today we will be talking about

truman capote's work, cold blood, a work of a true crime or and also a very significant work in the of american american. so. this book in cold blood is very important. itas widely regarded to be a tour de force. it was written and now 1966, it was originally serialized in 65 in the new yorker magazine, and then it produced broad public interest and debate. both for its sensational topic and for its new methods of journalistic reporting and investigation.

there are many sort of concerns that critics have had towards this work because truman capote, he considered this work a what he called nonfiction, the nonfiction novel. so to what degree was nonfiction is a subject of debate. and this work is about a murder in. kansas in holcomb, kansas but it has a broader as i mentioned, it is very significant to american lira historyt continues to sit shape public discussion of the nature of violence in eran society. it a very intimate story about the demise of an american family and addresses the major impact of violent cme in a small community as well as it shakes our legal and moral of nation.

now, i would argue this book relevance today, although it was written six decades ago, largely because the meaning of violence, senseless violence, is something that we face on a day to day basis. and it doesn't seem that it will abate anywheren e near future. in 2022, for insnc to put t 24,849 people were murdered in the united, which means that approximately 68 people are murdered every day during that year. now, right here in washington, d.c., last year, tre, 274 people that were murdered, which was a 3increase in the number of murders from 2020 to. so that each week approximately 5 to 6 people in our city or in the nation's capital are murdered on a week to week basis. and of course, as you know, this is about the lives of individual

that were murdered, four people murdered in every individual, every single one of these individuals are murdered. should have their stories. their stories told and could have a work written about each of them and their lives meant and how it impacted their families. d among g7 countries, the united states has the highest gun homicide re approximately. 4.38 per 100,000 residents. and in france it's only 0.4, and in canada, 0.67. and so we are by far among the most violent, highly industrialized nations. the world. now, this book, in cold blood by truman. is about the murder of the clutter. four members of the clutter family from the top left. you can see herb clutter, he was a successful wheat farmer,

rancher on the river valley farm, and he owned over 1000 acres of land in holcomb, kansas. and he founded the kansas wheat growers association, and he was appointed by president dwight eisenhower to serve on the federal farm credit board. but he was only 85 excuse me, 48 years old when he died. bonnie clutter was a loving mother, wife. and homemaker, having raised four poor children, two of which were grown adults. one was about to get married. and the family was very excited. but as know from this book, she suffered postnatal and ongoing depression in her life and. she was tragically killed at age 45. the bottom here, you see nancy clutter, and i think she's among the most tragic stories, she was

a straight-a student in her high school. she just performed in a play of tom sawyer in the lead and she had a boyfriend named bobby rupp. and she was very sociable and well-liked. all. she had a horse. she loved animals. her horse babe was, very special to her. and she was only 16 when she when she died. and then there was the youngest son clutter, the only young man in the family of the four children. he was sort of shy, introspective, and he liked play sports and music and and he was only 15 when he when he died. now there are two adult daughters that i mentioned that aviana and beverly clutter. they were the tweldest daughter, sister both tir

wedding photos. and it was an exciting time course. of course, you know that one of them had to because the families came out for the they decided to hold the wedding shortly afterwar because family was there. so followed a funeral with the wedding. now, the murders were investigated by a very for 18 men, many of whom were from the kansas bureau of investigations, led by alvin dewey. you can there and as well as a number of ople from city, kansas, the sheriff. earl robinson and harold nye, and among others. and much of our of the novel is

devoted the character and the motivation ofhesewo men. richard eugenechco or -- hickock on the left, and perry smith on the right to -- hickock. he was responsible for planning the robbery. the clutter family, and he was an athlete. all these high school. he had a fairly high iq. actually, 136 is quite significant. and he was involved in a serious car accident, however, that disfigured him and sustain multiple concussions. so later on that will figure into possible brain damage that he suffered that affected him for the rest of his life. now he was married twice and divorced and he fathered fathered three children. now, we also have perry edward

smith, who died at age 36 by hanging. he was depicted as very sensitive and artistic in this. you know, he played music, guitar and harmonica. and there are many moments where he plays gospel tunes and sings, which seems very incongruent to the mass murder that we know him to be. he also drew this picture of jesus that maybe some of you might know that showed a great sort of sensitivity and made people wonder how someone who could be so violent the same time have this compassionate and open heart to life. he was also an army veteran of the korean war and suffered from this dissociative disorder and was diagnosed as paranoid. he was of irish and cherokee indian descent, and as he also

was in a serious car accident and his legs were so damaged, you know, in a motorcycle accident that throughout his life he went with this great insecurity about his physical appearance and he was responsible for murdering the four members of the clutter family. so this work i want to speak to you about it in terms of true crime. it was a work of literature, the first of its kind in literature, i say, because it has these great literary ambitions to be more than just a sensational work of pulp fiction. yet it draws on pulp fiction, we will discuss. but in terms of true crime, you can see how rodolfo walsh, his operation masis an

argentinean writer who writes about murder many of yo. so this is considered by many to be the sort of true crime novel. of course, i think most people know vincent wilsey and curt work helter skelter about charles manson murders. and this, of course, is the most highly published work in true crime fiction of all time. then there's norman mailer's executioner's song, which won the pulitzer prize, and he was eatly influenced by truman capote. and we can how the genre right is becoming more well-resp and and roles. i mean you might kr she published the work the stranger beside me about, ted bundy, the devil in the white city, about h.h. holmes was a serial killer in the 19th century that i had mentioned to.

you also in a so have a number of different works the true crime genre and truman capote is working blood helped establish this genre as an important work in literary history. now i want to just mention for a moment the title in cold blood, because the title in cold blood is a very sensationalized title. it doesn't seem like it's going to be a work of serious fiction. it seems like it's coming of popular fiction or pulp fiction, and it seems like it's one of those hardboiled detective novels that in the twenties and thirties from dashiell hammett or raymond chandler, patricia highsmith, or or, you know, earl stanley gardner.

