Documentary

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vb4FK1NwazI&feature=youtu.be

Extreme Passion

             I have a problem with interviews. Not interviews, per say, but a question that tends to make its presence in them: “Who are you?” I know where I come from, I know what I like to do, I know what I want. But someone asks me who I am and besides my name, I know nothing of how to respond. This is why Willie-Jay’s dissection of Perry as a person is so remarkable. He doesn’t straight out say who Perry is, he slowly cements bricks of observations and facts to build the edifice of Perry, and in such a poetic way, too:

            "You are a man of extreme passion, a hungry man not quite sure where his appetite lies, a deeply frustrated man striving to project his individuality against a backdrop of rigid conformity. You exist in a half-world suspended between two superstructures, one self-expression and the other self-destruction. You are strong, but there is a flaw in your strength, and unless you learn to control it the flaw "will prove stronger than your strength and defeat you. The flaw? Explosive emotional reaction out of all proportion to the occasion. Why? Why this unreasonable anger at the sight of others who are happy or content, this growing contempt  for people and the desire to hurt them? All right, you think they're fools, you despise them because their morals, their happiness is the source of your frustration and resentment. But these are dreadful enemies you carry within yourself - in time destructive as bullets. Mercifully, a bullet kills its victim. This other bacteria, permitted to age, does not kill a man but leaves in its wake the hulk of a creature torn and twisted; there is still fire within his being but it is kept alive by casting upon it faggots of scorn and hate. He may successfully accumulate, but he does not accumulate success, for he  is his own enemy and is kept from truly enjoying his achievements."    

            I am in love with this ‘chaplain’s clerk.’ Maybe he’s spouting a bunch of bull, but I highly doubt it. In the beginning of the novel the narrator talks about Perry’s frustration with happy people that inspires in him an urge to hurt them. The hungry passion that isn’t sure where its appetite lies was a great description and example of Perry’s inner self. I myself find that I’m so ready to absorb the world, I’m hungry for knowledge and language and the fizzling stars of love. I know what the growling in my consciousness is due to, though. I know what I want. And so I’m at peace with myself. Perry is smoldering passion of desire and hunger but said hunger has no fixed target. It is like a person that wants do to so much and yet can’t figure out what it is exactly he wants to do. They are fireworks exploding inside a suffocating box that leaves them to burn inside: explosive emotional reaction. His hatred for people that feel happiness, the urge to cause them pain, is probably due to the fact that he himself can’t feel it. Life is leaving him out of said chemical bliss inside his brain so exerting it on others is his way of coping: misery loves company. But in doing this he’s just making himself more miserably, killing any possible chance at being satisfied. 

            When Dick and he entered the Clutters’ house to do exactly what the whole novel was leading up to, Perry’s “legs trembled; the pain in his knees made him perspire. He wiped his face with a paper towel. He unlocked the door and said, "O.K. Let's go."” His nervousness is palpable. We kind of feel empathy for Dick because there’s something more human about him, some turmoil inside of him. Willie-Jay’s former words resonate with the reader and each time Perry does something that leads one to the conjecture that he is not all together logically aware of his actions, of himself, his humanity is restored. I wonder every time about his past. Why he is the way he is.

            So they do the deed and eventually people find the bodies. Larry Hendricks testifies and says, “ The bed, that's where we found Mrs. Clutter. She'd been tied, too. But differently - with her hands in front of her, in that she looked as though she were praying.” It’s strange, but there seem to be religious references throughout the novel and I have the suspicion that there is something that runs deeper into that. The religious song playing when Mr. Clutter is getting his will and at the same time playing in Dick and Perry’s car was perplexing. It was a connection between the two, but I wondered why God, why that specific connection. And then we see the nuns’ stockings and now Mrs. Clutter in a praying position while she died. God is a unifying entity. While all of the events are so against what he symbolizes, there is still his overlooking presence. Mrs. Clutter accepts him and that makes her death more peaceful. I still have yet to figure out just what it means throughout the expanse of the novel.

            It is as Hendricks is testifying that the officer questioning him compares the deaths to puzzles:

            "Like those puzzles. The ones that ask, 'How many animals can you find in this picture?' In a way, that's what I'm trying to do. Find the hidden animals. I feel they must be there - if only I could see them.”

            It’s frustrating, feeling like something is there, at the tip of your tongue, behind your clouded senses, and you can’t see it. But the satisfaction that comes accompanies the final clarification makes up for it. 

