In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote (Bowie's Top 100)

For February, Megan (I read therefore I am) and Kim (Berly) are reading another of David Bowies's Top 100 list: In Cold Blood. Join us!!

David Bowie's Top 100 Reads:

Interviews With Francis Bacon by David Sylvester
Billy Liar by Keith Waterhouse
Room At The Top by John Braine
On Having No Head by Douglass Harding
Kafka Was The Rage by Anatole Broyard
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
City Of Night by John Rechy
The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
Iliad by Homer
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner--reading with Megan (I Read Therefore I Am) soon...
Tadanori Yokoo by Tadanori Yokoo
Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Döblin
Inside The Whale And Other Essays by George Orwell
Mr. Norris Changes Trains by Christopher Isherwood
Halls Dictionary Of Subjects And Symbols In Art by James A. Hall
David Bomberg by Richard Cork
Blast by Wyndham Lewis
Passing by Nella Larson
Beyond The Brillo Box by Arthur C. Danto
The Origin Of Consciousness In The Breakdown Of The Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes
In Bluebeard’s Castle by George Steiner
Hawksmoor by Peter Ackroyd
The Divided Self by R. D. Laing
The Stranger by Albert Camus
Infants Of The Spring by Wallace Thurman
The Quest For Christa T by Christa Wolf
The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin
Nights At The Circus by Angela Carter
The Master And Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Herzog by Saul Bellow
Puckoon by Spike Milligan
Black Boy by Richard Wright
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea by Yukio Mishima
Darkness At Noon by Arthur Koestler
The Waste Land by T.S. Elliot
McTeague by Frank Norris
Money by Martin Amis
The Outsider by Colin Wilson
Strange People by Frank Edwards
English Journey by J.B. Priestley
A Confederacy Of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
The Day Of The Locust by Nathanael West
1984 by George Orwell
The Life And Times Of Little Richard by Charles White
Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom: The Golden Age of Rock by Nik Cohn
Mystery Train by Greil Marcus
Beano (comic, ’50s)
Raw (comic, ’80s)
White Noise by Don DeLillo
Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm And Blues And The Southern Dream Of Freedom by Peter Guralnick
Silence: Lectures And Writing by John Cage
Writers At Work: The Paris Review Interviews edited by Malcolm Cowley
The Sound Of The City: The Rise Of Rock And Roll by Charlie Gillete
Octobriana And The Russian Underground by Peter Sadecky
The Street by Ann Petry
Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon
Last Exit To Brooklyn By Hubert Selby, Jr.
A People’s History Of The United States by Howard Zinn
The Age Of American Unreason by Susan Jacoby
Metropolitan Life by Fran Lebowitz
The Coast Of Utopia by Tom Stoppard
The Bridge by Hart Crane
All The Emperor’s Horses by David Kidd
Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess
The 42nd Parallel by John Dos Passos
Tales Of Beatnik Glory by Ed Saunders
The Bird Artist by Howard Norman
Nowhere To Run The Story Of Soul Music by Gerri Hirshey
Before The Deluge by Otto Friedrich
Sexual Personae: Art And Decadence From Nefertiti To Emily Dickinson by Camille Paglia
The American Way Of Death by Jessica Mitford
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Lady Chatterly’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence
Teenage by Jon Savage
Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh
The Hidden Persuaders by Vance Packard
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
Viz (comic, early ’80s)
Private Eye (satirical magazine, ’60s – ’80s)
Selected Poems by Frank O’Hara
The Trial Of Henry Kissinger by Christopher Hitchens
Flaubert’s Parrot by Julian Barnes
Maldoror by Comte de Lautréamont
On The Road by Jack Kerouac
Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder by Lawrence Weschler
Zanoni by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
Transcendental Magic, Its Doctrine and Ritual by Eliphas Lévi
The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels
The Leopard by Giusseppe Di Lampedusa
Inferno by Dante Alighieri
A Grave For A Dolphin by Alberto Denti di Pirajno
The Insult by Rupert Thomson
In Between The Sheets by Ian McEwan
A People’s Tragedy by Orlando Figes
Journey Into The Whirlwind by Eugenia Ginzburg

I'm (well, will be) reading this one, a pretty Penguin Modern Classics edition, spanking new today from the Book Depo :)
Eta: hm, can't get the image up properly. I'll have to come back later and fix that up. For now? I must away, to read!