so but i want us to know for a moment how much of this these detective stories are crime stories captured the public fascination. for generations to dating back to the 16th century. people were interested in these pamphlets that printed about crime stories, and they would read about it and buy pamphlets. and of course, that led in the 19th century to the story papers, into the penny dreadfuls about sensational crime stories. i mentioned. we could talk how detective storieseras true crime. the private investigator, alan pinkerton. the agents were hired to protect strikebreakers, ohio and. this, of course, helps to inform the one of his former private

detectives, dashiell hammett, who wrote about strikebreakers in his novel red harvest. now, alan pinkerton, his case studies also discussed h.h. holmes of he murdered between 27 0 people. s before statistics were pinned down. so that seems lite a wide p. but a serial killer, dr. h.h. and we that he helpedl plot to kill president elect abraham. and he contracted to form secret service. he the gate of the molly, which was an irish labor organization. and he proteill owners an scabs in the homestead strike of 18 and just like the old, he would ride on horseback to smash the jesse james gang in pursuit of butch cassidy and the sundance kid in the 1870s.

now, in the twenties and thirties, true crime sort of coincided with magazines like true detective magazine and t twenties and thirties. this single in particular, true detective, had over two 2 million subscribers. so it's very, ve popular. so the appetite for true crime fiction was there. now, before world war two, the crime genre of the detective flourished, capturing somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 million readers. so was massive worldwide. now, i want to i mention this because in the book, in cold blood, there are direct references to works of pulp fiction and to film noir and.

it's one of the reasons why he called his book in cold blood, because had in mind all of this history of true crime and of the genre of hardboiled detective fiction. we know that the last night came over to nancy's home, watched television, and together they watched the show called thma in the challenge. and then after this show, they watched a western and that after spy adventure, five fingers. and finally, mike hammer came on at 930. so this reference to dashiell hammett is very significant although it seems like a footnote in the book. the book also mentions earl stanley gardner, who was a pu fiction wrir of detective

stories, and we know that he wrote for , blk mask and detective detective magazines. he combined legal knowledge and action in detective n and. he ped t case of the velvet claw, which introduced his most famous character, perry mason. and in in cold blood could see that there's a dire entry for perry edward smith, the killer in. the book wrote in his diary. it is almost impossible. a man who enjoys freedom with all its prerogatives to realize it means to be deprived of that freedom said by earl stanley. so we see how you know gardner's, also mentioned in the book. now, the day before, herb clutter and his family were murdered, herb clutter took out an insurance policy that paid double indemnity and the

salesman, insurance salesman, was trying to get him to buy a policy. and in the book it's described this way. they shook hands. then, with the merited sense of victory, johnson up mr. clutters check and deposited his bifold. it was the first payment on a 0,000 policy that in the event of death by accidental means paid double indemnity. and of course, the insurance company made good on this promise and the policy was $80,000 to be paid out. but the fact this there's this intrigue about double indemnity with the crime reminds us of film double indemnity. among the most famous works of film noir came out in the forties, 1944. some among the best works of film noir. so what we have here is a direct

by capote to, this policy of double indemnity that reminds us again of this continuous reference to popular and to film noir that undergirds his work in cold blood. but perhaps the most direct reference to pulp fiction is a reference to doc savage. and as you know before, render the verdict there a group of people milling around outside courtroom talking about, you know, the closing arguments and es, quote, a jovial fellow with gold teeth, goldand a silvery 's peak. he jovially sometimes i des sometimes i think all doc savage had the right idea. the doc savage to w

referred to or referred was a fictional hero, popular among adolescent readers fiction, pulp magazines. a generation ago. if you boys remember doc savage f s he'd made himself proficient in every fi, science, phil there wasn't much ole dr. know or couldn't do. one of his projects was he deci rid the world of first he bought a big island out in the ocean. then he and his assistants, he an army ass kidnaped all the world's criminals, brought them to the island, and doc savage o their brains. he removed the parts that hold and when they recovl decent citizens. they couldn't. couldn't crimes because that ofs now it strikes me that surgery of this nature might really be the answer to and before he has a chance to finish the judge in

the everyone to hear the verdict. so doc savage had college he called it crime college where he would conduct surgery on the brains of criminals and, alter their brains so that they could not commit crimes and again, a reference to pulp fiction in cold blood. and there are other references. these are just odd references that appear in this work in cold blood that also reference pulp fiction, -- hickock wrote a manuscript telling his own account of the murders, the high road to hell, which was never published. and we'll talk about that in just a second. but he did describe himself to tarzan. edgar rrghs, tarzan of the apes, that was published in 1914

for serialized in 1912 and all story magazine. and we havagn, -- hickock wrote his own manuscript, the murders that he called the high ro thell. he to get random house to publish it. and they wouldot publish it cae they were committed to publishing capote's work in cold blood. so -- hickock rched to machinations who published the coespondence that he had with hitchcock in mail pulp magazine, 1961. this is odd, but one of the young persons who died in that murder was kenyan clutter, and next to his body, on a coffee table were wle stream of pulp fiction magazines, and they were romance magazines. pulp fiction, romance magazines. and it was very odd to find these works in the clutter home,

because mr. clutter was a very strict religious man and his family were very religious and he is likely that he would not like to see these kinds of magazines in his home. and yet they were spread all over the coffee table. and this is mentioned by a book published recently by gary mcevoy. and every word is true. it's. now truman capote is very intriguing. he had a very slim relationship with andy warhol. and andy warhol actually, you know, created this art of truman capote himself. and there you can see them together in this old photo. and what's significant about

this is idea that popular fiction can make popular art, pop art was becoming high art. so the art establishment was largely changing and works pop art were becoming art. high art. and this that we sometimes refer to as postmodern art impacted and is reflected in truman. his work in cold blood, because truman capote, i would argue, is doing something similar to andy warhol. what andy warhol was doing to high art by bringing popular art into into the establishment was what capote was trying to do with fiction in the realm of literature. and that popular fiction, which seemed to be inferior to

literature, were in fact merging. and there are many works that sort of bring together popular and literature among them. i could just mention a few. margaret atwood's the blind assassin. haruki murakami, who writes many works that i think addresses science fiction such as his work hardboiled wonderland and the end of the world. umberto eco is another great italian writer, writes in this vein. and and truman capote. i helped to bring these two together, popular fiction and literature into a new genre called true crime, or the nonfiction novel. so to get us to try to understand this, i would i want us to look at a that truman capote gives to george plimpton. and it was published in the new

