Truman Capote’s “Non-fiction Novel”

Press, Issue 31095, 25 June 1966, Page 4

Truman Capote’s “Non-fiction Novel”

In Cold Blood. By Truman Capote. Hamish Hamilton. 284 pp.

Something out of the ordinary can be expected of the continuing work of Truman Capote who is among the best of contemporary American authors. Drawing upon the facts of a recent multiple murder in Kansas he has produced this time what he regards as a new literary form—the nonfiction novel. The scene setting is in a small rural community that is historically, but no longer in fact, the “Bible - belt” or gospelhaunted strip where for business reasons a man must take his religion with a straight face. The victims were a family whose church affiliation was the most important factor influencing their top status. The father, a substantial farmer of wide public-spirited activity, was recognised on a Federal i Government level for his | contribution to farm pro- ! grammes. The two teenage children, really nice young Americans, as hygienic as toothpaste, were dominated in outlook and attitude by “head, heart, hands and health” of the 4-H Club movement, These, and the ailing wife and mother were fated to be brutally and senselessly murdered by two egomaniacial drifters named Hickock and Smith. The author’s narration is gripping as he deftly uses a cross-cutting technique alternately portraying the lives of the Clutter family, with the episodes in the progress of 1

the hoodlums as the two parties move towards the inexorable first climax—the murders. The development of the second climax will also hold readers as the murderers, initially clear away without trace, get off to sport in Mexico. Unknown to them the processes of detection are moving with all the excitement of a fictional thriller.

In the third part of the book, the legal proceedings tend to be an anti-climax although there is substance for thought on the controversial topic of punishment for capital crimes. It was a shocking murder, motiveless and without predisposing circumstances and although Hickock and Smith are shown to have been victims of the sick aspects of their society, they were surprised and gratified after being condemned to death, to be able to enjoy all the privileges of the law.

In the disposition of capital cases in the United States the median elapsed time between sentence and execution is said to be about 17 months. In the case of the Clutter murders of 1959, more than five years passed between sentence and execution. Mr Capote points out that even an attorney of moderate talent can postpone doomsday year after year, for the system of appeals that pervades American jurisprudence amounts to a legalistic wheel of fortune, a game of chance, somewhat fixed in favour of the criminal.

Thus, the murderers having being condemned, the appeal

system thereupon called for what was in fact an examination in the Courts of the prosecuting attorneys to demonstrate whether they had done their job fairly and justly. The author interleaves this section with his supplementary analysis of the life histories of other murderers also being held in custody in the same penitentiary with Hickock and Smith. The whole serves to demonstrate that horrible or clear-cut as the case may be, Americans like most of us, are still reluctant to agree that the best punishment for these kinds of people, is to kill them. The book has been hailed as a masterpiece, cleverly constructed and certainly brilliantly written even in the face of some puzzling new contributions to etymology in the coining of words difficult to interpret, as for example “pedophiliac tendencies.” The claim that the book, a best-seller in America, is a new literary form as a nonfiction novel may be disputed. Mr Capote, might be given access to several works of a similar nature dealing with the reportage of actual crimes that English writers, among others, have produced in recent times. An example could be Peta Fordham’s “The Robbers’ Tale,” a book which has the merit of brevity without losing effectiveness. But if Mr Capote is not the first to produce something new, based on treatment in novel form of a major crime, his book will prove one of the best of the kind, being a fine (fusion of a reporter’s craft land a writer’s art.