In Cold Blood, First Edition
Capote, Truman. In Cold Blood: A True Account of Multiple Murder and Its Consequences. First Edition. 1965. Book and dust jacket are both in very good condition—jacket shows just a hint of smearing to the lower front cover and there is a trace of edgewear. A beautiful copy.
In Cold Blood is more than a classic of the true-crime genre; it paved the way, showing that such works could not only be a respected form of literature; they could also be runaway bestsellers. It was elitism and populism in perfect equipoise. The book spawned a host of imitators, but In Cold Blood was more than just the shock of the new. It is as absorbing for the 21st Century audience as it was for the millions who read it when it first published. In short, it is a classic. Why? It is Capote at his best—a master stylist who still had the deep sense of empathy that fame and fortune would soon take from him (ironically, as result of this book’s success). Capote presents the brutal murder of the Clutter family from a variety of perspectives, serving to humanize the killers without mythologizing them, and pointing out the flaws of the victims and townspeople without impugning them. It's a portrait of 1950s-era American heartland starkly opposed to how nostalgists remember it today.
“One by one, he repeats the themes, images, and leitmotifs that permeate his novels and short stories: loneliness, the death of innocence, and the danger that lurks in every shadow. In an uncanny way, his true-life chronicle is the culmination of his fiction, the logical extension of all that he had written before.”
--Truman Capote Biographer Gerald Clarke, on In Cold Blood