york. in january 16th,. 1966. and it quote the story behind a nonfiction novel. and here capote, he describes this idea of a nonfiction novel and this idea would be a first of its kind in the world of literature. so. you could the question being asked by george plimpton, and then we have the answer given by truman capote side, like to ask if somebody would be able to read what capote says. okay. okay, great. thank you. not really. during the last year, i've learned a eal out crime and, the origins of the homicide ntaly still is a lman's knowledge, and i don't pretend to anything deeper. e movating factor in my choice of material that is oosi to write account of

an actual murder case was altogether literary. thsionas based on a thry i have harbored since i first began to write professions we over 20 years ago. it to me that journalism reportagd beorced to yield a serious art form. the nonfictioihoug it several admirable reporters beccwas for one and joseph mitchell and lillian rose have the possibilit narrative reportage and ms. and, her brilliant pictur achieved at least a nonfi novella. still, on the whole journalism, is the most underestimated and least explored of the literary mediums. okay, good, good. he introduces idea here of the nonfiction novel. and what would you say are his interests like? why does he want to create the nonfiction novel? he it's like an untapped field.

he believes it's an untapped it's something we should explore more. and it's like another form of like us being able to discover things through a different lens. okay. okay, good. very good. so just a little bit of backstory. there has always been tension between journalism and literature those who write literature look down on journalists. you know, they're kind of snobbish and say or there's a history, unfortunately, but they see journalism as inferior. you know, people are they're hack writers. they publish things to get the story out right. and authors spend years their novels or they're short stories and they see journalism as separate. so what capote proposes very controversial not only for the public, because they haven't

seen a work of literature of this kind, but more because or also because the literary establishment to make to bring in journalism, into literature is is anathema. okay. so george plimpton asks why that be so good? so can i have somebody do you mind? katherine, you. why should be so? because pew first class, journalism excepidine.hered with half work something to be done when the creative spirit is lacking.ors a means of making my quickly. such writers say in effect. why should we with factual writ 're abler own stories contrive own characters and themes. journalism is only l photography and unbecoming to the serious writers artistic di

r d not the smallest is that the reporter, unlikedierenl with actual people who have real names if they feel maligned or try or greedy gain. rich lawyers, though rarely them by libe actions. this last is certainly a fa to consideropessive and oppressive and repressive cae it's it'ed difficult to portray in any meaningful depth another being his appearance or speech mentality without some degr and often for quite trifling offending him. the truth seemth no one likes to see himself described as he is or cares to e actly set down what he said and did, while even i can even i eve cancae i don't like it myself when i am sit sitter and not the portrait portraitist. the frailty of and the more

accurareer the resentment. when i first formed my t concerning the nonfiction, many people with whom i discussed the matter were unsympathetic. they felt that what i proposed a narrative form that emplo the techniques of fictionalrt, but was nevertheless immaculately factualtt more than a literary solution for fatigued novelists, sufr failure of imagination. personally, i felt that this attitude represented a failure of imagination on their part. okay, good. thank you so much. okay. so what are the obstacles to printing a work? a nonfiction novel, do you think. those that were particularly scared of offending that were that they were writing. and those that cannot conceive of actually the two mediums.

mm hmm. mm hmm. okay. yeah. and then you could be sued for libel, right? so that's obviously a concern. so people don't like necessarily to see themselves depicted in. they might disagree with the way they're portrayed. right. but authors themselves did not this either. right. they felt that this the failure of the imagination imagination you had to create your story not rely on is actually happening. you might draw from. but if you're trying to be a reporter, an investigator, that in their minds what you can write about of the other side is true to that. those who are interested in the facts will always question if this is a novel, then it must be fictional. and capote himself put himself

in that bind because he said that everything that he in this book was factually correct. and that opened a pandora's box to a lot of people questioning whether or not this event actually happened and that greater controversy. so whether it's nonfiction or fiction and bringing these two together, you know, a lot of i think. ups created a lot of obstacles and yet at the same time, as you mentioned, the greater the risk, the greater the reward reward. we continue on. do you mind, susanna? of course. a de piece of rtinrequires imagination and a good deal of s technicalqument is usually beyond the resources and. i don't doubt the in most fictionalit t transcribe verbatim long conversations and to do so tht taking notes or tape recordings.

also, it is to have ae for visual detail. in this sense, it is quite true that one must be a l photographer, though exceedingly selective one. but above all the reporter must be able to empathize with peieoutside his usual range mentalities and like his n nds of people, uld never have written about how do you not been forced to by encountering them inside t jonalistic situation. this last what first attracted portage.e notion narrative ito that most contemporary novelists, especially tca and the french, are too subject mesmerized by private demons, enraptured by theior and to a view that their own toes. if i were naming, i'd name myseg others. an artistic n at one time feel escape my self-created world. i wanted to exchange a creativelyinfor the everyday, objective world we all inhabit. not that i'rien no bore. i kept journals and had a small,

ussians logo color.aveling but i had never attempted an ambitious piece of reportage until 1956, when i wrote the or heard an account tha theatrical cultural exchange between the usa and the ussr that is the porgy to of russia. it was published in the new yorker, the only mi ow of that encourages a serious practitioners of this art form. later, i contributed a few o report reportage finger exercises to the same. finally, i felt and ready to undertake a full scale narrative. in other words, a novel. okay. so we do see here that capote has experimented in this genre, this idea of a nonfiction novel, or at least applying sort of reportage to narrative reportage, trying to take in all of the details that he observes all the concrete details and to tell fidelity what he observes. right. and to do so on a small scale.

