Lessons in grammar from a condemned killer

Andrews' educated accent and the formal quality of his college-trained intelligence were anathema to Perry, who though he had not gone beyond third grade, imagined himself more learned, and enjoyed correcting them, especially their grammar and pronunciation. But here suddenly was someone - 'just a kid!' - constantly correcting him. 

[...]

"Don't say disinterested when what you mean is uninterested."

-Excerpt from In Cold Blood, page 318

Finally got around to finishing In Cold Blood today. I hadn't touched it in a few days. Not because I was uninterested or anything like that, it's just that I've had a lot going on this week. But I took a couple of hours this afternoon to sit down and burn through the final chapter and now that I've had a few more hours to give the whole thing a bit of thought, here I am.

Excellent book, no doubt about it. Very well-written from beginning to end, but what struck me most in the final chapter and final pages and Perry and Dick lived out their final days was what the book had evolved into. Once the two of them had been caught, convicted and condemned Capote seemed to spend a great deal of time meditating on mankind's motives for violence. I quite enjoyed how he tried to get into the minds not only of Dick and Perry, but the other inmates on death row. Almost as though he was trying to establish a common thread among the lives and personalities of each man, which as far as I'm concerned turned out to be a fruitless endeavour. Interesting to contemplate though.

Speaking of which, what I found most interesting about that final chapter, about all that meditation on what drives one person to shed the blood of another, was the issue of the townspeople. And the issue of those involved in the case's investigation and prosecution. Basically, everybody on the right side of the law. So many of whom stated that, ordinarily, they're opposed to the death penalty, but in this case...

And really, who can blame them? The average person probably doesn't consider themselves particularly violent, and subsequently, the average person never finds themselves responsible for the slaughter of an innocent family. But when it comes to justice for people savage enough to level a shotgun at those four innocent faces and squeeze that shotgun's trigger four times, a certain bloodlust is awakened within the average person. That typical "forgive a man for any sins" mentality flies out the window in favour of satisfying that primal desire for revenge. For better or worse, they suddenly become quite comfortable with the act of 'judicial homicide,' as Capote put it.

Finally I'll mention the passage that I quoted at the start of this post. Like my previous post on the symptoms of fury rearranging Dick's face, this line stood out for me quite a bit. Mostly because until now I had no idea there was any difference between the meanings of disinterested and uninterested. But now, thanks to one dead killer's steadfast commitment to proper grammar and one dead journalist's steadfast commitment to thorough documentation, I do.

Not a big step forward in expanding my vocabulary, but hey, every little bit helps.

Not Quite Another Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

As soon as the word 'Katrina' popped up in this excerpt from 'Zeitoun' I had my suspicions that this was gonna be another in the long line of books that have been written to highlight "One family's personal tragedy in the wake of a cataclysmic event." I just assumed that Zeitoun was going to drown and leave his family behind. I mean, all the hallmarks of a best-selling tragedy were there:

• A foreigner who's made good in America.
  
• A family of four young kids
  
• A beautiful wife whom he was able to marry, despite any potential racial or religious boundaries.
  
• Promoted by the New York Times.
  

All signs point to: Cha-Ching. Here comes another book whose utter perfection will be proclaimed by bleeding-hearts in sushi bars and tea houses across the globe. And yeah, okay, considering Dave Eggers has proven himself a decent author, it probably would've been a good read.

But with a bit of further research, the cynic in me was silenced. Turns out Zeitoun is alive and well. There goes the heartbreak factor. I guess this tale's gonna be one of inspiration instead. Inspirational, just like The Shawshank Redemption (by which I mean it inspires people to never give up hope, as opposed to inspiring them to break out of jail.)

Again, I'm sure it's a very good read. Maybe not a work of staggering genius, but nonetheless a decent collection of pages and ink. But the thought occurs that in the realm of 'creative non-fiction,' a realm to which Zeitoun and In Cold Blood both belong, commodities like tragedy and inspiration and heartache and hope are valuable. Extremely valuable, providing their manifestation isn't heavy-handed on the author's part.

So I guess my mission is clear: Find a tragedy to exploit and rake in some cash.

Oh. Turns out that Eggers won't be receiving any profits from this book. All of those are going to the Zeitoun foundation, which aids in the rebuilding of New Orleans. Once again the cynic in me has been silenced by this book.

Oh well, sometimes it's nice to be wrong.

...symptoms of fury rearranging Dick's expression

Started reading Capote's In Cold Blood yesterday, and so far it is definitely not disappointing. A real page-turner, trite as that sounds. The good kind of page-turner, too. The kind that keeps the pages turning because they're all part of a very well-written story, not because the chapters are each about three pages long. That there is a literary technique that's absurdly cheap and is the only way I can explain how so many people made it to the end of The DaVinci Code, which, let's face it, is essentially a pretentious, long-winded episode of Scooby Doo for grown-ups and wannabe theologians.