Twisted

            Cheese. God knows why they say that when you’re going to take a picture of someone, God knows who managed to find a connection between smiling and cheese. Ah, because when you say ‘cheese’ your mouth widens into what could be called a smile. Basically, your teeth are showing. Chuck Palahnuik said in his novel, Invisible Monsters, “You can only hold a smile for so long, after that it's just teeth.” A smile is not real unless your eyes are smiling along. That is actually a very overdone cheesy statement, and yet the eyes say it all. When Dick is smiling with his distorted face and all, Perry tells him, "The eye doesn't matter. Because you have a wonderful smile. One of those smiles really work."  It’s kind of a romantic phrase, beautiful in its sentiment and yet false in its meaning. The eye does matter. The eye is everything. And maybe it’s just that Dick is somewhat lacking the insight, the neutral and rational perspective that comes with eyes. He’s acting because it has become a mechanism, a smile that shines for the camera, a smile with no meaning. It works. But it’s not real. I wonder if he even knows what his motives are, if they are real at all.

            Said lack of eyes, as you might call it, result in the murder of the Clutter family. I feel pity for the mom and the son and daughter. For some reason though, I can’t bring myself to feel that much pity for Mr. Clutter. Mrs. Ashida spoke with him once, and the narrator’s analysis resonated with me. “ ‘ Just nothing scares you,’ she said, commenting upon a generally recognized quality of Mr. Clutter's: a fearless self-assurance that set him apart, and while it created respect, also limited the affections of others a little. “ That’s exactly how I feel. There’s respect in there, it’s just that the cold and austere aura makes people withhold their curiosity and touch from fear of getting scalded by the burning ice. Who knows? Maybe he’s the finest man ever to grace the pages of a paperback novel and I don’t know it. Maybe he’s actually the epitome of Ghandi in Holcomb, Kansas. But, Ghandi or not, even when the descriptions of their deaths are said, I don’t feel anything.

            While Mr. Clutter sparks neutrality in me, Perry and Dick fascinate me. Everything they do is so quirky and unexpected. I think of how they do those things to murder people and think that everything they do is also pretty messed up. But in a very interesting way. What can I say? Murder is interesting. Humans actually have a morbid side of them that gets off on watching the twisted things in life. Sinister and horrible, it’s true. But that is what makes it fascinating and interesting. So here are my favorite characters (yes, the killers):

            “Dick had surrendered. While Perry waited in the car, he had gone into the hospital to try and buy a pair of black stockings   from a nun. This rather unorthodox method of obtaining them had been Perry's inspiration; nuns, he had argued, were certain to have a supply.  The notion presented one drawback, of course: nuns, and anything pertaining to them, were bad luck, and Perry was most respectful of his superstitions. (Some others were the number 15, red hair, white flowers, priests crossing a road, snakes appearing in a dream.)”

            Maybe just the fact that they are talking about nun’s, out of all people, stockings is what reverberates inside me. I fail to see why it is exactly that they have to get nun stockings and not the nearest Walmart stockings. In a way, it’s kind of blasphemous, using something from people so devoted to God to do something that is totally against God. Wearing nun’s stockings as masks to murder an entire family is just, wrong. Murdering an entire family is wrong, period, but they had to bring the nuns into this? How much profanity do these guys want to breathe into the atmosphere? And get this, nuns, as knowledgeable every person knows, are bad luck. Where they get this from is beyond me. If they had put other examples such as spilled salt and walking under a ladder, I might have understood. But they are so random that they plague me in wonderment. Just why, exactly, are they bad luck? Where do said superstitions come from, from other people or from their own experiences? That is what I want to know. I want to know so I can pave a way to understanding this people so much more.

   

Too Perfect

           Nancy is too perfect for me. No, that’s not it. She’s too much what was expected of a woman before Women’s Suffrage. She reminds me of those really freaky and annoying females in Stepford Wives. Without the freaky and annoying of course. Don’t get me wrong, I like her. She just needs to tone it down a little.