and then he's building towards more ambitious project to write a whole novel in this in this in this vein. so so, okay, i know i talked little bit about how this was of the genre of realism in the 19th century, how authors tried to observe everyday life in their societies and they wanted to create stories that reflected what they did see balzac. for instance, as i mentioned, wrote his work the comedy mean about the human comedy about how all strata of society from from the top of the summit to the to the base of society at the bottom of society. he described in his work and goal was to capture how people actually lived, how they spoke,

how they conducted themselves, their mannerisms, their habits and to do this as a camera would and, this was a shift from the genre of romanticism to to realism. when taught creative writing, i would have students go a street corner and they were on the street corner. i told them to pick three or four people and to describe what they look like and what they were doing and to imagine where they were going and create stories around that and how that reflected those individuals. but a whole society right? you go on to street corner here in washington, d.c. and you could see, you know, people living their lives and going to work and going to school and doing their grocery shopping or whatever and yet their clothes,

something of their class reveals something of their purpose in their communities. and this i is sort of bringing together aspects, literary realism with this idea of, reportage and journalism. now, some people that john stewart, john hershey's hero or sima or oscar lewis as children of sanchez were early examples of a, quote, nonfiction novel and. capote anticipates this type question and he responds to it. so, carina, can i ask you or may i ask you, you don't win the lewis book is aocumtary a

job of editing from tapes and however skillful and moving is not creating hiroshima is creative in the sense that hershey isn't ta thg off a tape recorded and editing, but it still hasn' got athing to do with what i'm talking about. hiroshima is a strict classical at is closer to is what lillian rose did with picture or my o book. e se arewhh uses the techniques of the cosmic comic short it was natural that should progress from that experiment d t myself in much deeper water. i read in the paper and the hehai had been quoted as saying that reporting is now morenterested in the non than fiction. now that's not what i said. and it's t me to get this straight. what i think is the reporting n made as interesting fiction and done asti

underlining those two as as i don't mean to say that one is superior fhe oth i feel that creative reportage has been neglected gat e. the 20th century writing. and while it can be an artistic outlet for the creative writer, it has never been particularly explored. okay. okay. so what we essentially see here is that there has been creative journalism like john hershey's wiersema and oscar lewis as children of sanchez. but it's not quite the novel. why do you think it's not quite the nonfiction novel. why is it still journalism? yes, i was going to say because maybe it isn't particularly your stereotypical tropes, the way that nonfiction novels do. um uh, i guess also i haven't read hiroshima or children of

sanchez, but maybe there's a quality to them that he believes should be portrayed in nonfiction novels. okay. right. so in large measure, it's due to the fact that although this is great creative journalism, it's literature. these are not creative writers. they don't write creative writing for fiction. they they write in journalism. and they can add creativity to and literary qualities to it. but they're not trained in writing literature. so the difference here is that what capote is imagining is authors or writers creative writing and drawing on journalism, you know, but doing it as well as as is detailed as a journalist write in the reportage in their investigation and in their observations of society. in combining that to what is artistic and what is literary in a creative sense.

and there was, i think, associated james breslin and tom wolfe, a so-called journalism. and many people thought, that this idea of a nonfiction novel and what capote was doing with in cold blood was an example of what was as the journalism. and among these writers that exemplified the idea of new journalism was tom wolfe, but also james breslin. and so he says, quote if you at crowd, they nothinom wolfe in with creative journalism in the sense that i use the term neither of them nor any of th school of reporting have the proper fictional technical equipment. it's useless for a wrse iessentially journalistic to attempt reportage because it simplywon' a writer like rebecca always a

good reporter, has never really usorof creative, creativege bause. the form, by necessity, demands that the writer be completely in control. the fictional techniques, which means that to be a good reporter, you have to be a very good fiction writer. now, of course, you can imagine tom wolfe was very upset when he read this and he criticized in cold blood mercilessly. and they had a kind of competent action going on. but tom wolfe represented this new journalism and what he's essentially saying is that tom is not a good novelist or not a good writer. and, of course, who wouldn't be offended by this? okay and also, would it be fair to say that since many reporters use nonfiction techniques, that the nonfiction can be defined by the degree of the fiction involved and the extent the author's absorption with his

subject? so can somebody read the last paragraph here. thank y compulsion is fictional novel sugg fact, but no way bound to it. i never read the other book. the nonficti suld not be confused with documentary novel. a popular and but impure genre h lows all the latitude, the fiction writer, but usually contains nei persuasiveness of fact nor the poetic attitude. fiction is capable of reachingln riot over the facts. if i sound q oarrogant about this, it's not only that i have to protect my child, but that i truly don't. anything like it exists in the history of journalism. okay, good, good. so we see truman capote is making case. right. a very self oriented case that what he produced with in cold

blood was the first of its kind, that nobody despite what they produced. attained the status that cold blood purports to introduce to readers. he argues it's not like the documentary novel. it's it's very different than these other works that the new journalism it's not like hershey's hiroshima. it is a thing apart and. it draws on journalism. it draws on popular fiction, as we've seen. but it's taking what many consider not part of literature and making integral to literary representation. now i want to argue that this is important not just in of genre, but in terms of the question of violence in american society and

these questions of american society are, ones that are very real nonfiction and they're important to those are writers. okay, so we'll complete. interview. there's a couple of other that he says here. so. i may ask you to read one. thank you. what is the first step in producing a nonfiction novel? the di w to choose a promising. if you intend to spend three or four or fi wh the book as i plan to do. then you want to be reasonably certain the material not date the content of much story. another of the medium'ses which deterrents. a number of ideas occurred, but one after the other, and for one reason or another each wasevent.

often, after i'd considerable preliminary work. then on november of19, while fle new york times, i encountered on a deep inside page headli wealthy farmer three a family slain.the story was briet paragraphs stating the facts. mr. clutterd rved on the farm credit or during the eisenhower administration, his and two teenage children had been brutally mysteriously murdered. only we in cattle ranch in a remote part is nothing really except about it. one reads items concerning multiple murders many times in the course of a year. okay, great. thank you so much. so why do you think he chose to write about the clutter murders. and report on this particular event and use this to write the

nonfiction novel? yes. i think, like, usually people in kind of places like kansas, there's kind of this sense that it's safer because so remote. like the like you don't have to lock your doors at night. no one's coming for you in kansas. so i feel like that was kind of shocking that something so brutal could have happened. not like in an urbanized area. yeah. the kansas represents the heartland of america. it's it represents innocence. people leave their doors open right there, get their bottles of milk every morning. and they know everybody knows everybody. and there's a sense that all this was changed, a brutal murder that seems so senseless reaching into the heartland of america. you can think of a book like the great gatsby by scott fitzgerald. and we know that nick carraway

who you know experian is the jazz age and all the excitement of that world and realizes at the end of that book that he wants to return to the midwest because moral collapse that's evident in the metropolitan metropolis, right. is not worth sort of moral wholeness. and so he he leaves to return home to the midwest. and yet this book is something the exact opposite. this is a family, the midwest. and they're good moral people. and their lives were overturned overturned. and american innocence ended. there's the loss of american innocence. and so these are themes that timeless, right. again, 68 people die every day. right. are every day.

