Truman Capote, "In Cold Blood "
�I guess that was your accomplice in the wood chipper. And those three people in Brainerd. And for what? For a little bit of money. There�s more to life than a little money, you know. Don�t you know that? And here ya are, and it�s a beautiful day... Well... I just don�t understand it.�
-Marge Gunderson, �Fargo�
Funny how things like this work out. Camus (the last book I finished) kept bringing up the clause between rebellion and murder saying that few people, even the most rebellious, are willing to kill, and then mentioning fictional character studies like Raskolnikov from �Crime and Punishment� to make his point.
Then the next book I read is a true account of two yokels who slaughter an entire family of four for money. (Depending on whom you believe: the consensus is that one person did the actual killings, and the other guy was too scared to stop him.)
True crime is not a genre that I�ve read much of. In fact the only ones I can think of are on the Kennedy assassination, and the killing of talk radio jock Alan Berg (which was the basis for the Oliver Stone film �Talk Radio� � so I guess I read the same ones as Oliver Stone).
Actually, I guess there�s a few others. �The CIA�s Greatest Hits,� �The Diary of Anne Frank,� and �Swift Justice� (on the lynching in San Jose � Whoo! Represent!).
But this is supposedly the mother of all true crime books. And yeah, it�s well written, but I suspect that the style has been imitated so often, even in magazine journalism, that it doesn�t seem that groundbreaking anymore.
Capote tells the story from an omnipotent narrative, giving us the thoughts, tensions and motivations of all the characters involved, and for the most part it works but you occasionally stop and say, �Wait a minute, how could he possibly know that? It doesn�t seem like the kind of thing anybody would volunteer.�
When you do hit those spots, it�s difficult to relax again and let the narrative shape its course. Once or twice would have been okay, but this happened to me several times.
And by the time it concludes, I�m frustrated about the act of killing. There�s just no sense of remorse among the main killer, and I think it comes from the fact that guns make it so easy to kill someone. (Or, that guns make it so easy for people to kill someone, depending on what side of the NRA you lie). There�s an area of distance so you don�t have time to think about the consequences.
When my friend Mia Zapata was killed (the singer from The Gits), I was seriously freaked out because of how it happened. She was strangled with the cords from her sweatshirt.
I just can�t understand that. How somebody could have the strength and effort to kill somebody else with their bare hands. Or why they would, for that matter. Really, just thinking about it makes me want to board myself up inside my house and never come out.
Actually, that sounds pretty nice, except that I would miss things like that great Flogging Molly show I went to on Friday night. Which, by the way, ended with people getting into a full bar brawl, with several people getting whacked in the head with beer bottles. Maybe staying inside isn�t such a bad idea after all.
