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April 05, 2006
Book Report
After a spell of reading work-related items on the train and the occasional New Yorker, I delved into two books: In Cold Blood, by the ambitious Capote (yes, I saw the movie and had to have the book), and Specimen Days, by Michael Cunningham (of The Hours fame). If you want to read either, skip the rest of this post -- I don't want to ruin them for you.
I started with Specimen Days, and made it through about 60 pages before I simply couldn't take the depressing story line anymore. If I kept reading, the inevitable outcome seemed to be that every character would die or live a life of desperate poverty and hard labor. Each minor advance for the slightly deranged and deformed main character (a twelve-year-old boy) was counteracted by some awful act of pathetic stupidity on the part of the same character, and I couldn't take the stress anymore.
I came up for air and turned the book over to look at the back cover for some clue about where things were headed, but it was blank. All it had was a giant picture of the inquisitive-looking author (odd, no? A bit self-aggrandizing? Does he have a policy about back covers? My mother always said not to read them anyway...). So I flipped ahead and noticed acceptable dialogue and the presence of three separate parts. This encouraged me to finish up, and I wasn't disappointed.
The three parts take place in the past (industrial-age New York), present (post-9/11 NY), and future (post-nuclear-fall-out-Disneyesque NY). Each part has similar characters, but the roles change. A woman, a man, a deformed child, and various forms of automation and violence appear in each, but in extremely different ways. Like The Hours, this book uses the same format as Mrs. Dalloway -- three distinct narratives on the same theme. It gives you plenty to think about -- I felt kind of satisfied at the end.
As for In Cold Blood, I'm blown away by the sheer effort Capote made to record so many small details. I have enough experience with journalism (not much, but enough) to know that it takes a shitload of careful work to get so many details and so much intimate information. Now I understand why it made such a good movie. This was hard work, and not only did Capote get the information, but he really knew what to do with it. I'm sure my reading was influenced by the movie, but the book is fantastic. Its strength lies in its faithfulness to journalistic integrity -- Capote manages to explore both sides of the story with equal intensity. Perry and Dick -- the men who murdered the Clutter family -- are fascinating characters with screws loose somewhere in their heads. The story is very well told -- you're kept in suspense as Capote changes from story line to story line in the beginning, he maintains the momentum until the end, and the prose is fantastic. I highly recommend it.
Posted by csageday at April 5, 2006 12:05 AM