Cold Blooded and Wicked

I just wanted to share my thoughts on a couple of recent books:

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote:

We decided to watch the film Capote recently, which was a fascinating glimpse into the personality of one of the more colorful authors I’ve ever run across.  If you haven’t seen the film, the plot focuses on the period of Capote’s life surrounding the research and writing of In Cold Blood.  I was fascinated by the intimate interest he took in knowing the world of his book.  After viewing the film I was curious to find out how the book turned out.  I knew that it was often hailed as one of his best works, if not the best.

The book did not disappoint.  It was an incisive and mesmerizing examination of not only the crime, but also the minds of the men responsible and the difficult questions that such an act inevitably prompts.  I was particularly captured by the first section where he sets the scene by walking us through the final day of each member of the Clutter family.  His intimate and informal tone truly makes you feel as though you know the family and makes the tragedy all the more affecting.  As he walks us through the aftermath you struggle along with the rest of the community to understand to seemingly random nature of the crime.  It’s hard to accept actions that don’t fit our view of how the world works.  It’s unfair.  We grapple with ourselves and try to put a meaning on the meaningless.  Is it evil?  Is it bad luck?  Was there something sinister under the surface we just didn’t see?  If so, how do we face this harsh new picture of people we thought we knew?  How well can we really know people?  As the story progresses we also enter the world of the two men responsible.  Capote is at turns confidant and analyst as he paints the picture of two men who certainly don’t seem to fit within the normal confines of society.  How do you step beyond the bounds of action that most people consider unthinkable?  Is childhood pain and societal exclusion an explanation or merely a symptom of individual aberration?  Is there an excuse?  mitigation?  understanding?  I won’t these questions right now, but hopefully this will whet some literary appetites.

Wicked by Gregory Maguire:

I was very curious about this book thanks to the notoriety of the musical adaptation.  I feel like a dead cat.  The concept of telling the story from the perspective of the witch is interesting and would seem to be a wonderful canvas for painting a compelling character.  Unfortunately, the novel fails miserably at everything it seems to want to do.  My biggest problem is the fact that he subtitled the story, “the life and times of the Wicked Witch of the West” without telling us the most important parts.  The narrative inexplicably stops and leaves holes at climactic moments, and never returns to fill in the missing picture.  However, the events that we miss are so important that the main characters life is forever altered.  Consequently, you don’t care what happens later and there is no sense of enlightenment or empathy as the story unfolds.  I only stuck it out until the end out of mild curiosity to see how the events with Dorothy are dealt with.  I’m sorry I did because that section felt as though it were only included because it had to be, not because that’s where the narrative was leading.  Boring and frustrating.

Another reason I read the book was because I got tickets to the show for Melody’s birthday.  Thank you Steven Schwartz and Winnie Holzman.  All of the dreck of the book was cast aside for a plot that, while not wholly original, told a compelling, interesting, and entertaining story.  The music was fun and the production that we saw was stellar.  It’s not often that I feel that an adaptation is far superior to a book, but this adaptation took a jumbled mess and made a great evening.

Hope to have some more reviews soon.  My birthday presents included four new books to go with the ones that I have from the library.

TTFN

~ by hamrex on 1 December, 2008.