The line I've used for the title of this post is one I noticed from In Cold Blood, somewhere around page 80. It really stood out for me, but I'll come back to the reasons why after I've had my say about a few other elements.

First, the story's structure. I'm a massive movie fan (but absolutely refuse to use the term 'film buff') and if you were to tell me that Capote had been influential on the work of somebody like Quentin Tarantino, it'd come as no surprise at all. Not only because Tarantino is notorious for the outright theft of ideas he incorporates into his films (but hey, they're still entertaining), but because the way Capote has structured the novel, at least thus far, has been really interesting in terms of how it plays with time, locations and events.

Much like all of Tarantino's films, the structure of In Cold Blood is, to an extent, quite nonlinear. For instance, I can recall at least a couple of scenes that involved the Clutter family, all still among the living, which then used a particular object or person to segue into the future, wherein somebody would be giving police evidence regarding their slaughter. This constant alternation between past, present and future is one that I quite enjoy in all forms of entertainment, particularly when we're thrust into a future where have things seem to have gone very much awry, leaving us to try and fill in the blanks about things reached that point.

Speaking of filling in the blanks, I quite like how Capote hasn't immediately revealed the events of the murders, but rather, has to some extent put us in the minds of the townspeople who are trying to comprehend what, why and how this all happened. The only difference of course is that we're well aware of who's behind the killings. Once again the novel is reminiscent of Tarantino's work (or should that be, Tarantino's work is reminiscent of this novel?) in that with his debut film, Reservoir Dogs, Tarantino told the story of a jewelry heist gone very, very, very wrong, without ever showing the events of the heist itself, in effect allowing the mystery to unfold for the film's audience as it does for the film's characters.

But anyway, getting back to Capote. To reiterate, I feel that playing with structure in this way is an excellent literary technique, one that I can see myself using in my own writing, should the an appropriate enough opportunity arise with its subject matter.

To an extent, that's exactly what I'm doing here, because to finish up this post I'm going back to the very beginning of it, discussing the line that comprises its title. The whole sentence goes:

"Nevertheless, Perry observed with some misgiving the symptoms of fury rearranging Dick's expression: jaw, lips, the whole face slackened; saliva bubbles appeared at the corner of his mouth."

Such a well-written way of saying, "Dick looked pissed off."

To me, this single sentence epitomises a lot of what literary journalism is about and the added freedom of wordplay it offers the author. Were this just a straight down the line news article, there's no doubt the editor would slash that entire sentence, citing excessive verbosity. News journalism is all about keeping it short, sharp and punchy, whereas with literary journalism we're not only given the opportunity to be more creative with words, but in most cases, we're encouraged to be.

A few words from the good Doctor.

"If I'd written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people - including me - would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism."  -Hunter S. Thompson

"Truth would quickly cease to become stranger than fiction, once we got as used to it." -H.L. Mencken

So I figure what better way to launch of a blog focused on literary journalism than to quote two of its most revered practitioners? One of whom I've been familiar with for years, the other, only months. What they shared in common, aside from their chosen profession, was that they each had their own very particular views of the world. Views that manifested in their writings over the years with large helpings of my three favourite literary qualities: Energy, wit and cynicism (or realism, depending on who you ask.) By admiring their work it seems obvious that the next logical progression would be for it to influence me, in terms of both how I think and how I write.

But to be honest, I'm almost reluctant to say that I've been influenced by Hunter S. Thompson. By this point, where's a journalist who hasn't been influenced by the good Doctor? More to the point, he's one of those writers whose style has been aped by so many wannabes over the years that acknowledging his influence is almost tantamount to admitting plagiarism. But there was more to what he did than getting really fucked up on drink and drugs before dropping words on pages. As I said, guys like he and Mencken saw the world in a certain way. It wasn't only Thompson's writing that originally attracted me to journalism, but also what that writing reflected.

And Mencken, man, don't get me started on Mencken. I only became familiar with this guy's work a few months ago and I've really no idea how I was able to exist for 23 years without discovering him sooner. As soon as I started reading his words, I was hooked. I felt an instant for affinity for this guy and his world view. A visionary cynic who was decades ahead of his time, the guy definitely had a way with words.

Which brings us back to the notions of fact and fiction in the realm of journalism. My perception of literary journalism so far is that it allows for certain liberties to be taken with the absolute truth in order to present a more engaging version of the overall truth. Not only that but it allows for far more creativity in terms of story structure than conventional journalism does. And as a fan of creative writing, I like that.

So here's hoping that by the end of semester I've got a story to my name that's well written, well researched, and above all else, entertaining.