Kill Your Idols: "In Cold Blood"

The Wall Street Journal goes to town, saying according to some long-forgotten Kansas Bureau of Investigation documents Capote made up events in two "crucial" chapters. Capote also required Columbia Pictures to give his hero's wife a job as a consultant on the 1965 film version.

It also quotes KBI agent Harold Nye's long-standing claim that the book is fiction:

http://online.wSportsJournalists.com/article/SB10001424127887323951904578290341604113984.html

 

The depictions of Perry Smith and to a lesser extent Alvin Dewey seem very much products of the erotic prism through which Capote viewed each man. I always assumed he had an intimate relationship with Perry, as well, which I guess has never been established. Regardless, as a suspense book, a thriller, a book that will keep you from sleeping, In Cold Blood is a masterpiece.

 

This is circulating today as a sidebar:

www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/press_box/2003/06/the_fabulous_fabulists.html

 

If I was going to kill my idols, it would likely be in cold blood.

 

Does license not grow along the continuum between journalism and fiction? I don't understand the pettiness or Capote's critics on this topic.

 

I always thought the book was meant to be enhanced somewhat, anyway. Truth-based but also written up to highlight the dramatic elements. If there were elements that were completely made-up, I couldn't tell you what they were.

My father was attending Holcomb High School when the Clutters were murdered. He says he knew Nancy but they weren't close friends. There were always the rumors about the money in the safe but he says he doesn't know how they started because the Clutters just didn't appear to be any better off than his family.

I used to knit-pick the original (60's) movie for the little details it got wrong. I'd have to watch it again to pick out most of them because it's been a while. But one scene shows either the police or the criminals crossing the railroad tracks on the street in Holcomb that led to the Clutter's house. But in that scene, they're going north. The Clutter's house is south of the tracks.

The house is on the very edge of town (the southwest part). Holcomb has never expanded in that direction, so it's almost the same today as it was the day of the murders: A modest brick house at the end of a dirt road surrounded by farmland.



It's not small but it's not a mansion, either.

 

Great detail, a33. Thanks.

 

So people have been living there for 50+ years since the murders?

I don't know how I'd feel about buying a house where a nationally-prominent multiple murder had taken place.

 

They don't like the visitors but the approach to their driveway is on a public street, so you can get within about 400 yards, have a good look and turn around. It's posted private property where the driveway begins and apparently most people respect that.

 

I guess I'm just surprised anybody would want to live in the house at all.

 

I'm more surprised it hasn't been turned into some sort of museum. The owners don't exploit the fact that the murders happened there. They'd rather be left alone.

 

I saw a segment on the Wichita news probably a decade ago or so and you could still see faint blood spots on some of the concrete basement walls.

My best friend from college was from the Garden City area. He said it wasn't uncommon for high school kids to drive out there late at night. That would be one major drawback to living there.