Ten of swords

I don't fully understand why it seems crushingly obvious to everyone but me that Truman Capote was more than a slightly imbalanced individual. I read In Cold Blood after Rishi gushed about it (and trust me, Rishi does not gush. He flippantly insults, he does not gush) to me for about a week, before leaving it on my bed for me to peruse. I enjoyed it. There was a macabre honesty that you just don't see in literature today – an immoral slant to what should have been an incredibly black and white story. Capote managed to romanticize two immensely immoral men to the point of victimizing them. Perry Smith and Richard Hicock were crazy. I mean that. And I'm all for a good horror story every now and then – but the precision and complete lack of passion present in either of them was almost more disturbing than the crimes they committed. It's one thing to pass judgement on two men who walk into someones home and blow their heads off. Thats easy. Condemnation in the absence of personification is not a stretch of the imagination. It's the humanization that Capote puts us through – hearing their conversations, knowing their fears, seeing the world through their eyes that taints a complete disavowal of them. The more you read In Cold Blood, the more you feel that Capote either identifies with something, especially in Perry Smith, or he kinda sorta understands him. Either is terrifying. Because its easy to see how it could happen. So what makes us so different from him, and by inference – from them? If an act of complete violence is met not with unadulterated hatred, but with a starry eyed character study, how much is the crime undermined? The thing is – its all just very human. I dont think Capote was completely unhinged BECAUSE he was affected by the humanity he saw in Smith. I think everyone has their insecurities and doubts – and they bubbled to the surface when he tried to juxtapose the man who killed four people in Kansas, to the quiet dreamer he met in a jail cell. A part of him wanted to believe that there was something more, or something less to him. I dont know – I think its natural, to want to draw some semblance of rationality from any irrational experience, because at the end of the day, all that anyone wants is to be able to understand what is going on around them. So was Capote insane – I dont know. I just didnt think he was based solely on In Cold Blood.