Capote

Cold blooded sensitivity
by Nick van der Leek

Some years ago an aunt suggested I read Truman Capote, but I found him vulgar, and full of intellectual self indulgence. I supposed even then that I might need a second opinion at some stage, and so I was glad to have the opportunity of watching an easily digestible (and Oscar winning) performance about an episode in the author’s life.

If you’re not a writer, or an intellectual arty type (and I’m not sure if I am the latter), give this movie a miss. I only counted 5 people besides me in the cinema, and two of them walked out after 10 minutes. My girlfriend, after seeing the not very exciting poster, refused to watch even 1 minute of it.

I found it absorbing. There’s an amusing scene in a train that captures the overall tone quite well: Capote is caught out having bribed the conductor to pay him a compliment (about his writing) in front of a fellow writer. Not far into the film, I realized my first assessment while not entirely incorrect, was also incomplete. Capote’s writing is brilliant, in the same way that his capacity to remember written passages and conversations (at 94% accuracy) is brilliant.
But that doesn’t mean the man has no flaws. Or that he was a credit to society. He probably was as a writer. But was he a good person? It’s a credit to the film that it portrays him as both brilliant, and flawed.

The film covers the 4 year period Capote spent doing research for what was to become a new genre: the non fiction novel. He befriends, in the name of research, two men guilty of the quadruple homicide in a small town in Kansas. What makes our blood run cold is how Capote gives in to a decadent lifestyle filled with mendacious manipulation. What are his motives other than to gain fame? Elements of Capote reminded me of the movie Monster. In real life, Aileen Wurmos was framed in order to sell the book rights on her story, and of course, if she received the death sentence, it would make a more compelling non fiction ending. So too with the book Capote was to eventually write: In Cold Blood.

Interestingly, Capote’s research led to the killer’s death sentences being postponed time and again (Capote himself hired an advocate to protect the killer’s rights), until the author could extract an ending – how the murders actually happened. Once this information is extorted, is there any reason to allow the killers to stay alive (and on death row?) Here the writer of fact becomes involved in the actual sequence of events, and then has a hand in how the events ultimately play out.
Capote attends the execution, and is so upset and haunted by what he witnesses he is unable to finish another book again. In Cold Blood becomes his last, best work, makes him America’s best writer, but the emotional dénouement costs him dearly. He is driven to alcoholism, which eventually kills him.

As a youngish writer, I found Capote (the movie) compelling. There are several good performances. This movie should also be seen as a cautionary tale to many aspiring writers out there. Why? The act of playing God is best left to God. Writers ought to represent the facts, or the fiction, without distorting either themselves or the picture they’re presenting. It’s hard to do that, to write deeply and sensitively, to be absorbed and analytical, and have the strength to resurface, to emerge to play in the health giving rays of the sun, and find the time and focus to live a balanced and happy life devoid of critical and calculating nuances. It’s tempting, in the written world, to kill off who we don’t like, to exact personal revenge, to find personal closures on a range of issues that plague our personal realities. But writing these plots into existence doesn’t change reality. Writers (and TV addicts) should know better.

Many acclaimed writer’s become sickly and frail, even as their power and influence expands, because they focus so relentlessly on the frailties of an ailing environment, and soon enough, are enveloped by this fixation. I intend to be a writer who lives a life worth writing about, and perhaps I may make some noteworthy observations (getting sidetracked in other words) whilst traveling through the undiscovered countryside associated with day to day life.

As writers we do have to ask ourselves this, as I am sure Capote did: do we reserve all our sensitivity for writing, and none for ourselves, none for our friends and family? Do we sacrifice life for art, or art for life? What ought we to be obsessive about, if we are a chronically compulsive-obsessive set of individuals? And what do we do when God answers our prayers?