In cold blood

In Cold Blood – New Journalism

• Between 1960s and 1970s journalists started to present the information in a form usually used in fiction – writing events with history.

Tom Wolfe: The properties of new-journalism

Scene by Scene Construction: It means to learn the events first, to put it into order and then explain it with all details.

THE VAXXED ARE DYING AND WILL CONTINUE TO DO SO.

THE REASON VERY SIMPLE – THE GRAPHENE OXIDE TURNS INTO 2D RAZOR BLADES COMPOSED OF THE HARDEST, STRONGEST SUBSTANCE KNOWN TO MAN – WHOOPS
IT SERRATES THE BLOOD VESSELS THEN CLOTS FORM – THE NUMBER OF ADVERSE EFFECTS IS RIDICULOUS. THESE POLARIZED RAZOR BLADES CAN BE ORGANIZED INTO NANOBOTS – WELL, THE TRACKING SYSTEM FOR THE VAXXED FOLKS EXISTS ON THE DARK WEB

Doctors performing autopsies on victims of the Vax are not going to find anything. These doctors are looking for something biological as the cause of death but the graphene hydroxide is not biological so it will not be visible in their tests.  -Dr. Andreas Noack -

THUS, THE SOLUTION LIES IN PHYSICS, NOT BIOLOGY. 

IT GIVES ME GREAT PLEASURE TO INTRODUCE TO YOU A PERMANENT SOLUTION

Having been considered "a pioneering document in the history of American nonfiction" and "a true crime narration" (Voss, 2011), In Cold Blood was a peak of Truman Capote's literary career and the examplary work of creative nonfiction writing. Not only is the novel a stunning and thorough study of the crime itself as well as the impact it had on the community, but above all it provides one with the direct insight into the mind and persona of the killers, allowing the reader "to understand them as deeply damaged human beings" (Davies, 2012). This thesis is going to attempt at the analysis of the characters of the Clutter family murderers, Richard 'Dick' Hickock and Perry Edward Smith, revolving its focus around the non-fictional, documentary character of the novel that provides the reader with insight into murderer's mind. The focus will be put on how the journalistic style of Capote and his factual research of the Clutter family murder of 1959 in Holcomb, Kansas, that is visible in his interviews with both the witnesses and the Clutter family killers themselves, provide one with a direct insight into murderers' personalities. This thesis is going to ponder on what leads to murder, focusing on trauma, childhood and family memories as well as psychoanalysis. First and foremost,  I will describe the very process of creation of the true crime genre. This part of my research will draw upon the biography of Truman Capote as well as conversations with the author and his personal essays and records about his research of the Clutter family murder case. Second of all, the thesis will proceed to describe the certain features of the non-fiction genre that allow one to get to the very core of the psyches of the Clutter family killers, Richard 'Dick' Hickock and Perry Edward Smith. Last but not least, the thesis will provide an analysis of the killers themselves taking into account their background, past, traumatic experiences and mental welfare.

The genre of true crime has, since its inception, garnered much scholarly attention and come under increased scepticism. Involving factual events with narrative-style writing, the legitimacy and authenticity of many true crime novels has been debated, and the writer’s moral and ethical responsibility has been called into question. A number of authors have achieved a significant degree of fame through writing a true crime novel, including Vincent Bugliosi’s Helter Skelter (1974), Norman Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song (1979), James Ellroy’s The Black Dahlia (1987), and, more notably, In Cold Blood (1965) written by Truman Capote, whose role in the investigation of the Clutter murders, which made him a celebrity, has since provoked much discussion regarding the author’s motives and the novel’s authenticity. Having gained intimate access to the police reports and interviews with the convicted murderers, many of Capote’s critics accused the author of taking advantage of the condemned men’s stories for the purposes of writing a bestseller, creating a significant link between crime and celebrity. Famously, the more gruesome and detailed the narrative, the more a crime author can benefit both financially and professionally. This paper will explore the problematic link between true crime and authorial celebrity specifically through In Cold Blood – celebrating its fiftieth anniversary in 2015 – and other famous true crime novels and their authors, offering an analysis on the lucrative relationship between celebrity culture and the genre of true crime, and the ethical considerations
that this relationship provokes.

Psychiatrists define folie à deux as communicated insanity; a rare psychotic disorder that may be transmitted from the sufferer to a person or persons closely related to him/her. The disorder is often described in the context of schizophrenia, but different varieties of folie à deux have been noted in other conditions. In criminology, the term is used in the framework of team killers and seldom involves false or delusional beliefs, but rather deviant behaviour shared by two. Examples of notorious folie à deux unions include In fiction, folie à deux with a criminal intent appears in Truman Capote's In Cold Blood (1966), where a dominant leader unites with a passive follower to commit felonies. The novel, based on the real-life massacre of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas in 1959, centres on the two men responsible for the carnage, Richard Eugene Hickock and Perry Edward Smith. Capote introduces the process that brings these two warped individuals together, the early stages of their friendship, their personalities, why they are attracted to each other, and how, over time, their relationship becomes more sinister. By exposing the inner workings of their criminal minds the author enters the domain of criminologists and psychologists who are only now beginning to understand the true dynamics behind couples that kill.

