Truman Capote freely referred to himself, throughout his life, as a "fairy".
If you remember his frequent appearances on Johnny Carson, then you will remember his flamboyant character, his high lispy voice, the drawling Southern accent ... He never tried to hide who he was.
Capote was hired in the 50s as a replacement screenwriter for the Bogart film Beat the Devil. It was being filmed in Italy - it starred Bogart, Gina Lollabrigida, Peter Lorre - and others. Capote arrived, and worked his ass off. Churning out pages on a daily basis. The movie is quite fun, if you've never seen it. You can hear the Breakfast at Tiffany's voice of Capote in much of the dialogue. Humphrey Bogart didn't know what to make of this self-proclaimed "fairy" at first. Bogie kept his distance. Capote finally broke through with Bogart when he challenged Bogie to arm-wrestle. Bogart laughed in his face, and then promptly lost the wrestling-match to Truman. Instead of being a bad loser, Bogart clapped Truman on the back, congratulating him. Truman had won his trust, by beating his ass. Bogart later wrote to Bacall, "Wait until you meet our screenwriter. You have never seen anything like him. At first, I didn't think he was for real - but he grows on you, and now I'd like to carry him around in my pocket, and take him out whenever I need a laugh."
Gerald Clarke wrote a biography of Truman Capote which is a classic in the genre. I read it years ago, but it is one of my cherished books, and I dip into it often.
A couple days ago, I picked it up again, to read the whole section on the writing of In Cold Blood. I had forgotten much of it.
Truman Capote said later that if he had known what he was getting into, when he traveled down to Kansas ("a fairy down on the prairie - who'd have thought?") to write a piece on the murder for The New Yorker, then he never would have gone. He went to Kansas only 2 weeks after the murders took place. The killers had still not been found, the community was in an uproar of suspicion and paranoia. Capote's main interest was to do a long profile of the townspeople, how regular church-going farmers handled such a disaster. Little did he know what the book would eventually be! The project took up years of his life. He had to wait for the executions of the 2 murderers, in order to complete his book. So he waited, and waited. Appeal after appeal ...He was unable to write anything else. Nothing else interested him. He was a man obsessed, in the grip of his obsession for years. His health was ruined. His friends were sick of hearing about the Clutter family. He tried to take vacations with his long-time partner, and would just drink, and try to sleep, and have fits of despair. He thought those boys would never be executed, he thought he would be in limbo forever. Yet - the morbidness of his entire life being on hold because of commuted death-sentences in Kansas - the morbidness of trying to go on, when really all you want is for those 2 boys to be killed - so that YOU can go back to YOUR life ... This paid a huge toll on him.
Finally - there were no more appeals and Capote traveled to Kansas, to watch the execution. Hickock and Smith had asked him to be there. In the intervening years, he had interviewed the 2 killers numerous times. Their first-person descriptions of their own sorry lives make up important parts of the book. Capote became their conduit to the outside world. Hickock would draw self-portraits of himself and send them to Capote. Capote was playing a double-edged game here. He became "the listener", the one who would sit and ask them questions, and nod understandingly. The 2 of them got addicted to his concern. Yet Capote was horrified by most of what he heard. He wasn't without pity for these men, who had pretty much been beaten like dogs from the second they were born - and yet Capote hadn't had an easy road either, and HE hadn't killed anyone in cold blood. He had grown up with alcoholics, he had been abandoned by his father, his parents were ashamed of having a "fairy" for a son, he was sent to military school - can you imagine how awful that must have been for him? Capote may have acted like a cream-puff but that man was cold and hard as steel inside. He had to be.
Capote needed quotes, he needed access, he needed to enter into the psychologies of these 2 men. He was able to paint the graphic picture of the Clutter family through interviews with people who knew and loved them. But the Clutters were no longer around to speak for themselves. Hickock and Smith were alive for a couple of years, so he visited them often. On his way out of Death Row, he would feel the urge to vomit. It would take him days to recover, emotionally, from these macabre "visits". And he said, later, that he never recovered from the "shattering" experience of watching the two men hang. The letters he wrote to friends afterwards are nearly incoherent. Watching how hard the hanging body clings to life, watching the kicking feet, the flailing, the letting-go of bodily functions ... Capote was really never the same man again.
And he then sat down and wrote the book like a bat out of hell.
