Deb Southerland reflects on reading and re-reading Truman Capote’s classic true crime book – In Cold Blood.



I read Capote’s book in the late 1960s, the grisly story from the Beacon still fresh in my head.  I would not have picked up In Cold Blood again, had it not been for My Wife’s Book Club, a reading group I recently rejoined having found myself with a little more time on my hands.  The club, so called because Thad Hartman, when asked the name of the book club, said, “I dunno.  My wife’s book club.” 



Thad, Technical Services Supervisor at TSCPL, was picking up the Book Group in a Bag kit for his wife, Christi, the catalyst for our reading group.  Each bag contains 10 books of the same title and a reading guide, and to facilitate groups such as ours, checks out for six weeks.  In Cold Blood is one of the “Bag” titles and it was for that reason I once again journeyed to Holcomb, Kansas via Capote’s narrative non-fiction.

Half a lifetime between reads gave me a new perspective.  Capote’s new style of writing the book (the non-fiction novel he called it), although no longer a new idea, still carries the reader away, but my feeling this time around was one of annoyance.  Capote, it’s said, was a good listener, but having lived in Kansas all my life, I have yet to hear anyone talk quite so, shall we say, hickey, as the people in Western Kansas he interviewed.  It seems he recreated those folks in order to allow the characters to tell the story and to deliver a sense of time and place - a noble endeavor, and obviously successful.  Yet, to me, it felt as though he were portraying Kansas folks as New Yorkers would expect them to be.

Once I got around that little peeve, I discovered, quite to my shame that even though the book indicated no one disliked Herb Clutter, I, the reader, all these years later, didn’t like him at all.  I felt terrible for the guy, his helplessness in a hopeless situation, yet to my horror I couldn’t find it in my heart to like him one bit – something I never felt 40 years ago.  What happened over the course of the years, I wonder, to cause such a reaction?  Annoyance and shame aside, In Cold Blood sent a chill up my spine.  That a mere suggestion in prison regarding a former employer who might have a safe full of money in the house could culminate in such a heinous deed reminded me what a fine thread life really is.

My Wife’s Book Club has since traveled on to James McBride’s The Color of Water and The Man in My Basement by Walter Mosley, both fascinating reads, yet books we probably wouldn’t have chosen had it not been for Book Group in a Bag. I feel oddly indebted to those who are picking the titles for the Book Group bags, Readers, I’m assuming, who, unlike myself, manage to read more than one book a month.  Every time I start a new read for My Wife’s Book Club, I am once again reminded of how much fun an armchair trip can be.

What other titles is My Wife’s Book Club reading and discussing? Look at the list of available titles from the Book Group in a Bag website and check one out for your book discussion group!