The death sentence signifies a discrete bounding of the metaphysical condition known as living. The term references both grammar and narration. As a grammatical suggestion, death indicates the point where living comes to a full-stop. Narratologically, by contrast, death frequently generates stories, giving birth to reconstructions of the scene of the crime and the moments that led up to it. Narratives based on real, fatal crimes invite us to consider the ethics of storytelling.
      Jaques Derrida’s discussions of sacrifice (The Gift of Death) and of the ethical responsibility that the living owe the dead (Specters of Marx) point us toward theorizing narrative in terms of an economy of ethics. With respect to true crime narratives, we must ask, is the surviving text—in part the product of Others’ deaths—the profit of unethical narration?
        Focusing on Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood and Toni Morrison’s Jazz, this essay discusses the ethics of authorship, the justice of narrative, and the im/material bodies who haunt crime narratives. This essay considers whether the creative license that the novels take with the facts constitute a second-order crime, an injustice against the victims whose violent demise occasioned the writing. It asks crucial questions about our complicity in the pleasure of murder and about the ethical responsibilities of both writers and readers to the actually-dead.

Questo lavoro si occupa del tema dell'American sadness nel reportage narrativo nordamericano contemporaneo e ha lo scopo di dimostrare la dignità letteraria di questa forma narrativa poco conosciuta in Italia. La creative nonfiction è un genere letterario emergente e in via di legittimazione negli Stati Uniti cui è possibile attribuire due paternità: il New Journalism di Tom Wolfe e il nonfiction novel di Truman Capote. Per creative nonfiction si intende una letteratura della realtà caratterizzata dalla presenza dell'autore sulla pagina. Il reportage narrativo è un sottogenere della creative nonfiction che si distingue per una spiccata vocazione giornalistica e per l'elemento del viaggio. L'American sadness è uno stato di malessere che coinvolge gli Stati Uniti, una condizione di disagio più o meno latente, un'ombra che incombe sul sogno americano. Essa riguarda sia l'"asse dell'Inclusione" sia quello "dell'Esclusione" e si manifesta in modo particolarmente evidente alla convergenza dei due assi. "In Cold Blood" di Truman Capote è un precedente illustre nel reportage narrativo nordamericano contemporaneo in cui è possibile riconoscere le dimensioni costitutive del genere e il tema dell'American sadness declinato sulla totalità dei piani individuati. "Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream" di Joan Didion racconta la sadness interna all'asse dell'Inclusione; "Ladies and Red Lights" di William T. Vollmann quella interna all'asse dell'Esclusione. Anche Sarah Vowell, David Foster Wallace, John Jeremiah Sullivan e George Saunders sono autori di reportage narrativi collocabili distintamente su uno dei due assi. "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again" di David Foster Wallace e "The Great Divider" di George Saunders raccontano la sadness della convergenza. La presenza dell'autore tra le pagine dei reportage narrativi permette di scoprire una via di guarigione per l'American sadness, che si cura con l'empatia e l'apertura nei confronti del prossimo.

Truman Capote's In Cold Blood is a work that still, nearly 50 years after its original publication, has the capacity to captivate the reader. From the real-life events of the murder of a family of four in Kansas, based on research in the field in 'real time', Capote created a crime narrative which continues to fascinate readers and has inspired decades of 'literary journalism'. At the heart of the account lies a real-life murder case, and at the heart of the legal case lies the testimony of the expert witnesses: the forensic psychiatrists.

This paper argues that In Cold Blood employs a twofold strategy in order to reintegrate the Clutter murders into the simulacrum of a meaningful Middle American identity. Both the depiction of the Kansas citizens and representation of the killers act as agents in a process of textual simulation, although from opposite ends: Whereas the Clutter family and townspeople are being embedded in a framework of objective rationality, the text makes use of psychological analysis and subjectivized aesthetics in order to reintegrate Perry and Hickock into said simulacrum of meaningfulness. Indeed, the textual struggle over truth-claims, objective representations, and the ‘making real’ of events spreads out across various fault lines, which this paper will traverse by inserting two different, yet profoundly interconnected analytical lenses in aforementioned magnifying glass. The primary lens is the Baudrillardian concept of simulacra and simulations which are seen as progressively undermining the reality principle by superseding it with hyperreal entities and precipitating excesses of information-creation that ultimately incite the collapse of meaning.