Truman Capote always thought that he had a "great book" in him. This mythical "great book" haunted his dreams, he would lie awake at night aching with ambition, dreaming about this great book ... He never thought In Cold Blood was it. He looked back on the experience of researching that book and writing it as a grim one, an almost universally unpleasant and grueling experience. I've read all of Capote's books. I love that guy's writing style. I even read his unfinished work - the 2 chapters of the novel he was working on when he died. He claimed to have it almost finished, but the rest of it (if it even existed) was never found. The 2 chapters are okay - it's a gossipy bitchy look at high-class New York society. It's merciless. It's very funny. Nobody is spared. Human beings are seen in their worst lights. Everyone is selfish, cynical, out for themselves ... It is quite funny, but it's very very mean. He was nearing the end of his life, and he had been abandoned by most of his friends. His outlook was not good, he was addicted to drugs, filled with anxiety and loneliness ... The 2 chapter are his way of lashing out at all those people who left him, who tossed him out with the trash. Hence, the mean-ness.
The thing in the rest of Capote's writing that, for me, sets him apart is his undeniable love of humanity. His tenderness. His ability to SEE people, with all their flaws - and to see them as beautiful. Much of his best writing is all about nostalgia, wistfulness, yearning for childhood ... Yes, it is sentimental, but it also has a depth of sadness beneath it, a grief ... which elevates it from mawkishness.
In Cold Blood taps into something else. In Cold Blood doesn't fit into either of the Capote categories: the bitchy mean queen telling all the nasty secrets of his high-class friends, or the lonely sweet man filled with hurtful nostalgia for childhood.
It was something completely new. For him, and for us. I don't even know if I can describe it. All I can say is - he never accomplished such a thing again. His writing never seemed so effortless again. You read that book and you feel like if you cut ONE WORD, the entire thread will unravel. It is so tight.
The other thing I had forgotten from the biography is Capote's personal experience leaving his home-environment of ritzy New York City (where there were lots of "fairies"), and venturing into the Kansas prairies to investigate a murder. Capote was openly gay. He wasn't a macho gay, either. He didn't try to blend in, or act straight, or hide his gayness. He was a small rotund man, who wore wide white hats, spoke with a lisp, fluttered about like Blanche DuBois, and literally said things like, "I declare!"
He took one of his best friends, Harper Lee (yes - THAT Harper Lee) as a co-researcher. She was much more "normal"-acting, and was able to blend in a bit more. She could get people to talk to her, because she seemed like one of them.
But Truman Capote was so relentless, and not only so relentless, but so committed to justice, so committed to discovering what had happened in the Clutter household, that people started opening up. The people in the town started competing about who had had him over for dinner the most times. Alvin Dewey, the head of the investigation, a tough gruff 3 pack a day smoker, eventually counted Truman as a valued partner. Truman was there when Dewey got the call that the 2 murderers had been picked up in Las Vegas, AND that they were still wearing the boots with the distinctive soles (that had left footprints - If the 2 hadn't confessed, the boots alone would have convicted them). Truman was standing right there, with Dewey's wife, listening to Dewey hear the news.
The people of Kansas, who had never met a person like Capote in their lives, who were Bible-Belt ranchers and farmers, took him into their homes, their hearts, their families. Without them, the book would not be what it is.
It is a massive accomplishment. The power of his personality, the depth of how he listened, and sympathised - must have been extraordinary.
I know that Truman Capote always thought that his "great book" remained unwritten ... but I beg to differ.
Posted by sheilaI think you've convinced me to read In Cold Blood again. I haven't read it since high school.
Posted by: Dave J at August 20, 2004 1:41 PMI hadn't read it in 10 years or something like that. I had forgotten much, but it was amazing how much I remembered. Perry Smith had these fantastical dreams where he would be saved from death and doom by this giant avenging "yellow bird" - I almost remembered the description word for word.
Also - I'm in the middle of the trial section right now. Psychiatrist evaluations, etc - but because of the rule - the (forgive me) M'Naughten Rule (???) the psychiatrists weren't allowed to go into their actual diagnosis. If I'm understanding it correctly. They could only answer Yes or No.
But Capote interviewed both psychiastrists later and said, "If you COULD have testified - what would you have said about Hickock? About Smith?"
I love all that shit.