Yess! my image is there now. Srsly, the iPad version 1.0 is not up to the task these days. Its back to the trusty desktop to get some things done :)
Im thinking to start In Cold Blood in a week or two.

Just finished one RL Bookclub book. One to go, then I can start in. A week or so sounds great! And I have to get my hands on a copy....

Maybe I take the lovely book with me on holiday this long weekend?
I have just finished a GN and a dry academic number, the time might be right? Only problemo is that I will have no intent so won't be able to talk about it the first 3 days of reading!

I got my copy (the third one up top) at Half-Price Books in Kansas City yesterday. I couldn't wait and have already started it. I know this story well so I hope I can get through it without tears. Capote has painted a lovely picture of the Clutter family. I hatehatehate what is in store for them...

Fifty pages left in I Am Malala, then I can start in....! That means I can catch up a little before Megan can start talking about it. ; )

Hi Donna!! Welcome aboard. : ) I have a vague feeling of dread, but don't really know the story. So, you are saying I need to have the Kleenex on hand? Uh-oh.

Haha, well, fear not (for your own reading pace) Kim. I only started it today. So much for holiday weekend reading- for some reason I picked up Domestic Manners of the Americans and started up where I left off quite a while ago. It seems easy enough to start and stop with, so I think I'll go on to In Cold Blood with all my attention now :)

I am up to page 29. The descriptions of the landscape and the personalities are wonderful! I have noticed he seems to be able to put multiple descriptive clauses within sentences, and yet they still seem simple and tight and easily read. Did someone say genius?! I look forward, with trepidation, to what is coming....

I have finished the book and am eager to talk about it. I highly recommend the movie "Capote" starring Phillip Seymour Hoffman in the title role. It is based on the book. It's interesting that in my copy, no credit is given to Capote's childhood friend, Harper Lee, who traveled to Kansas with him and did much of the research.

>10 Donna828: woah, nice reading :)
Well, I have just put my copy down at Lenny's insistence. Fair enough.
I am 50 pages in, and the baddies are making their way to the ranch. Or at least, I assume they are, it's not made explicit. You can feel the tension building, clever of Capote to not really be keeping the final ending a secret. It would have been common knowledge I suppose in the day, and it does help the suspense. I fear I am going to be a nervous Nellie reading what I anticipate to be scary moments!!

Thoughts....
In section two the voice seems to change from a fiction sounding literary one, to a voice that is more factual, with a more perfunctory feel. Maybe this is when the primary sources came to the fore...
That's all for now :)

Capote's narration is so cheery and upbeat in the beginning. The 4-H club, and pie baking, little snippets from Nancy's diary. And I suppose that is how it is. Life is normal right up until it isn't.

They have just arrived at the ranch...

I just became aware of this group read, minutes ago, via the Message Board thread. Coincidentally, In Cold Blood is my RL book group's selection for February, I just finished it last night, and shortly prior I'd added Capote to my Amazon watchlist, possibly to see this evening. I haven't yet posted comments to my thread.

>13 Berly: duh duh duuuuh. I guess things are about to go awry.
I am half way though now and although the style seems to have changed, I am still enthralled. I had to stop and google the family...I couldn't help it. You don't want to do an image search. It brings the whole tng back into reality. Ew.

>14 qebo: good timing! I have just been looking at all the associated films, with Sandra Bullock cast as Harper Lee (Capote's friend) in one. I'm not sure which one I want to see now, but any would do for starters.

>14 qebo: Hi there! When is your book group meeting to discuss? I'd love to hear what they say and also your comments. Can you repost here or link us to your thread? Thanks!

>15 LovingLit: So now you know I have to do an image search. Thanks. : P And I haven't even gotten to the ugly part and I can't quite imagine wanting to watch a movie of this?! But I do love Sandra Bullock.

>15 LovingLit: There's also In Cold Blood the movie, creepily starring Robert Blake. I haven't seen any of them.
>16 Berly: The book group meets on Feb 20 (Saturday). I don't know how much I'll have to say... but the interesting aspects were the description of place (and time, though of course when the book was written the time was not a past era), and the mind of the murderer (both, but more one than the other). Also the family was apparently none too pleased with the book; I've done some where-are-they-now googling.

