wendle Meier, denied that she heard Smith cry and that she held his hand as described by Capote. In Cold Blood indicates that Meier and Smith became close, yet she told Tompkins she spent little time with Smith and did not talk much with him. Tompkins concluded:
Capote has, in short, achieved a work of art. He has told exceedingly well a tale of high terror in his own way. But, despite the brilliance of his self-publicizing efforts, he has made both a tactical and a moral error that will hurt him in the short run. By insisting that ‘every word’ of his book is true he has made himself vulnerable to those readers who are prepared to examine seriously such a sweeping claim.
True crime writer Jack Olsen also commented on the alleged fabrications:
I recognized it as a work of art, but I know fakery when I see it, […] Capote completely fabricated quotes and whole scenes... The book made something like $6 million in 1960s money, and nobody wanted to discuss anything wrong with a moneymaker like that in the publishing business.
His criticisms were quoted in Esquire, to which Capote replied, "Jack Olsen is just jealous."
That was true, of course, […] I was jealousâ€"all that money? I'd been assigned the Clutter case by Harper & Row until we found out that Capote and his cousin [sic], Harper Lee, had been already on the case in Dodge City for six months. […] That book did two things. It made true crime an interesting, successful, commercial genre, but it also began the process of tearing it down. I blew the whistle in my own weak way. I'd only published a couple of books at that timeâ€"but since it was such a superbly written book, nobody wanted to hear about it.
Alvin Dewey, the lead investigator portrayed in In Cold Blood, later said that the last scene, in which he visits the Clutters' graves, was Capote's invention, while other Kansas residents whom Capote interviewed have claimed they or their relatives were mischaracterized or misquoted. Dewey said that the rest of the book was factually accurate. Further evidence indicates that the book is not as “immaculately factual†as Capote had always claimed it to be. The book depicts Dewey as being the brilliant investigator who cracks the Clutter murder case, but files recovered from the Kansas Bureau of Investigation show that when Floyd Wells came forward naming Richard Hickock and Perry Smith as likely suspects, Dewey did not immediately act on the information, as the book portrays him doing, because Dewey still held to his belief that the murders were committed by locals who "had a grudge against Herb Clutter".
Publication
In Cold Blood was first published as a four-part serial in The New Yorker, beginning with the September 25, 1965 issue. The piece was an immediate sensation, particularly in Kansas, where the usual number of New Yorker copies sold out immediately. In Cold Blood was first published in book form by Random House in January 1966. The book, however, was copyrighted in 1965, and this date appears on the title page of most printings of the book and even in some library indices as the original publication date. The Library of Congress lists 1966 as the publication date and 1965 as the copyright date.
The cover, which was designed by S. Neil Fujita, shows a hatpin with what appeared originally as a red drop of blood at its top end. After Capote first saw the design, he requested that the drop be made a deeper shade of red to represent the passage of time since the incident. A black border was added to the ominous image.
Reviews and impact
Writing for The New York Times, Conrad Knickerbocker gave praise to Capote's talent for detail throughout the novel and declared the book a "masterpiece" â€" an "agonizing, terrible, possessed, proof that the times, so surfeited with disasters, are still capable of tragedy".
In a controversial review of the novel published in 1966 for The New Republic, Stanley Kauffmann, criticising Capote's writing style throughout the novel, states that he "demonstrates on almost every page that he is the most outrageously overrated stylist of our time" and later asserts that "the depth in this book is no deeper than its mine-shaft of factual detail; its height is rarely higher than that of good journalism and often falls below it."
Tom Wolfe wrote in his essay "Pornoviolence": "The book is neither a who-done-it nor a will-they-be-caught, since the answers to both questions are known from the outset... Instead, the book's suspense is based largely on a totally new idea in detective stories: the promise of gory details, and the withholding of them until the end."
In The Independent's Book of a Lifetime series, reviewer Kate Colquhoun asserts that "the book â€" for which he made a reputed 8000 pages of research notes â€" is plotted and structured with taut writerly flair. Its characters pulse with recognisable life; its places are palpable. Careful prose binds the reader to his unfolding story. Put simply, the book was conceived of journalism and born of a novelist."
Adaptations
Film
Three film adaptations based upon the book have been produced. The first focuses on the details of the book, whereas the later two explore Capote's fascination with researching the novel. The first adaptation was the 1967 film of the same name by Richard Brooks, who directed and adapted the screenplay. It starred Robert Blake as Perry Smith and Scott Wilson as Richard Hickock. John Forsythe played the investigator (Alvin Dewey), from the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, who apprehended the killers. The film, shot in black and white, was nominated for four Academy Awards: Best Director, Best Original Score, Best Cinematography, and Best Adapted Screenplay.
The second and third film adaptations tell the story of Capote's experiences in writing the story and his subsequent fascination with the murders. Capote (2005) starred Philip Seymour Hoffman, who won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of Truman Capote, Clifton Collins, Jr. as Perry Smith, and Catherine Keener as Harper Lee. The film was critically acclaimed, and was nominated for five Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Actor (Hoffman), Best Supporting Actress (Keener), Best Director (Bennett Miller), and Best Adapted Screenplay (Dan Futterman).
A year later the 2006 film Infamous, starring Toby Jones as Capote, Daniel Craig as Smith, and Sandra Bullock as Lee, was released to favorable reviews.
Television
The book was adapted into a two-part 1996 television miniseries starring Anthony Edwards, Eric Roberts, and Sam Neill, portraying, respectively, Dick Hickock, Perry Smith, and Alvin Dewey.
Graphic novel
Oni Press published a graphic novel, Capote in Kansas, by Ande Parks and Chris Samnee, in 2005.
See also
- George York and James Latham
- Lowell Lee Andrews
- Capital punishment in Kansas
- New Journalism
- Trial movies
References
General references
- Clarke, Gerald (1988). Capote, A Biography (1st ed.). New York: Simon and Schuster. ISBNÂ 978-0-241-12549-6.Â
- Davis, Deborah (2006). Party of the Century: The Fabulous Story of Truman Capote and His Black and White Ball (1st ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. ISBNÂ 978-0-470-09821-9.Â
Inline citations
External links
- In Cold Blood, Part I: "The Last to See Them Alive" in The New Yorker (September 25, 1965); the three subsequent installments are available in synopsis only:
- Part II: "Persons Unknown" (Abstract) (October 2, 1965)
- Part III: "Answers" (Abstract) (October 9, 1965)
- Part IV: "The Corner" (Abstract) (October 16, 1965)
- In Cold Blood, a Legacy in Photos
- Photos of the first edition of In Cold Blood
- Literapedia Book Summaries for In Cold Blood