Posted by: red at August 20, 2004 1:48 PMI'm not sure I see how the old M'Naughten rule defining the defense of insanity (which is still the law of many states, and no, I don't remember it off the top of my head nor how it differs from the multiple more modern definitions) would have limited psychiatric testimony to yes or no questions. As a very general rule, counsel directly examining a witness (almost always the one whose witness it is) can't ask leading questions, while the one cross-examining often asks nothing but leading questions that can only be answered yes or no and sometimes skirt close to prohibited attorney testimony. Yet another reason to read the book again.
Posted by: Dave J at August 20, 2004 1:53 PMHmm, I might have it mistaken in my head. I do know there is much discussion about the M'Naughten rule. And the questions are put to the doctors like: "Are you under the opinion that so and so knew right from wrong when he committed the murder?"
Only a Yes or No answer was allowed.
Posted by: red at August 20, 2004 1:56 PMWhen I do read it, and I plan to, it sounds like I might also wind up looking up relevant provisions in Kansas's statutes, case law and rules of criminal procedure as they stood at the time. And I'll be sure to share any further insights on this point that I glean from that.
Posted by: Dave J at August 20, 2004 2:02 PMDave - here is a relevant excerpt from the book:
"Soon after the original arraignment of Smith and Hickock, their advocates appeared before Judge Tate to argue a motion urging comprehensive psychiatric examinations for the accused. Specifically, the court was aksed to permit the state hospital in Larned, Kansas, a mental institution with maximum security facilities, to take custody of the prisoners for the purpose of ascertaining whether either or both were 'insane, imbeciles or idiots, unable to comprehend their position and aid in their defense.'
...This plan was opposed by the special assistant prosecuting attorney, Logan Green, who, certain that 'temporary insanity' was the defense his antagonists would attempt to sustain in the forthcoming trial, feared that the ultimate outcome of the proposal would be, as he predicted in private conversation, the appearance on the witness stand of a 'pack of head-healers' sympathetic to the defendants ...
Short, pugnacious, a Kentuckian by birth, Green began by pointing out to the court that Kansas' law, in regard to sanity, adheres to the M'Naughten Rule, the ancient British importation which contends that if the accused knew the nature of his act, and knew it was wrong, then he is mentally competent and responsible for his actions."
There's more ... it comes up quite a bit during the trial itself, but that's the introduction of the idea.
OK, now my recollection of the rule is refreshed (and "British" rather than "English" is technically wrong since Scotland has its own courts and is a seperate civil-law rather than common-law jurisdiction), but it still doesn't explain why psychiatric testimony would be limited in that particular way. The excerpt also seems to clarify that this was specifically a pre-trial hearing to determine whether the defendants were competent to stand trial (i.e. "assist in their own defense"), which can involve a different standard and certainly different evidence than attempting to prove at trial that they were legally insane at the time the crime was committed.
Posted by: Dave J at August 20, 2004 2:21 PMI just picked up my old copy of ICB from my parents'. Definitely, it's time to read it again.
I didn't know that about Harper Lee. The things I learn reading this blog!
Sheila, our minds must be working along parallel paths today. This morning I was thinking about the fact that Capote had to wait for the conclusion of the story - the trial and execution - before finishing his book. As I remember, he had it mostly done, except for the ending, which was still to be determined. He knew the ending needed the killers' execution in order for the story to have the kind of concluding impact he wanted, and yet he felt guilty wishing for that particular denoument. And as you've pointed out, despite his abhorence of Perry Smith's actions Capote had developed something of an attachment for him (not sure about Hickock), which must have made for some highly conflicted emotions as he waited to learn whether the killers would live or die.
Posted by: Bernard at August 20, 2004 2:29 PMRight - this was definitely pre-trial. What ended up happening is a psychiatrist spoke with each of the murderers for a couple of hours - and he also had them write down their autobiographies. This was how he made his diagnosis.
In his estimation - Hickock did know right from wrong, and Smith did not.
Posted by: red at August 20, 2004 2:31 PMPerry Smith haunts my thoughts in a much more powerful way than Hickock does. Perry's fantasies, his delusions, his intelligence ... he's a fascinating character.
I have a theory, too.
Perry Smith makes such a big deal out of Hickock's "masculinity" - and Hickock would call Smith "baby", "honey" - There was an intimate vibe between the 2 of them. Hickock was a pedophile. Smith was disgusted by that predilection. He stopped Hickock from raping poor Nancy Clutter.