and you wonder how many stories like this, you know, are grieving. right. still asking these large questions about. why does this have to happen in larger existential questions about why god allows this to happen or, you know, was this related some sin and death or is this related crime and punishment? is this related to the meaning life. you know? and why does it matter? you know. okay, now there's one more genre that i want to introduce, detective fiction that is clearly being referenced with the title in cold blood and all the references that i mentioned of pulp or popular fiction that precedes the publication of this book. but somehow made it into the book itself.

we also talked true crime, right? how this is an emerging. and this idea of the nonfiction novel and he has all these ambitions about bringing journalism into literature. so all of that is true. but the novel is actually very very dependent on another genre. and this is the opening to the book. okay. so let's let's read the opening of the book and talk a little bit about it. the village of holcomb, stan is on the high plains ofhe western kansas, a lonesome area. the other kansas kansans out some 70 miles east of th colorado border. the countryside with its hard blue skies and desert clea s, an atmosphere that is rather more far west than middle west the localt is barber.

barber barbed with a bright lake how do you say that? prairie. prairie twang. a ranch hand needs honesty. e men, many of them wr frontier trousers. thurston and high heeled with po t the land is flat and the views are awesomely extensive. herds of cattle a white. cluster of grain elevators rising as gracefully as greektown pulls are visible along long before, a traveler reaches them. okay, good. all right. so let me ask you, what does this remind you of what popular genre does this remind you of the western? the western. very good. very good. the western. it's a romantic description of the countryside and it's reminiscent other novels that we read in this class, such as riders of the purple sage.

with its romantic depiction of the, uh, the western. frontier lands of, uh, of utah. okay okay, good. yes. right. so it comes. it's the western. right? and kansas. is this, you know, the wheat plains. you know, in the midwest of america. right. and there are people wearing their stetsons and they have a little barbed look or barb accent with the prairie twang. a ranch hand nasal in this could picture the ranchers, the cattle ranchers, the farmers and people riding horses in their with herds of cattle and, their grain elevators. you that are rising as gracefully as greek temples, as visible or visible long before a traveler reaches them. so they have their frontier trousers right in their heel boots, boots with pointed toes. we're in the in the west.

right. we're in the area. that was the frontier. and this is very important. now, it's a beautiful setting right. just as we saw with the western. the landscape is very beautiful. and so there's this idea of grain elevators and the the wheat fields of of western reflecting the beauty of the land land. now, i don't know if you've seen those grain elevators, but this what they look like and they do kind of you know, it's very interesting that he compares it to greek temples. and what's important here again as we see capote is self-consciously bringing in the literary to describe the landscape and the beauty of the landscape. and we know, of course, when the that the beauty of landscape is not just describing the setting, it's essential to their sense of wholeness and to the unity in

harmony with nature, and that it reflected their their ideas of, justice, love and justice that was bound up with the beauty of nature. it was all of a piece. and so, as you can suspect, this idea that a crime would happen in the in the old west, right. or the far west is something straight out of out of a western that is asking us to capture the criminals. right. and them to justice. so we have here this idea continuing on with with the novel. so do you mind. farm ranchers. most of them. they are outdoor folk of very varied stock, german, irish norwegian, mexican, japanese

they're raised cattle and sheep grow wheat, mrassand sugar beets. farming is always a chancy sine, but inestern kansas, its practitioners consider born gamblers, for they must contend withn extremely shallow annual average is 18 inches an anguishingems. however, the last seven years have been yearsough loss of beneficence. the farm ranchers in finney county, of which holkhams a part have done well. money has been made not from farmine, b alsorom the exploitation of plentiful natural resources. and it's acquisition is reflected in new the comfortable inventor's interiors of the farmhouse as is the steep and swollen grain. okay. so people have become very prosperous. they've benefited, you know, they are. and the, you know in western

kansas as farmers as ranchers as you know planting beets and and wheat. right. raising their cattle in their sheep and there's been a bounty rain to help with the farming right. with the fields and this drought loss benefits is reflected in the fact that many people have prospered among them, of course, the the clutter family. mr. clutter and his family, wheat growers and so we see here how the whole has been has benefited. there's a natural gas resources as well. and they have a new school, new farmhouses and the grain are filled to capacity. now would probably argue that it's not so much. the agricultural economy that mr. clutter was deeply involved

in, in which he shaped the policy during the eisenhower. in the 1950s. certainly he made a impact and that's why he was appointed by the president and started his own kansas wheat association. so was a very involved politically in his time and made significant differences supporting other farmers. but i would argue that what we're getting more so in this introduction is about the sort of pastoral landscape and the sort of way in which the people are prospering that live and are part of this frontier community, so to speak. this is how the western begins usually with the beauty of nature, things are in their proper place until something terrible happens right.

and so then. one morning in mid-november, november. 1959,ewmericans, in fact, few kansans had ever heard of hoikthe waters of ghway. like the motorists on the and like the yellow train streaking down santa fe tracks, drama the shape of exceptional happenings had never stopped. there. the inhabitants of village, numbering 270, were satisfied that they should be so quite content to exist inside ordinary life, to work, to hunt, to watch television, to attend school choir practice meetings of t four h club. but then in the earliest hours of that morning in november, a sund morcertn foreign nitlyum, the keeninge normally hysteria of coyotes, the cries,

dry scrapes of, studying, scurrying tumbleweed, the racing receding wall of locomotive whistles. at the time, not a soul is sleeping. he'll come. heard them for gunshot blast. that all told ended six human lives. but afterwards the townspeople therefore sufficiently and fearful of each to sdom trouble to lock their doors found fantasy recreating over and over tho somber explosions that stimulated fires usin the glare of which many old neighbors viewed each other and as strangers. so i think think this, you know, draws on the idea the western right as we talked this idealized landscape and the

