2006

This book was a very quick and engaging read. The two killers were well developed as I was disturbed by their lack of remorse and hate. ( )

The crime has become famous - notorious even - not so much because of its bloodthirstiness, but rather because Capote chose to write this book. It is an amazing piece, an early example of the new journalism. Capote's voice is there, but it is subdued compared to some of his other work, and rightly so. The story is the story here - there are few embellishments, little in the way of literary pretension - and the book has remained an incredible journey into hearts of darkness as a result. ( )

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1337799...

I don't read much true crime, though I am as fascinated as anyone by the story of human wickedness. This seemed to me a particularly good (and early) example of the genre, with Capote following events through the stories of the victims, the investigators and the perpetrators, from just before it happened to the day of the executions. The crimes in question took place fifty years ago next month, when the Clutter family of Holcomb, Kansas, were murdered by two men who had recently been paroled from the state prison. Capote devotes a lot of the book to a not unsympathetic psychological portrait of Hickock and Smith, the two killers; though the description of the Kansas environment where the Clutter family lived and died (based partly on notes by Harper Lee, who had just finished writing To Kill A Mockingbird) is also rather memorable. The book was originally published as a series of long articles in The New Yorker, and retains a couple of journalistic touches; the most intrusive of these is that Capote can't quite decide to keep himself out of the picture he is creating. I see that there have been two recent films about how Capote wrote this book, which is somehow not surprising. ( )

I'm in awe of Capote's ability to take a factual story in which the ending is known at the beginning and spin it into an engaging novel. ( )