Truman Capote - In Cold Blood - A True Account of a Multiple Murder and Its Consequences

Impressions I Garnered from the Letter:

1.) When she began this letter, she intended that it should be a compassionate demonstration of Christian principles. That is to say that in return for your letter to her, which apparently annoyed her, she meant to turn the other cheek hoping in this way to incite regret for your previous letter and to place you on the defensive in your next.

However few people can successfully demonstrate a principle in common ethics when their deliberation is festered with emotionalism. Your sister substantiates this failing for as her letter progresses her judgment gives way to temper – her thoughts are good, lucid the products of intelligence, but it is not now an unbiased, impersonal intelligence. It is a mind propelled by emotional response to memory and frustration; consequently, however wise her admonishments might be, they fail to inspire resolve, unless it would be the resolve to retaliate by hurting her in your next letter. Thus commencing a cycle that can only culminate in further anger and distress.

2.) It is a foolish letter, but born of human failing.

Your letter to her, and this, her answer to you, failed in their objectives. Your letter was an attempt to explain your outlook on life, as you are necessarily affected by it. It was destined to be misunderstood, or taken too literally because your ideas are opposed to conventionalism. What could be more conventional than a housewife with three children, who is “dedicated” to her family???? What could be more unnatural than that she would resent an unconventional person.

There is considerable hypocrisy in conventionalism. Any thinking person is aware of this paradox; but in dealing with conventional people it is advantageous to treat them as though they were not hypocrites. It isn’t a question of faithfulness to your own concepts; it is a matter of compromise so that you can remain an individual without the constant threat of conventional pressures. Her letter failed because she couldn’t conceive of the profundity of your problem—she couldn’t fathom the pressures brought to bear upon you because of environment, intellectual frustration and a growing tendency toward isolationism.

3.) She feels that:

a) You are leaning too heavily towards self-pity.

b) That you are too calculating.

c) That you are really undeserving of an 8 page letter written in between motherly duties.

4.) On page 3 she writes: “I truthfully feel none of us has anyone to blame etc.” Thus vindicating those who bore influence in her formative years. But is this the whole truth? She is a wife and mother. Respectable and more or less secure. It is easy to ignore the rain if you have a raincoat. But how would she feel if she were compelled to hustle her living on the streets? Would she still be all-forgiving about the people in her past? Absolutely not. Nothing is more usual than to feel that others have shared in our failures, just as it is an ordinary reaction to forget those who have shared in our achievements.

5.) Your sister respects your Dad. She also resents the fact that you have been preferred. Her jealousy takes a subtle form in this letter. Between the lines she is registering a question: “I love Dad and have tried to live so he could be proud to own me as his daughter. But I have had to content myself with the crumbs of his affection. Because it is you he loves, and why should it be so?”

Obviously over the years your Dad has taken advantage of your sister’s emotional nature via the mails. Painting a picture that justifies her opinion of him—an underdog cursed with an ungrateful son upon whom he has showered love and concern, only to be infamously treated by that son in return.

On page 7 she says she is sorry that her letter must be censored. But she is really not sorry at all. She is glad it passes through a censor. Subconsciously she has written it with the censor in mind, hoping to convey the idea that the Smith family is really a well-ordered unit: “Please do not judge all by Perry?

About the mother kissing away her child’s boo-boo. This was a woman’s form of sarcasm.

6.) You write to her because:

a) You love her after a fashion.

b) You feel a need for this contact with the outside world.

c) You can use her.

Prognosis: Correspondence between you and your sister cannot serve anything but a purely social function. Keep the theme of your letters within the scope of her understanding. Do not unburden your private conclusions. Do not put her on the defensive and do not permit her to put you on the defensive. Respect her limitations to comprehend your objectives, and remember that she is touchy towards criticism of your Dad. Be consistent in your attitude towards her and do not add anything to the impression she has that you are weak, not because you need her good-will but because you can expect more letters like this, and they can only serve to increase your already dangerous anti-social instincts.

As Perry continued to sort and choose, the pile of material he thought too dear to part with, even temporarily, assumed a tottering height. But what was he to do? He couldn’t risk losing the Bronze Medal earned in Korea, or his high-school diploma (issued by the Leavenworth County Board of Education as a result of his having, while in prison, resumed his long-recessed studies). Nor did he care to chance the loss of a manila envelope fat with photo-graphs—primarily of himself, and ranging in time from a pretty—little-boy portrait made when he was in the Merchant Marine (and on the back of which he had scribbled, “16 yrs. old. Young, happy-go-lucky & Innocent”) to the recent Acapulco pictures. And there were half a hundred other items he had decided he must take with him, among them his treasure maps, Otto’s sketchbook, and two thick notebooks, the thicker of which constituted his personal dictionary, a non-alphabetically listed miscellany of words he believed “beautiful” or “useful,” or at least “worth memorizing.” (Sample page: “Thanatoid = deathlike; Omnilingual =versed in languages; Amerce = punishment, amount fixed by court; Nescient = ignorance; Facinorous = atrociously wicked; Hagiophobia = a morbid fear of holy places & things; Lapidicolous = living under stones, as certain blind beetles; Dyspathy = lack of sympathy, fellow feeling; Psilopher = a fellow who fain would pass as a philosopher; Omophagia = eating raw flesh, the rite of some savage tribes; Depredate = to pillage, rob, and prey upon; Aphrodisiac = a drug or the like which excites sexual desire; Megaloda Citylous = having abnormally large fingers; Myrtophobia =fear of night and darkness.”)

Oil the cover of the second notebook, the handwriting of which he was so proud, a script abounding in curly, feminine flourishes, proclaimed the contents to be “The Private Diary of Perry Edward Smith”—an inaccurate description, for it was not in the least a diary but, rather, a form of anthology consisting of obscure facts (“Every fifteen years Mars gets closer. 1958 is a close year”), poems and literary quotations (“No man is an island, Entire of itself), and passages for newspapers and books paraphrased or quoted. For example:

My acquaintances are many, my friends are few; those who really know me fewer still.

Heard about a new rat poison on the market. Extremely potent, odorless, tasteless, is so completely absorbed once swallowed that no trace could ever be found in a dead body.

If called upon to make a speech: “I can’t remember what I was going to say for the life of me—I don’t think that ever before in my life have so many people been so directly responsible for my being so very, very glad. It’s a wonderful moment and a rare one and I’m certainly indebted. Thank you!”

Read interesting article Feb. issue of Man to Mtn: “I Knifed My Way to a Diamond Pit.”