            Now that I think about it, I feel bad for her. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, shall we? I shall proceed to dissect her bordering-on faultless self. According to the narrator, “Normally, Nancy would willingly have taught Jolene to prepare an entire turkey dinner; she felt it her duty to be available when younger girls came to her wanting help with their cooking, their sewing, or their music lessons - or, as often happened, to confide.” Okay. It doesn’t say younger kids, it specifically says ‘younger girls.’ Fine, she’s a girl and she happens to be the typical small town Good Samaritan that helps other females because guys have cooties. Okay, my sarcasm got ahead of me. Sorry. But let’s focus on the activities they mention: cooking, sewing, music, and confiding. The first line of a sewing textbook from the 1890s reads, "Girls: You have now become old enough to prepare for woman's duties; one of these is the art of sewing, which we will take up as simply as possible. By following the given instructions carefully, you will become able to dress your dolls, assist your mothers in mending, make garments, fancy articles, etc.” All they have to do know is stay in the kitchen like good women learn to play the piano, and confide in each other as a pact of womanhood and expression. I’m sorry, but that’s just what come’s to me when I think of the things Nancy does with other girls. It almost places her in a different time period, an epoch where women do those things because it is what is expected of them. That is Nancy in a nutshell: play-doh pliable in her parent’s, her town’s expectations.

            This is why I pity her. When she’s thinking about her best friend, the narrator speaks of how Nancy “deeply felt the daytime absence of her friend, the one person with whom she need be neither brave nor reticent.” Her whole persona is a mere façade then. She is a mannequin trying to appeal to people’s critical gazes. It is when she is basking in her friend’s open ears that Nancy says something that sparked my interest even more than her reticent persona: “I'm losing my mind. I get into the car, I walk into a room, and it's as though somebody had just been there, smoking a cigarette. It isn't Mother, it can't be Kenyon. Kenyon wouldn't dare . . ." Capote goes on to say how Susan grasped the implication Nancy was making but thought it ludicrous. Nancy was referring to her dad, the coffee Nazi and substance critic. Her argument is valid. I just can’t figure out why, out of all people, Mr. Clutter would resort to inhaling such horrible smokes that he hates so much. And I ponder just what it is that would be the catalyst of said decision, what is happening in Mr. Clutter’s life that is so crucial, so colossal. It’s mind-f#@cking. It makes me think that maybe Mr. Clutter is not as innocent as he seems, as oblivious as he sets himself out to be.

Mirrors

            I read this book once. (This is when all of my friends resume to throw themselves back in upturned laughter at the ridiculousness of my statement. And by ridiculous I mean obviousness and expected aspect of it. I always read). So I was ready this book and the man, talking about a certain woman, said, “She doesn’t mind empty promises. She likes pretty words.” And I thought of some of the aphorisms of In Cold Blood that just pry themselves into my memory, my consciousness plagued with their existence. They are leeches draining me from logic, that’s how beautiful Capote’s words are. And I strife to suss out just what exactly he means to say, and sometimes I wonder if there is any point to them. But I don’t mind. They’re pretty.

            But God knows writers don’t just write meaningless rabble. This novel especially doesn’t seem like the type to state things that don’t make a difference to the plot of the story, that don’t have some type of purpose. The one that captured my attention the most was when Perry was walking outside of the café to meet up with Dick and he looked at his reflection and the narrator said:

             “His own face enthralled him. Each angle of it induced a different impression. It was a change-face, and mirror-guided experiments had taught him how to ring the changes, how to look now ominous, now impish, now soulful; a tilt of the head, a twist of the lips, and the corrupt gypsy became the gentle romantic.”

            Of course, what Capote means to say is that Perry is the ever-talented deceiver. But the phrasing, the pure music of the words, is just beautiful. At first the reader sees this bit of information as somewhat negative, Perry as a conceited male that can’t seem to loose thirst for his utterly refreshing countenance. But there’s more to that. It’s a “change-face”, a noun, as if it were an object you encounter everyday. Mirrors are not his way of basking in ego and aesthetics, mirrors are his path to accomplishing his goal of great fraud. They are his mentor. Unlike most human that occupies this earth, to Perry, mirrors don’t show him what he is, they show him what he can become. And, quite frankly, I’m scared of what it is exactly that he can become. Haunting and beautiful in its exposition, this quotation shows the pure wickedness that encompasses Perry as a character. Not only a character, but as a person.

            Every Bonnie has to have a Clyde. Perry’s Clyde is dick in all his logical and non-artistic glory because, “when you got right down toot, Dick's literalness, his pragmatic approach to every subject, was the primary reason Perry had been attracted to him, for it made Dick seem, compared to himself, so authentically tough, invulnerable, "totally masculine."” Here we see a type of FOIL in the, I guess you could call them antagonists, of the story. There’s a balance. Not only that, but therein lies a kind of lack in confidence, demure quality then that lies within Perry. The above quotation implies that Perry sees himself as not very tough, maybe even vulnerable, and not completely “masculine.” He, consciously or not, is with Dick because it fulfills the aspect of a man that he cannot fulfill himself.