people who prospered in their lives that seem to be. you know reflect of of their of of happy and happy and and good times. now there has been turned upside down by these right these murders that will eventually lead to the ending of six six lives. right now, how is this literary. let's talk a little bit more about that idea. how would you say this is literary, aside from, genre. i, i feel like it's the literary because it's very descriptive. it goes into detail and depth and it of puts you there. it takes you into that world and a. kind of opens your imagination so you can what if or least try to understand and conceptualize

what it felt like, which i feel like is what most novels try to they try to put you into another world even though this we know was something that actually happened. but trying to put ourselves in those shoes. mm hmm. okay, good. good. anybody else? yes. yeah, i agree. the imagery kind of used. this is more like substantial than i would say for, like, a nonfiction. just kind of fact oriented piece. i feel like you kind of see more in your head as, like, story, even though it's true which kind of, like, makes you feel it all that much more. mm hmm. mm hmm. okay, good. good. yeah. those are excellent, i think, features that connect with literature. perhaps we can add that there is a sense of tragic irony. and i think what authors is they create dramatic irony that you're expecting something and

you get the exact opposite. irony is when expect light to be darkness or darkness to be light and the opposite of what you expect. and so there is great irony in the juxtaposition of this peaceful moment in time in this horrible, horrible violence. and it's disconcerting when the language is so beautiful to bring together such senseless, chaotic. you know, this terrible beauty, you know, as william butler yeats puts, it. so there's this sense of of terrible beauty. right. of horror. that is described. and it creates irony, traumatic irony. and capote is very conscious of of this technique and this mode, mode of storytelling. there's a scene when bobby goes to the funeral parlor, and he sees the four caskets. caskets or coffins, right.

and looking into the coffin you know, we're led. imagine that he saw the bodies of the four people who were killed and they're wrapped with this gauze around their heads because they were each shot in the face and so you can't actually see their faces. and there's a little bit of glitter on the cotton or on the gauze and capote describes this as lightly fallen snow. and it's a beautiful image. right. but again, it's of the it's the horror of of, you know, how young these four people, all of them young, you know, their lives were extinguished so violently. and yet it's described, you know, in such beautiful language. you know, there's another would

be, nancy, she was so happy to wear this red dress, do you remember that she had created herself. they picked out a cloth and she stitched. she's very talented, you know made her own dress and was so excited to be wearing it. right and then it became the dress that she wore in the inner coffin, you know, and it's those kinds moments that capote is taking from real life and trying to show the irony. you know that heightens the the discordant ways. something beautiful hopeful is, you know, matched with something horrible and and evil and ugly. now, going back to the western, because the western is very important. the idea of violence is very critical that we talked about to founding of the country itself.

our country is based the united states of america is based on a frontier myth. as we talked about with frederick jackson turner, who described the frontier myth the founding. yes. of that this myth, you know, which has sacred connotations of manifest destiny. right. of going from coast to coast that these types of ideas represent the spirit of redemption of america and its renewal. when people move westward, they compared it to israelites crossing a leaf egypt into the into the wilderness. right. and making their way to the promised land. the land of canaan fills milk and. and of course, when they there, they had to defeat a lot their enemies. the implicates and the canaanites and it's a war, right

in the war would lead to their greatest sort of belief that the land would be theirs. the land flowing with milk and honey. now the myth, according to richard slotkin, who describes this in his book, gunfighter nation, he connects to the concept regeneration through violence. and the myth represents this idea. they play through a scenario of separation, temporaryegssion to a primitive or an more natural state, and eventually leading to some kind of progress, state of progress. and that state progress will create a new of world or new utopia that the old utopia was beautiful as well, but it too died or ended. and a new one is born. and this sort of mythic cycle is

one that is very much of the story. according to richard slotkin, the frontier myth. so there are stages right? and we see that these stages of the western are ones that are followed in the telling of the story of in cold. it starts with american pastoral landscape, right? the western plains of kansas. it their lives as idyllic. and when you read not just the opening but the stories of their lives how they were in high when you know and they were happy and they were you know everything that you think about when think of family life know and so on. they had their issues, you know, this to a kind of complete a kind of sudden separation and the loss of these families. there's a regression to a more

primitive. and then a conflict that ensues, leading to savage wars. and in the western, it's oftentimes indian wars, so-called indian wars. native americans. and leading to some notion of progress. so the frontier myth and this of the american myth is that these stages of violence are necessary to bring regeneration, violence in for society to be renewed, it must do through do through violence. and this idea, i think, is very significant. it has to do with the idea that our country is based on violence. we like to think of our country as opposed to violence, anti violent. but we're we're founded on violence, our very ideas of violence we consider sacred.

those who there are two great examples of the highest citizen in the country. those who kill for the country and those who die for the country each are redemptive in their own way. the who dies for the country in the sort of christ like so-called christlike manner. right. are sacrificing themselves and renewing society. and the people who kill the country are protecting the country from from outside, as if to say that there needs to be some symbolic act of violence that takes the place of all other sort of generalized that if we deem a sacred violence important, it will take away from the other types of violence, the chaotic.

and this leads us to rené girard, who wrote a book called violence and sacred. his idea is that we imbue violence with a sacred duty. and this, i think, is connected to western is connected to religion. it's connected to the american founding myth of the frontier, because murder inspires because men must be forcibly restrained from murder. vengeance is inflicted on all those who t. the obliev to shed blood cannot be distinguished from the obligation, exact revenge. and thos who shed it. enisho an intimate, interminable outbreak of vengeance. judawe wish to prevent nuclear war, it is not enough to convince their fellows that en is detes for it is precisely because. they detest violence that men a duty of vengeance. so it's a violence becomes

sacred in this instance because to exact revenge is to prevent violence from occurring. and so you are you're mandated commit violence to stop violence. now before we get to the sort of the way the book addresses this question, i want to go back to the idea the detective novel. and when you when we read the detective novel, let's say dashiell hammett's red harvest or mickey's spillane inside the jury, there clearly is pursuit of vengeance, a pursuit of justice. it might not be justice in the traditional sense through the courts, but that justice is that the guilty will be punished. and in hardboiled detective fiction, sometimes it's just karmic justice. the people who commit evil deeds will be punished and get what they deserve.