>17 qebo: Oooh, where are they now googling. Tantalising! It would be very hard to be pleased about any adaption of the murder of your family, I suppose.

>14 qebo: Welcome, Katherine. I look forward to hearing what your book group makes the focus of the discussion. To me, the middle part of the book -- the tracking down of Hickock and Perry Smith -- was pretty fascinating. Capote really got into their heads as they traveled around making one bad decision after the other.

>19 Donna828: I am on that part at the moment, Donna. And Capote has gotten inside their heads. But a little part of me can't reconcile that with the fact that he is, really, just making it up. I know he interviewed the two at length, so would have a good idea as to what they were thinking etc, but I just can't get my head around the classification of this book, the fiction/non-fiction dichotomy is messing with me. I guess I need to accept that there are facts in it, but there is also conjecture.

As an FYI, I did watch Capote this evening (because the alternative is to continue reading ISIS: State of Terror. And lest you think that I have a thing for gruesome and brutal, this was another book group selection. So you may wonder about my friends, but I swear I just went along with the group decision!) It's sketchy on the crime, and focused on Capote's (and Harper Lee's) involvement with the story, kind of fills in some gaps and questions about the book, where at most he'll mention "a journalist".

Is something up with touchstones? All evening they've been churning and timing out, need several tries to take.

Donna--I am just at the middle part of the book and I am not sure what is "known" and what is conjecture. (What Megan said.) Intriguing, confusing, and creepy either way!

Katherine--Imagine Capote being a break! But from ISIS, I guess it is. Phew. I DO wonder about your book group!! LOL. Yes, I noticed the same thing about touchstones....

>22 Berly: Well, it's two different book groups, dunno if that makes it better or worse... In Cold Blood was suggested by the same person who got us to read Go Set a Watchman, so maybe it's Harper Lee completion. And ISIS: State of Terror was suggested by someone whose niece assisted the authors with research.

Touchstones still a problem.

>21 qebo: so in Capote he's investigating the murders from the town where they occurred and just says he s's a journalist? He'd never get access to interview the killers in jail now, would he?
I like Catherine Keener, but am intrigued as to how Sandra Bullock might 'pull off' being Harper Lee in the other film...decisions decisions.

Re: the book. I read for two hours last night. The story is cleverly laid out; I marvel at that aspect of it.

>24 LovingLit: No, he was a journalist (employed by New Yorker magazine) and arrived in Kansas with his friend Harper Lee (before publication of To Kill a Mockingbird, so she was just a person, not a celebrity), who smoothed the way to getting interviews. In the book, he is not present; he recounts events presumably as reconstructed from interviews and investigator notes, but he doesn't say "I was here", or how he came to be involved, or when he was in town, or who he met directly etc. At most, he'll mention that a quote was told to "a journalist", which presumably means either himself or Harper Lee. Yeah, I'd guess access would be more restricted now. For example, a murderer residing in a home jail seems... quaint.

>25 qebo: aaah, gotcha.
I am at the part in the book where he is in the home jail cell...getting apple pies and other such thoughtful provisions from the jailers wife. Quaint indeed. But, the back of the book mentions how human Capote has made the killers, and I agree. They, well, only Perry, seems rather a sensitive and paradoxically sweet guy. I wonder if Capte wrote him like that because he had a soft spot for him. (I suppose one would only develop a soft spot for someone if they were in some way likeable)
But, that is what I like about the book, killers or people who do bad (terrible, hideous, heinous) things, aren't necessarily always a bad terrible hideous person. There is a grey area.
And so ironic that the 'sweeter' of the murderers is the cold hard killer, while also stopping Dick rape Nancy, and making the family comfortable before their being slayed. I feel like I would have feared Dick more, as Bonnie seemed to have when she appealed to Perry to not let Dick harm her family.
eta: spoiler sections...don't want to ruin it for anyone!

Aaah, finished!
So good. Really, such a good book. At the end of my daily roundup of things to tell my lovely other at the end of the day, I almost said and Dick and Perry got executed!!!
Such a part of my week they were.

