Ill wind and In Cold Blood
By JT Knoll THE MORNING SUN
An ill wind blows nobody any good.
— Proverb
I've just finished reading "In Cold Blood" by Truman Capote.
Most people reading this likely know it's about murder. Multiple murder.
Four people, Herb and Bonnie Clutter and their two teenage children — Nancy and Kenyon — executed in mid-November, 1959, in their farmhouse on the far western Kansas plains just outside the small town of Holcomb.
Killed for money. Just under fifty dollars.
It's a compelling book. I discovered that on my first reading as a sophomore in high school in 1965. Which is why I accepted the invitation from Carol Ann Robb, Adult Services Librarian at Pittsburg Public Library, to read it again and lead a discussion about it as part of Kansas Reads, a statewide project that encourages Kansas adults to read, discuss, and experience the same book.
I found this reading as gripping as I remembered. But I had forgotten how painful a book it is.
Full of evil.
Evil appears to be undeniable if you look around much. Unaccountable suffering prevails over the planet. Some, however, deny its existence because they don't care to deal with the problem of explaining how evil can exist in a world created and governed by a God who is supposed to be perfectly good.
Christian Scientists are among those that teach that evil is an illusion. The movement's founder, Mary Baker Eddy, wrote, "Evil is a negation, because it is the absence of truth. It is nothing, because it is the absence of something. It is unreal, because it presupposes the absence of God, the omnipotent and omnipresent. Every mortal must learn that there is neither power nor reality in evil."
I don't have much use for Christian leaders who assign everything good that happens to them – or their kind – as attributable to God and everything bad to Satan (I'm thinking here of the dynamic duo, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, who attribute catastrophes like Hurricane Katrina, Global Warming and 9-11 to Satan — personified in the ACLU, gays, civil libertarians, etc. — and all that's positive and joyful to God — embodied in them and their followers who live "good" Christian lives.)
Still, I can't quite buy the view that all evil is illusory.
If the malevolence of the senseless, brutal Clutter murders is an illusion, it's an excruciating one. So much so that it makes little difference to me either way; whether in the flesh or by some trick of the mind, it's still evil.
Besides the subject of evil, the book discussion I will be leading at the library February 19 at 6:30 p.m., will cover a range of other topics. Not the least of which will be the killers, Perry Smith and Dick Hickock, whom Capote got to know quite well while on death row and about whom he provides detailed biographical and psychological profiles.
There's also detailed background on the Clutter family gleaned by Capote in interviews with farmers, ranchers and townspeople. According to Paul Fecteau, professor of English at Washburn University, K.B.I. Agent Harold Nye speculated that Capote spoke to more people connected to the murder of the Clutters than did the Bureau. Capote spent the better part of four years tromping around western Kansas, amassing thousands of pages of notes.
Of course we'll talk about the author and his writing style. Capote wrote what he termed a non-fiction novel, a combination intended to achieve historical accuracy but also use fictional devices to shed creative light on actual events.
Just by chance, a couple of days after I finished the book, I happened upon the movie "Infamous" on one of the cable channels. The movie, based on the 1997 book Truman Capote by George Plimpton, details the way Capote charmed his way into the homes of Holcomb residents and bonded with killer Perry Smith on death row.
The scene that I found most moving of many emotional scenes in the movie was one in which Capote and his close friend, Harper Lee, author of "To Kill A Mockingbird," were talking, in a barren field, to a farmer about Herb Clutter. The farmer's reflective monologue on the cunning nature of evil, delivered in slow, western Kansas, rhythm, made me think of soliloquies from Shakespeare's "Hamlet."
The man said Herb Clutter was a good man; one of the most respected farmers in the state. A man, who when he went to church, didn't just punch the clock. He listened. In trying to make some sense of the it, he uneasily described how Herb Clutter's murder affected him, saying that no matter how good a man is, sometimes an ill wind comes along — could be drink, could be a woman, or something else. That ill wind will just blow in out of nowhere, raise him up and carry him away. And there's nothing he can do about it.
J.T. Knoll is a writer, speaker and prevention and wellness coordinator at Pittsburg State University. He also operates Knoll Training, Consulting & Counseling Services in Pittsburg. He can be reached at 231-1852 or jtknoll@swbell.net
Other activities at the Pittsburg Public Library include handing out 100 copies of In Cold Blood which were purchased by our Friends of the Library, presentation by Tom Averill on "Why Kansas Still Reads In Cold Blood", book discussion, presentation by KBI agents on "Forensic Science Then & Now", and showings of In Cold Blood related movies.
Carol Ann Robb, Reference & Adult Services Librarian
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