Bookstores and the Worlds They Open For Us

Warning: this one gets a little graphic.

I had the best time last weekend. One of my favorite people in the world came to visit me for the weekend. We had an absolute blast. We toured STL, and discovered a bookstore that maybe I should never have been allowed to enter. I could spend hours in there.

I could spend hours in pretty much any bookstore. I love to read. Always have. I compulsively read. If there’s a book around, I can’t NOT read. This bookstore had new books, used book, and rare books in this two-story house that was filled to the rafters with books – pretty books, good books, bad books, cat books, classics, children’s, etc. I did, however, manage to restrain myself. I only bought three. I’m halfway through one, I’ve started one, and I’ve finished one. This is not my usual MO. Usually, I’m a one-book-at-a-time kind of girl. I read fast enough that it works for me, and if I read too many at one time I forget and lose track of what’s going on. I hate when that happens.

But that’s not the point. I won’t give you a book report, but I have got to say that Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood is fascinating. If I don’t end up with nightmares, I’ll be really glad I read it. I’m going to count this as one of the 10 books that I read this year that challenges me, even though it was hard to put down. So it wasn’t challenging to read, but it challenged my thinking and my sensibilities, and spurred my fascination with the mind of killers. Not that I want to be one, but because I cannot fathom they way that they think. I’m struck. I read things that prisoners write on a daily basis. I used to think I had a pretty good insight into the way the human mind works. No more.

The most startling line of the entire book came at me so fast I had to back up and take it in. If you don’t know the basics, here they are: Two men with no real connection with the Clutter family drove into Holcomb, Kansas, went directly to the Clutter home, and murdered the husband, wife, and two youngest children – everyone in the home. They were prepared for as many as twelve people. The only motivation was that there was a possibility (one that proved false) that they would get several thousand dollars and be able to move to Mexico in luxury. I’m not giving anything away, because this was a “true crime” story – Capote just went back and interviewed everybody and managed to make a foregone conclusion a gripping story. You know what’s going to happen from the first page, and yet you just can’t put it down.

So back to that startling line. One of the murderers, upon being captured, was describing the events of the night. “I didn’t want to harm the man. I thought he was a very nice gentleman. Soft spoken. I thought so right up to the moment I cut his throat.” These words, spoken by a man who had been physically crippled and emotionally stunted, encompass the timbre of the story like no other line. So many things converged to create just the awful circumstances to end the lives of four innocent people.

Maybe I’m just morbid, bitter, and cynical (Fine. I am.) But it fascinates me, that fine line between sanity and insanity, good and bad, right and wrong. Reading Perry Smith’s confession, I was expecting a catalyst, something that caused the horrifying events of that night. I couldn’t find one. It is the worst example of someone choosing a course of action and carrying it out despite every indication in the world that the action was not necessary or even logical or remotely acceptable. Of someone having the simultaneous ability to like someone and cut their throat.

But still, it makes me think. It makes me think about all of the things that happened to this guy to create who he was. Is psychopathy something you’re born with? Is it manageable given the right circumstances? How do you classify or punish a person who is wholly without remorse because he is wholly without the ability to feel it? And how do you feel safe in a world populated with people like that?

And, seriously, how did Truman Capote spend six years writing this stuff? I mean, I’ve spent a week thinking about it and I’m just about ready to give it a rest. Word.