            It is not a healthy relationship. It sounds irrelevant, but a romantic relationship in which one person feels that their partner completes them in a way and is ergo not free to feel fully independent and complete without said person, is unhealthy. This is not romantic, obviously. But it runs the same lines. And it says a lot about Perry and Dick and maybe helps understand their actions.

Guitars and Other Instruments: ie. Guns

            It’s surprising how knowledge can change your perspective. Now, dear friends, let’s proceed to learn how to differentiate functions and dispatch our myopic mindset by exposing ourselves to all the possibilities. Oh God. AP Calculus is quite obviously rendering me delusional. No. By knowledge I’m not referring to concrete facts and logarithms. By knowledge I mean my awareness of the fact that four members of the Clutter family are going to die. Spoiler, this is not. Before gnawing my eyes, please do read the very accessible summary on the back of In Cold Blood. I hadn’t read it before I delved into the text. I just thought that, well, duh, six people die, and the whole novel would be a mystery as to who it was. But it isn’t. The summary specifies who died and who exactly went to jail. I now think of the Clutter family and, quite frankly (and pathetically) I’m sad to know that Dick and Perry were the killers. I thought Mr. Clutter would pave a gradual road from sanity to inevitable madness.

            Maybe the former were unjustly convicted? One can only hope. (Yes, because everyone obviously hopes it’s the deranged father that ends up encasing his entire family in a bloodbath and not the two convicts.) I think that’s just my morbid side.

           

            Mr. Clutter is what appears to be an okay man, save for the fact that he is obsessively self-controlled and opposed to drinking and smoking. Any stimulant, really, and he proceeds to fire anyone he sees involved in any of the like. That just made me harbor some dislike for the man, probably because it seems like a pretty ludicrous thing to do unless the worker is a raging alcoholic who is the Hulk personified. And so it is so astounding and thought-invoking when his daughter, Nancy smells smoke everywhere and narrows down her options to her dad. She voices her concerns to her best friend: "Why do I smelling smoke? Honestly, I think I'm losing my mind. I get into the car, I walk into a room, and it's as though somebody had just been there, smoking a cigarette.” And I just can’t seem to fathom just why it is Mr. Clutter, hater of anything smoke and alcohol would resort to doing such a thing.

            Like Mr. Clutter whom never smokes or drinks (or so we think), Perry,  “the young man breakfasting in a cafe called the Little Jewel never drank coffee.”

           This seemed kind of ironic to me, given that he was in a café. From now on, I’ll go to ice crap shops even though the idea of frozen dairy makes me hyperventilate (Not really.) Either way, Perry was in the café and the narrator says that “now, thanks to a letter, an invitation to a "score," here he was with all his worldly belongings: one cardboard suitcase, a guitar, and two big boxes of books and maps and songs, poems and old letters, weighing a quarter of a ton,” and I fell in love. The man’s possessions rendered me speechless. A guitar happens to be my favorite instrument and one I play daily, books are my ever-present companions, songs are my transportation to peace, and poems and letters are just pure poetry that hypnotizes. And the guy travels. I can imagine his cardboard suitcase slathered in quotes and postcards, and drawings from all over the world, pure culture emanating from that sole entity. Too bad he turns out to be a killer.

           

            Or does he? Tun Tun Tun. Another thing that captured my interest, apart from his obvious great taste for the finer things in life, was when I read that “only four months ago he had sworn, first to the State Parole Board, then to himself, that he would never set foot within its [Olathe, Kansas] boundaries again.” Why? What is it about Olathe, or any place actually, that would significantly make a person swear never to come back to it? It irks me.

           

            But what irked me, or rather, astonished me, the most, was when the reader got an inside look into the other ‘instrument’ he and Dick had:

            “Another sort of instrument lay beside it - a twelve-gauge pump-action shotgun, brand-new, blue-barreled, and with a sportsman's scene of pheasants in flight etched along the stock. A flashlight, a fishing knife, a pair of leather gloves, and a hunting vest fully packed with shells contributed further atmosphere to this curious still life.”

            Curious, indeed.