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Oh, hey Book of the Month. I haven't read ICB for a few years but I remember a bit. agree that the whodunit aspect is fairly low down on Capote's priorities. I guess because almost everyone who read it (especially at the time) already knew who did it and the fact that they were captured, tried and executed. I guess we have to factor in that readers knew the basic outline already. I read something interesting about how a lot of pleasure in reading isn't not knowing what will happen in a story but knowing roughly what will happen but not how or why it will happen. It is knowing the what already but discovering the how and why aspects that are key to enjoying stories. That is why we re-read and why we read different narratives of the same events, different biographies of the same person etc. I feel like pointing this out every time a goon complains on the Stephen King thread that he uses foreshadowing too much. Maybe he does but that kind of misses the point. I didn't find the procedural/evidence stuff that gripping. Is that because a) Capote does it badly, b) I am not experienced in reading/don't enjoy crime books (it isn't what I normally read) or c) because that stuff already leads to known perpetrators and known capture, hence it lacks suspense? Overall, I would recommend this title even if you are not a fan of Capote or crime novels. I enjoyed it. The film Capote is also a definite must-watch.
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Jun 22, 2015 18:45
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Walh Hara posted:Ah that explains something, I didn't realize Capote assumes knowledge about the case already (I had never heard about it before). You don't have to know the case at all to understand or like the book, but it seems he could have (would have?) written it differently if he hadn't expected the readers to know about the case before. It was all over the news of the time because it was such a sensational murder of an entire family for apparently what was a minor burglary. That was why Capote went out there. I think he was living in NYC at the time and wasn't a regular stringer. He was deliberately searching out a dramatic story for an innovatory "factual novel" and the newspaper reports caught his eye. Every turn of the case was covered in the press, as were the trials and executions. It would be like someone writing about the SImpson-Goldman murders in 2000.
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Jun 24, 2015 17:27
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