so the point of this is truman capote in his work, cold blood is deliberately building towards a climax and does this by referring to genres that are traditionally ones in which. we expect this regeneration through violence. this gets at the core our so-called beliefs in the nation and that even our spiritual beliefs that times that violence is necessary to regenerate society, to save them from themselves. and so we expect this to build towards that conclusion. now, of course, there are two people involved. they are, you know, who are the ones who perpetrated that violence. and according to the way in which we think that justice is to be served, it's to be served to those those who kill will themselves be killed for their

actions. and that this is intended. you throughout history to to regeneration, to violence. however, we see in. well, let's take this to just start with start with that idea. and go with the books that we've we've read. so in red harvest there's a catharsis, right, that everybody that violence occurs and, that violence regenerates society because all of the evil criminals in the town poison ville are killed and they're eliminated. in violence serves. that purpose of purifying, cleaning up the town. the i the jury is mike hammer right. that did hardboiled detective that carries out a crime. or sorry is trying to prevent criminal activity by a woman

that we find out charlotte manning the femme fatale. and there's a lot of corruption going on that is about prostitution, gambling, you know, and so on. and and mike hammer solves case and gets revenge because his best friend was murdered. right. and the end the killer dies in same way that his best friend died. he got shot in the stomach and died a horrible death. so, charlotte is going to get shot in the stomach. and she die a horrible death. so that's the eye for an eye right? so, in other words, hardboiled detective fiction, detective fiction in general, are ones that sort of lead up to a moment where there is regeneration, there is closure. there is utopia. right. or we return a state of progress and justice or vengeance served. however, we saw movie.

with jack nicholson. right. the. chinatown in chinatown and. in that particular movie, it does something similar to what in cold blood is doing. it leads to a climax where we expect the the crooked boss of the town across to get to be killed. right. he's somebody committing incest. you know, he's killing people and getting away with everything, right? and what's so disturbing about chinatown is that in the end, he doesn't pay for his crimes. he gets away with it. so in truman capote book, we're leading to a moment in which justice to be meted out and societies to affirm its foundational principles. but there's a there's something that happens with this book, you

know, that it from the realm of fiction to the realm of real life. okay. now we have the mcnaughton rule in the rule. the idea that mcnaughton is that order for a defendant to be held responsible, they have to he or she must know the nature and consequences of his or her actions and must be able to determine right from wrong. this is not possible, and the defendant could be considered unfit. stand trial. now, more recently introduced the idea of the durham right that the defendant is not criminally responsible if the actions with product of behavior stemming from illness or disease. and in the book we have.

references and this is unusual but to actual scientific blations one of which was this piece published in the american journal psychiatry, written by kar menninger, erwin rosin and martin maiman. and they wrote a this essay, a murder without apparent motive, a study in personality, disorganized. and perry and -anperry were sort of diagnosed ba ycatrist named dr. w mitchell jones. he was a criminal psych psychiatrist at learn and state hospital. and dr. joseph staton of the menninger in topeka, kansas, also affirmed, the conclusions drawn. dr. dr. jones. so together these scientific cases show that -- hickock and perry smith. right.

that their findings were relevant, their defense. and although the mcnaughton rule was invoked, suggest that they are able to stand trial, the diagnosis that perry was a paranoid schizophrenic and that he had this dissociative moments due to trauma in his life. now we know that the trauma that he experiences have to do with this very troubling childhood and abuse that he by his father and his mother and how he went from home to home. of course, this led tragically to the suicides, his sister and brother, sister fell out of a, you know, apartment building and fell to her death. they don't know if it was accidental, if it was suicide. but she died violently.

and their mother was alcoholic and his brother killed himself. his his wife killed himself. she killed herself. and then, of course, we know that perry will die by hanging right. it's really terrible. tragic story. and perry will describe going to orphanage and so forth. right. and struggling through adolescence and youth. and he's got side of artistic side, right. this picture of jesus, you know, being sensitive some ways. right. you know, and then we have -- hickock, right? we learn a lot about his childhood and background. but he, too, was in a car accident, severe car accident and experienced concussions. and that dr. mitchell jones sort

of suspects that might have been one factor because apparently he did not have these violent tendencies. prior to the accident. but after accident, he began to get a lot of trouble. and so they suspect that it might have something to do with brain damage or illness. so we won't read these passages. you know, we'll talk about it. there's also a very strange case is added in this book, and it's the case of lowell, leander. this is an actual case now loyola andrews was a very quiet, reserved, young man who was a very good in school. he had a very supportive, loving family. apparently, he wanted to you gain the money that his family

had through inheritance and day. he came home during thanksgiving holiday and he killed all of family. okay. so this, man, lola andrews was on death row. the coroner, as it's put in the book. and he, too, was going to to die. so lola andrews was on death row and he, too, was hung. but we know that before he died, the man, read voraciously. he read 20 or 30 books a week. and he had hunger for knowledge and wanted to learn. and there was this in this man wanting so to live and to improve himself, improves intellectual abilities and yet he had these sociopathic tendencies and he murdered his whole family. right. and so he went, you know, he was hung in kansas prior to hanging

of --. and perry. so the point here is that the pendulum swings from one side to the other. on the one hand, we have the idea that the guilty should be punished. right. that a vengeance is necessary. that it's a it's at the core of our beliefs. you know. and when the pendulum swings, the other here in this case with this work of nonfiction novel. we have the idea that no capital punishment there's something inhuman about it, about the idea or the principle that it's wrong to kill someone and therefore it you will be killed for that reason. so let me ask you. okay, what do you think about these and other kinds of questions of a.

last comment. i want to show that there's a epigraph that begins the book it's a quote by francois vian. and the quote reads in the english translation is brothers, men who live us, let not your hearts be hardened against us because if you have pity for us, poor men, god will have mercy towards you. so the idea, i think, is that he. the very foundation of regeneration through violence and it's deeply ironic. it's disturbing as seeing this the freshly fallen snow through the gauze on the corpses of, this family that seems to be so and peaceful. you of okay so let's ask we have some final here i guess.