But Perry references again and again his experiences in the army with "queers", and he seemed to over-compensate for stuff - he admired Hickock's brash masculinity ... There was something homoerotic between those 2.
I think Perry was actually a homosexual. Deeply in the closet, deeply self-hating about it. And here comes this flamboyantly out man to interview him, to listen to him ... I think Perry felt a strange fascinated bond with Truman. Like: how can you be out? How can anyone be "out"? How does he DO it??
Posted by: red at August 20, 2004 2:39 PMWhile this is slightly off topic-your post on Capote reminded me of the following.
I think the film " A Christmas Memory" originally a TV Movie later released with two other segments as Trilogy in 1970 could be classified as great. A christmas memory is the story of the young (about 11 year old Capote just prior to being sent to military school) in his final days with his aging aunt played by Geraldine Page-as they set about making Christmas pudding for their friends and neighbors-it is sentimental and moving without being cloying and even though I was only 22 when I saw it-cried throughout.
A second segment "Among the Paths to Eden"-starring Maureen Stapleton as a lonely women seeking to find love among widoers in a New York cemetery is also evocative and touching. She encounters Martin Balsam visiting his recnetly deceased wife and depite the fact that he is unavailabe his tenderness and concern for this sad stranger make the interaction between them wonderful.
The third segment "The Nanny" with Mildred Natwick eludes my memory at this time and unfortunately according to reviews at Amazon.com the copies available commercially have significants cuts and are of poor quality compared to the original releases
Of all that you've written, I think this post is my favorite. Just had to share that...
Posted by: Mr. Z at August 20, 2004 3:55 PMMike:
How amazing - I do not remember that TV movie. But A Christmas Memory makes my heart hurt - a lovely story, and so beautifully written. like a prose poem.
Posted by: red at August 20, 2004 3:57 PMWhy, Mr. Z, thank you so much!
Posted by: red at August 20, 2004 3:57 PMBecause of this post, I got up from my desk here at work (a library, no less), walked 2 feet to the biography section and grabbed Capote by Gerald Clarke.
I am now on 50 and utterly captivated. Thanks Sheila!!
Years ago, I hitchhiked from Missoula, Montana to Columbus, Ohio primarily to see what it was like. On the way, I purposely sidetracked to Holcomb, Kansas just to visit the Cutter farm. In Cold Blood had affected me to the point I had to see the town and the Cutter home. It was such a quiet, sedate little town and area that the idea that those murders took place there was more unnerving in person than on the written page. I think one of the reasons for the book's enduring place in so many minds is the idea that such random and unfeeling violence could happen to any of us, if it could happen to a family like the Cutters. Standing not far from where Hickock and Smith sat in their car and talked about how they were going to proceed, I was struck by the complete unpredictability and senselessness of their acts. The Cutters could not have anticipated such a thing in their lives, yet it happened. They were good, decent people who in no way brought these killers into their lives, yet they came. It is very chilling, and Truman Capote captures the senselessness of it, and the bored distance the killers feel towards the Cutters' lives.
By the way, I have always been under the impression that the character Dill Harris in To Kill a Mockingbird was based on Truman Capote and his childhood friendship with Harper Lee. Does anyone know if this is true?
Posted by: DBW at August 21, 2004 1:11 AMI have no idea why I spelled Clutter as Cutter in my post above--Maybe an aversion to the letter L.
Posted by: DBW at August 21, 2004 11:07 AMThat sense of 'if it could happen in a quiet place like Holcomb, to a nice family like the Clutters...' is what gives the story its chilling attraction. That's really what's scary, isn't it? - That such evil is not only possible but that we all are vulnerable to it, no matter who we are or where we live.
Good recall on the Dill Harris character, DBW. I don't know if it's true, either, but I've always had the same impression.
(Sorry, Sheila. You can have your blog back now.)
Posted by: Bernard at August 21, 2004 11:10 AM
By the way DBW: incredible story about visiting that town. I feel like I can see it in my head.
One of the reasons why it sticks with me so much (the story, I mean) is that - when all is said and done - even though you hear the "motives" of those guys, and how it all went down - you still can't say WHY. And dammit, that is unfair, and also terrifying.
To be murdered in such a way for no reason.
Posted by: red at August 21, 2004 3:23 PM