November 16, 2008
Capote’s Fatal Vision (1959)
Truman Capote was a rising star in the literary world. His novella, "Breakfast at Tiffany's" had been published to great acclaim the year before, and the 35-year-old writer was casting about for another project. He had written a few nonfiction pieces, but he wanted to try telling a larger story using fictional techniques. It didn't matter what kind of story, just so long as it was big. On this day, he picked up The New York Times and found it.
WEALTHY FARMER, 3 OF FAMILY SLAIN. It was the type of story you didn't see very often in 1959, but The Times didn't play up crime stories, and it happened in Holcomb, Kansas, a dusty small town an hour's drive from the Colorado line, so it ended up on page 39. The wheat farmer, Herbert W. Clutter, even had a small national connection: President Eisenhower had appointed him to a federal wheat board five years back. The Times noted this in paragraphs 5, 6 and 7, after the sheriff said a psychopath was on the loose and before telling readers that the family's bodies had been found in their pajamas, except for the boy, who wore jeans and a T-shirt.Capote took the train out to Kansas accompanied by his childhood friend Harper Lee and with her help spent two months talking to everyone and absorbing everything: "the people, their accents and attitude, the landscape, its contours, the weather," he said. He made a strange sight among the farmers and police officers, this little man with the high, piercing voice, odd clothes and fey mannerisms. He intended to write a story for The New Yorker about the Clutter family and the effect the murders had on the small town, but the arrest of two small-time criminals who confessed to the killings altered his plans. He wanted to tell their story as well.
He befriended the killers, Perry Smith and Dick Hickock, sending them gifts of magazines, books and money. He questioned them closely about their lives, what they did and saw, before and after the killings. When he had gathered over 8,000 pages of notes and court documents, he was ready to write.
By January 1963, the story was three-quarters done. People who read the work-in-progress were enthralled. They literally could not put down the manuscript. "In Cold Blood" was going to be a big, big book.
All "In Cold Blood" needed was an ending. Smith and Hickock had been sentenced to death, but their appeals dragged on for two long years, and Capote suffered. He had become obsessed with his story. He would fall into trances thinking about it that would last for hours. Not only that, he had formed close relationships with Hickock, and especially Perry. In him, Capote saw much of himself. They shared an abusive childhood, a burning ambition to better themselves, an artistic bent (Perry painted); they were even similar physically.
It was over on April 14, 1965. In a warehouse outside Kansas State Prison in Lansing, Capote was present as Hickock, then Perry, climbed the 13 steps to the top of the gallows. He cried during most of the flight back to New York City, tightly gripping the hand of his editor. Capote was free. "In Cold Blood" could be published, but he knew it was at the cost of two men's lives.
The book was a worldwide best-seller and made Capote not only rich but notorious. It also took much out of him that would not be replaced. His drinking had grown, and he had developed an addiction to painkillers. His writing suffered, and he published little. His life spiraled down until his suicide on August 25, 1984, a month before his 60th birthday.
Capote denied that "In Cold Blood" changed him, but he added that, "The experience served to heighten my feeling of the tragic view of life, which I've always held and which accounts for the side of me that appears extremely frivolous; that part of me is always standing in a darkened hallway, mocking tragedy and death. That's why I love champagne and stay at the Ritz." In that respect, Truman Capote became the fifth victim of Perry Smith and Dick Hickock.
Born: Louis-Honoré Frechette, poet, Lévis, Quebec, Canada, 1839; George S. Kaufman, drama critic, playwright, Pittsburgh, Penn., 1889; George Seldes, journalist, Alliance, N.J., 1890; Michael Arlen, novelist, short-story writer, Ruse, Bulgaria, 1895; Chinua Achebe, author, Ogidi, Nigeria, 1930; Elizabeth Drew, journalist, 1935.
Died: Alan Watts, philosopher, San Francisco, 1973; Jack Finney, novelist, short-story writer, historian, Greenbrae, Calif., 1995.
Quote for the Day: "At dramatic rehearsals, the only author that's better than an absent one is a dead one." — George S. Kaufman, playwright, who was born today in 1889
Also from the "Writers 365" project:
- Margaret Wise Brown Kicks Off (1952)
- Howl's Moving Telegram (1955)
- Malcolm Lowry's mysterious death (1957)
- Raymond Chandler and The Rise of the Zombie Novels (1958)
- The Battle Over Doctor Zhivago (1958)
Enjoy this post? Share it with others.