let's start with number three because it's building on this question. and do you think or was it appre, capote, to humanize the killers, perry and of so crime? or is this approach, in essence, quote, giving sympathy to the devil. yes. in a way, i think it was appropriate, because so often when we think of killers or like murderers, we kind have this vision in our head that they're inhuman or monsters or. but at the end of the day, they are people and anyone can technically could be a killer which is something we often don't want to admit. but i think it's important realize that at the end of the day, they their own histories, their own backgrounds, but they were still capable. evil. mm hmm.

you can't get anybody else. i mean, if they were painted as monsters, i think we would. we wouldn't have sympathy for them. right. and as we saw with the western as angry, you know, the mormons that are depicted in that are vilified. right. it's a manichean world, a manichean world is dualistic. good versus evil. and what we have here is a complicated of those sort of moral equivalencies. well, that's what capote is doing, right? he's trying to humanize. it's a very liberal humanist novel. right. which is very different from what we've read. and and so i wanted to have a think about it in terms of, you know, the literature, you know, that we read and this particular work that's some of those foundations. now, do you think does in blood succeed in bringing together popular fiction and

literature? well, we can add journalism and. literature. or do you think it was was it a failure of of sorts? is it mixed. anybody. well, yes, it was absolutely a true success. and it's survived since the day is is one of the most popular true crime and fictionalized, not crime. novels is is true proof of that. it is a literary novel. his his literary chops are shown all the way through this this book, the first page on from descriptions on the. i think the question comes in is

it was a success is how did company in search himself into the nonfiction part of story because he was very a figure in this case and the way he the the literature part of the literature and the fictionalizing of a true crime novel in the dialog in. and he abso lutely made up that dialog from whole cloth. yes. and so. as he talks about it is a nonfiction novel. what it is, is fictionalized. a true story has been fictionalized in two a great extent. so there are two sides of of that story. yes. i mean, it is true that the last scene in the novel where alvin

dewey. right visits the site of the graves to pay homage and not only to his father, who passed, but to the clutter family. and then he runs into sue kidwell, one of susan kidwell, one of the best friend of nancy. she's on leave from her university. and they have a conversation, you know, and we learn that bobby rupp is engaged to be married and life goes on. and he uses that to in the novel, you know. but according to alvin dewey that that never happened. that scene was completely made up. know so there were moments like that in the novel that i think he capote just probably was just unable to to exclude that poetic sense of poetic justice that he thought should be in a work of

literature and change the story. but then you can claim that it's nonfiction. you not not in the way that he does where he says that every word is true. is true. yeah. yeah. but but it does make an impact. we are still reading it and talking about it. and of course, very relevant to do it today. okay. so and then. do you think i guess this is personal, but do you that the state should punish those who are convicted of capital murder with the penalty of death. yes. i think this is a very complex question and you have to take a lot of things consideration. but like the first thing that comes to mind for me is since my parents are from el salvador and renan and salvador, a lot of almost the gang members, like 90% of the gang members, have been like put into jail and in el salvador. death penalty does not exist.

they will just be incarcerated forever. but with the history that el salvador has of corruption right now, currently the president we we he is not up. they won't get out. but there is this fear that if this president does not continue presidency the next president will release them. and so, like, even though in country, the death penalty does not exist, that they should made an exclusion for mass murderers or gangsters. and kill them, because if the next does release them and is corrupt and falls into their pockets, well, they're to start killing everyone because of everyone who was like because it was a it was a mass sweep of all the gangsters in el salvador. and so there was a bunch of people who, i guess are considered because they were like, oh, i know that this one lives here. this one lives here. this one lives here. it was a mass roundup. and so they ever were to get out, they would do a mass killing.

everyone who was who gave their locations and all these other things. and so there is this fear in the population, the general population in salvador. and so they believe or some everyone obviously people do don't think death is the solution. but there is a certain population in order that believes that we have made an exclusion to the law, that that there is no death penalty in el salvador because of this fear in the future, this mass killing, it's like kill or be killed type of situation. so it's a complex question and it does beg to know the circumstance this. but it's like even if i if i were to just yes or no, i still don't think i would teeter totter between yes or no, because it's a very complex question. and you you you have to decide between whether you want to see

death as something that is you can just do. it's like giving no importance, death and giving. that means you give no important life importance to life. and i guess you don't people don't want to see it that way. you want to see importance in life because then there's no end points to life. then what we doing? mm hmm. mm hmm. okay. good. thank you. yeah. i think this is a this is a big question, right? so. and everybody has different opinions about it. let's see here. well, i think we might be running out of time. but let me just ask this last question here, that this idea of the true crime genre, finally, that it's proliferating, right? it spawned so many podcasts and books and shows right. but what's i found in my research is that 70 the audience a lot of this true crime are in fact women that 70% of the

consumers of true crime are women. and so i want to ask you, why do you think that might be the case? yes, there are a couple reasons. one is that the female population feel sort of a. drawn to true crime because they feel as if they can relate to some extent to, the the victims perpetrated to for the majority of the cases of true crime that the victims are, i believe, women or are targeted for a specific reasons. the a lot of i believe feminists

are. targeting i'm i might be remembering enron. i just remember reading an article that talked about that specifically. but, yeah, that's that's one of the reasons. yes. and i was going to say, i'm part of that 70% like i was criminal mind, you know, watch like and order all of those like and twice and be something. something and why see something and why. that's what i'm saying. so, like, i watch i watch a lot of true crime. if i were to say why i'm interested in it, i honestly don't know. i think it's just kind of like something 70% of us women, i guess it's just we're compelled to it for one reason. and i think it's also kind of the brain teaser because at least criminal minds like it's kind of the brain teaser you get because see, read, read is like the smart guy in criminal minds and he like you see him of like

piecing it together and you you kind of see it and you're like, oh my, god. like, that's how you piece it together. so not only we feel identified with the victims because he has typically, victor, the victims are women. yes. or at least in these shows, the victims are women. but also, you get that brainteaser. mm hmm. mm. yeah. okay. thank you. well. well, our discussion for today and i think what we get at this book and blood is this is tragedy. right. it's a a human tragedy. all around, you know, and good people, evil people, you know. but together, it's it's it's a human tragedy. and it's a question that we have to ask ourselves in and day out. there are no easy, no easy answers, but at least forced us to ask questions and perhaps to fight to to stop whatever leads

us to this point, so that such these kinds of tragedies won't happen. yeah.