| Product Summary | | Format: Paperback | | ISBN: 9780679745587 | | Publisher: Vintage Books | | Publish Date: 2/1/1994 | | Buy.com Sku: 30118551 | | Item#: R79XKW | | Buy.com Sales Rank: 68799 | | Dimensions (in Inches) 8H x 5.25L x 0.75T |
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| | | | "The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call 'out there'..." (from the first line) With the publication of this book, Capote permanently ripped through the barrier separating crime reportage from serious literature. As he reconstructs the 1959 murder of a Kansas farm family and the investigation that led to the capture, trial, and execution of the killers, Capote generates suspense and empathy.
Annotation:
Truman Capote's masterpiece, IN COLD BLOOD, a sterling early example of the New Journalism, was part of an evolving genre that filtered events both big and small through the writer's own experiences and feelings. IN COLD BLOOD is the intensely researched story of the Clutter family of Holcomb, Kansas, and the two men who brutally murdered them on a November night in 1959 for 40 dollars and a radio. Capote spent six years working on the book; his research included not only long stays in Kansas but a sympathetic relationship with Perry Smith, one of the killers. The result, which Capote termed a "nonfiction novel," combined what he knew with what he imagined to present a chilling and vividly documented tale. IN COLD BLOOD was one of the first popular books to look deeply into the mind of a killer, finding both evil and humanity, and has been an important influence on the "true crime" genre that became popular in the years after its publication.
| PraiseNew York Review of Books
"[This] is the best documentary account of an American crime ever written, partly because the crime here in question is not yet a part of the heritage....But if 'In Cold Blood' deserves highest marks among American crime histories, it also raises certain questions. What, more or less, is the narrative intended to be: and in what spirit are we supposed to take it? While the book 'reads' like excellent fiction, it purports to be strictly factual and thoroughly documented, but the documentation is, for the most part, suppressed in the text....Whatever its 'genre,' 'In Cold Blood' is admirable: as harrowing as it is, ultimately, though implicitly, reflective in temper...." - F.W. Dupee 02/03/1966New York Times Book Review
"'In Cold Blood'...is a masterpiece--agonizing, terrible, possessed, proof that the times, so surfeited with disasters, are still capable of tragedy. The tragedy was existential. The murder was seemingly without motive. The killers...almost parodied the literary anti-hero....There are two Truman Capotes. One is the artful charmer, prone to the gossamer and the exquisite....The other, darker and stronger, is the discoverer of death....He has traveled far from the misty, moss-hung Southern-Gothic landscapes of his youth." - Conrad Knickerbocker 01/16/1966 New Yorker
"[William Shawn, editor of 'The New Yorker'] would have been reluctant to say go ahead to Truman if he had known what, in point of fact, 'In Cold Blood' proved to be. I suspect both Shawn and Truman himself were surprised to find what the piece became." - Brendan Gill 10/13/1997 |
| Author Bio| Truman Capote | | Truman Capote, born to a bumbling loser and his chronically unfaithful wife, was originally called Truman Streckfus Persons. Young Truman was raised mostly by his mother's relatives in Alabama, until his mother's divorce and remarriage in 1931 provided him with a more stable family life (and a more melodious name). The family moved to Greenwich, Connecticut and then New York City, and Capote quickly made the transition from Southern country bumpkin to East Coast sophisticate. At 18, he was hired as a copy boy at The New Yorker and eventually became not only a successful writer but one of the first to declare his homosexuality openly. Renowned for his fabulous parties, celebrity friends, and extravagant lifestyle, Capote died from a combination of alcohol, drugs, and exhaustion. |
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| Customer Reviews | ![]() | | Writing |  5 | | Content | 5 | | Readability | 5 | | Overall Satisfaction | 5 |
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5 of 5 Masterpiece Thursday, August 07, 2008
Craig from Hempstead, NY
Without a doubt one of the best books I have ever read. Engrossing, compelling, and expertly written, Capote completely engulfs the reader into the world of the two killers, the innocent family they killed, and the town that lived through it. At some points I couldn't put the book down. A definite masterpiece and classic. Was this review helpful?  
5 of 5 A Must Read Monday, August 07, 2006
A Reader from Seattle, WA
If you haven't read this classic in American nonfiction literature, I thoroughly recommend "In Cold Blood." Not only is it meticulously detailed and compassionately (from any perpective) written, it's a thrilling page-turner, from the events leading up to the murders, to the state-sanctioned murders of the two killers.
Each personality was so interesting, I often wondered how much of it may have been embellished.
If ever there was a case for capital punishment, the brutal execution of the Clutter family would be it. Certainly, the world is a better place without these killers, and if released, they would have been dangerous to society. However, the book made me ponder the brutality of capital punishment, and whether it can ever be justly applied. These two murderers had profound psychological disconnect problems, and the archaic Kansas court in 1959-60 was unwilling to accept arguments of insanity.
"In Cold Blood" is a timeless work. Was this review helpful?
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