Save the Date! Truman Capote and the Legacy of In Cold Blood

It's Truman's Birthday!

September 30 marks the birthday of Alabama native son, Truman Capote.  To learn more about one part of Truman's legacy, join us on Wednesday, October 17, 2012 at 5:30 pm for Ralph Voss's talk on Truman Capote and the Legacy of In Cold Blood. This talk is not to be missed!  A small exhibit of  In Cold Blood related items and Capote books, including some from his own personal library, will be on display!

Truman Capote and the Legacy of In Cold Blood: A Lecture

Join us on October 17, 2012 at 5:30 pm for an evening with Dr. Ralph Voss, retired professor of English at The University of Alabama. Voss will talk about his new book, Truman Capote and the Legacy of In Cold Blood (UA Press, 2011).

The talk will be followed by Q&A and a book signing. This event, like all events at Hoole, is free and open to the public.  A small exhibit of Capote materials will be on display in the Hoole Lobby.

"Truman Capote and the Legacy of In Cold Blood  is the anatomy of the origins of an American literary landmark and its legacy.

Ralph F. Voss was a high school junior in Plainville, Kansas in mid-November of 1959 when four members of the Herbert Clutter family were murdered in Holcomb, Kansas, by “four shotgun blasts that, all told, ended six human lives,” an unimaginable horror in a quiet farm community during the Eisenhower years. No one in Kansas or elsewhere could then have foreseen the emergence of Capote’s book–which has never gone out of print, has twice been made into a major motion picture, remains required reading in criminology, American Studies, sociology, and English classes, and has been the source of two recent biographical films.

Voss examines Capote and In Cold Blood from many perspectives, not only as the crowning achievement of Capote’s career, but also as a story in itself, focusing on Capote’s artfully composed text, his extravagant claims for it as reportage, and its larger status in American popular culture.

Voss argues that Capote’s publication of In Cold Blood in 1966 forever transcended his reputation as a first-rate stylist but second-rate writer of  “Southern gothic” fiction; that In Cold Blood actually is a gothic novel, a sophisticated culmination of Capote’s artistic development and interest in lurid regionalism, but one that nonetheless eclipsed him both personally and artistically. He also explores Capote’s famous claim that he created a genre called the “non-fiction novel,” and its status as a foundational work of “true crime” writing as practiced by authors ranging from Tom Wolfe and Norman Mailer to James Ellroy, Joe McGinniss, and John Berendt.

Voss also examines Capote’s artful manipulation of the story’s facts and circumstances: his masking of crucial homoerotic elements to enhance its marketability; his need for the killers to remain alive long enough to get the story, and then his need for them to die so that he could complete it; and Capote’s style, his shaping of the narrative, and his selection of details–why it served him to include this and not that, and the effects of such choices—all despite confident declarations that “every word is true.”

Though it’s been nearly 50 years since the Clutter murders and far more gruesome crimes have been documented, In Cold Blood continues to resonate deeply in popular culture. Beyond questions of artistic selection and claims of truth, beyond questions about capital punishment and Capote’s own post-publication dissolution, In Cold Blood’s ongoing relevance stems, argues Voss, from its unmatched role as a touchstone for enduring issues of truth, exploitation, victimization, and the power of narrative."

From the vaults -- past events and exhibits at Hoole

This time of year brings to mind some cool film screenings we did in 2001, 2002, and 2003 at the Bama Theater in downtown Tuscaloosa right around Halloween.

In 2001, we screened the 1956 film The Bad Seed, which was based on the creepy novel by William March -- whose papers are at Hoole! In 2002, we screened the 1967 film, In Cold Blood, which was based on Truman Capote's stellar book on a quadruple homicide in rural Kansas -- which he researched with his childhood friend and fellow Monroeville, Alabamian, Harper Lee. In 2003, we screened the 1955 semidocumentary film, The Phenix City Story, which was shot in Phenix City not long after the crime took place that was the subject of the film. All three films were introduced by scholars from UA and beyond that added an interesting and unique perspective to the film itself. To read about the events and exhibits that the Hoole Library has done in the past several years, visit http://www.lib.ua.edu/libraries/hoole/happenings/pastexhibitions.htm

And tune in next year... it may be time again for another cool and creepy film event!