This is one of those classics that I never read but had to pick up and learn quickly because it became a required text for a Crime unit in a course I was teaching. Man, did this piece blow me away. Truman Capote’s writing? Terrifying, honest, and completely brutal. This piece is one of the first examples of the true crime genre ever, and Capote delivers a harrowing, horrifying story of the murder of a family and the manhunt and investigation that led to the execution of two of America’s most remorseless, cold-blooded killers.
This narrative nonfiction investigation puts the pedal to the metal in establishing the True Crime genre in its most energetic and defining moment. Two narratives drive the story – one, of the Clutter family, a family that is the center of the sleepy town of Holcomb, Kansas. They are leaders in the government, church, and business, and they may very well be one of the more established examples of what anyone would look back and consider that elusive, definitive ‘American Dream’. A dominant man, a submissive wife, a girl next door daughter. They are found murdered for seemingly no reason, and that leads to the second narrative of two low-down drifters who need some fast cash. Richard Hickock and Perry Smith had troubling, inconsistent lives, and somehow found one another to lean on. That is, until they make a series of terrible decisions that include robbing and murdering the influential Clutter family for a rumored fortune in cash that only ended up being merely fifty bucks, a pair of binoculars, and a portable radio – about five or six hundred bucks in today’s money.
Where this piece shines is the organization and prose – it isn’t just the beginning of the genre, but an incredibly well-written book that is the nonpareil. It is gripping, with characters and situations written in the form of a novel an exceptional standard. I also recently read Breakfast At Tiffany’s, and to look at Capote’s writing is to look at a master of the craft, willing to defy any expectations and pigeonholes in the service of really great writing that takes itself as seriously as we take it. Deathly serious.
While I have not seen the contemporary 1960s Hollywood film, we watched a 1996 made-for-TV film version with Sam Neil that was captivating and did the entire story homage without changing anything or skipping any of the important beats.
A great book that I could see myself reading again – but I also understand that The Stranger Beside Me, Ann Rule’s book about her experiences with Ted Bundy is something I should check out first as being another defining moment in True Crime literature. Had a lot of fun with this, and as a teacher of writing and literature (and as a writer), I found this to be an exceptional book to use in the classroom, blending my goals and high-interest, high-stakes reading the students responded to very well.
For no rhyme or reason, here is my brief review of Breakfast at Tiffany’s when I read it in the first couple weeks of December 2018…
I am probably in the camp of many of the readers of Breakfast At Tiffany’s. We may have picked up some other Capote work, but haven’t read this particular one prior to seeing Blake Edwards’ 1961 film. If you’re like me, it is a shock to see a film that feels so far off from his normal prose – that such a fun-loving fluffy book came from the same typewriter as In Cold Blood. Is it because Capote was a young freshling whose work was so underdeveloped that there was nothing less than a blissful ignorance of the acceptable nature of an extended offensive Asian stereotype? After reading, it was no surprise to learn that the film is incredibly far from the book in mood and tone, and perhaps Hollywood-ized a story for the grand mass appeal that may have solely served as a vehicle for the career of Audrey Hepburn.
The narrative is told in the point of view of an unnamed writer who moves into an apartment building he shares with a variety of interesting characters, most notably, Holly Golightly. Holly is a young socialite who weaves in and out of the lives of rich men, allowing them to wine and dine her in exchange for no-strings-attached…..nothing. As the book unfolds, we are fascinated by this character of a woman whose flightiness, engagement, repartee, sense of humor, and quick wit all seem to get her everything anyone would want in life, seemingly with no repercussions for her actions. In the end, we learn that the book hinges on a single observation echoed throughout – that Golightly is, in fact, a true phony in the greatest sense of the word.
Golightly is the centerpiece of this novel, and in her, Capote has created some of the most impressive three-dimensional characterization work. What I don’t understand is, why is she put on the pedestal she is? She is basically a prostitute (not that there’s anything wrong with that, per se), but she is also using this as a weapon for her emotional and financial con artistry against people that arguably don’t deserve it. She is a criminal. She is selfish. She is a manipulator of the highest order. In the film, I feel like we let a lot go considering we get a cute whitewashing of her character that plays out a lot differently in the novel (and don’t get me started on my intentional double-meaning of ‘whitewashing’). In many ways, she is an absolute mess and her history makes for an absolutely tragic conclusion. Is she the feminist icon she is made out to be? If the definition is for equality and allowing her to make the decisions she wants to, sure; but gender aside, she isn’t a good person so who would want to emulate her? The reason I like her, and the only reason I enjoyed the book, is that her characterization is magnificent…All I want to know next is, what was with all the Hollywood starlets of the time lining up to take credit for inspiring her character?
Garrett Zecker 