Lalalalal--not reading the spoilers yet. Just started Part 3. Dizziness and reading not working that well together.

>28 Berly: oh you do display impressive self control! Just think of how fun it will be to read the spoilers and be conversing about it later.
Sorry to hear your reading is marred by dizziness :(

Ahem. Conversation please Kim?
:)

OK. Better late than never...these are some of the things I bookmarked during my reading.

I was duly impressed by Perry Smith's vocabulary: Thanatoid=deathlike; amerce=punishment, amount fixed by court; facinorous=atrociously wicked; hagiophobia=a morbid fear of holy places, etc. And his "diary" which really as just a place he kept favorite quotes and interesting tidbits of information. Whew!! The man was smart, but only book smart. He was morally bankrupt. I am horrified that his upbringing could have so warped him that he could go on to kill the Clutter family, especially when the prime instigator, Dick Hickock, seemed to back off the crime.

"The crime was a psychological accident, virtually an impersonal act; the victims might as well have been killed by lightening. Except for one thing: they had experienced terror, they had suffered." (Dewey)

And Perry's response? "'Am I sorry? If that's what you mean--I'm not. I don't feel anything about it. I wish I did. But nothing about it bothers me a bit. half an hour after it happened, Dick was making jokes and I was laughing at them. Maybe we are not human. I'm human enough to feel sorry for myself. Sorry I can't walk out of here when you walk out. But that's all.' Sullivan could scarcely credit so detached an attitude; Perry was confused, mistaken, it was not possible for any man to be that devoid of conscience or compassion."

I found the article "Murder Without Apparent Motive--A study in Personality Disorganization" completely fascinating and very disturbing. And I feel sorry for all people raised in cold environments like these men experienced. But why do some people emerge without conscience and others rise above it? I am reading Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal and she has an equally awful childhood and turns out to be a wonderful, if lonely, writer.

Capote did an awesome job of bringing this murder case to life. He fictionalized a lot of the conversations, but it did not detract from the book for me. I just wish Hickock and Smith had read about the Clutter family--perhaps the murder wouldn't have happened.

Late to the party but I started a few days ago and just got the part where they were caught.

It really does bring up questions about nature versus nurture doesn't it? Rather reminds me of We Need to Talk About Kevin. Does one raise a serial killer or is one always a serial killer waiting for an opportunity.

Capote does do an awesome job reporting on this murder without putting too much of himself in the picture. I don't normally read true crime but this reads like an interesting crime novel and I can't wait to read on.

>32 Yells: Hi Danielle or Rob (You guys share a thread? How does that work? How do you keep track who read what book?! LOL)--

Glad you are enjoying the book. The second half is pretty interesting. Let us know what you think! And I have heard about We Need to Talk About Kevin. What viewpoint is that one written from?

I also saw that you (one of you!) read The Master and margarita and gave it a 5-star--I am excited to read that one in April. There is a thread for that one if you want to chime in later.

For March, we are reading Bowie's Fingersmith if you want to try that one.

For anyone interested in another Bowie's top 100, we are reading Fingersmith by Sarah Waters and have started a thread over here:

https://www.librarything.com/topic/219758

Hello! Rob uses my thread to keep track of his library (anything tagged RLD) but I (Danielle) am the only one who posts.

Yup, I read Master and Margarita a few years ago and loved it. It is absolutely absurd in a fun way. I am trying to get Rob to read it so we can discuss but no luck so far.

We Need to Talk About Kevin is told from the mom's point-of-view as she tries to figure out what went wrong and piece her life back together. I had to start it a few times before I had success but by the end, it was one of my favourite books.

I have read Fingersmith already but will chime in when you get going.

>33 Berly: Is the thread for The Master and Margarita up yet, or are they waiting until April? I loved that one, too.

>35 Yells: Hi Danielle--Thanks for clearing up how you guys share LT, LOL. I look forward to your comments here and hope you chime in on the other two that you already read. I am really looking forward to them!

>36 jnwelch: Joe--Here is the link for The Master and the Margarita--see you there!

https://www.librarything.com/topic/219712#5496948

>37 Berly: Perfect-o. Starred. Thanks, Kim.

Anytime. : )