The Cold-Blooded Story of Us

“What is the book about?”

Anytime you tell someone that you are reading and they are even slightly polite they will ask this question. Usually I mumble something about eschatology or epistemology, or an inside look at the nuances of freestyle pew-sitting. Yet with Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, the answer has not been so easy.

The easy, quick, pat answer is that it is about a family in Kansa who were murdered in 1959 and how the police found, tried, and convicted the killers. It is portrayed by many as a modern murder novel breaking into a new genre of writing, but I do not think that really is what the book is about.

Yes, the murder of the four members of the Clutter family is a significant plot turning point. It is what the story circulates around and if this event never happened then this book would probably have never been written. Yet the story would still have existed even if it was never told.

To cover my backside and avoid the snobbery of English Lit. majors I will say that there are many different levels of stories in this work and there is not one correct way to read it. Ah the postmodern escape from the culpability of ultra-criticism. I love it! With that said:

On one level the story is about the life of Perry Smith, one of the murders. Yes, other characters have important parts to play, but Perry seems to be the tragic hero of the story. He carries that Shakespearian flaw that, like the pain in his legs, will not allow him any peace. It is a rage and a sorrow that will not leave him alone. He is someone that we are led to view with an eye of sympathy as we learn about his torrid relationship with his father, the death of his siblings, and the brokenness of his relationship with his sister. We see in Perry a sense of humanity and sympathy as he is concerned for his partner Dick Hickock’s family, as he cares for a squirrel, and builds a relationship with Mrs. Meier. He is someone that we begin to feel sorry for, and yet Capote does not lead us down a path of unadulterated sympathy. Perry Smith is dangerous. He murdered and we are led to believe that would have done it again and again. Here is where the tension of the title is so apt. As we learn about Perry, as we journey with him, feel for him, grow to know him, always in the background is the murder of the four Clutters and terror of that crime. It was in cold blood, it was without any real provocation, without real meaning that these four people gave their lives. In this book he is just as much a monster as he is a man.

On a deeper level what this book seems to be about is the complexity of humanity and looks at the question of redemption. As a Christian I believe that God’s forgiveness and grace is available to all, but after reading this book could I hold to such a belief? Perry Smith was not repentant, he was not contrite even saying that “someone had to pay,” for the pain and suffering of his life. Is there hope for Perry Smith? If he never committed the murders, if the Clutter family was still alive, would Perry Smith still be considered a monster? Would he have committed other crimes? We see the compassion and the brutality of Perry Smith in this work and are left holding that mess. The mess of Perry is the mess of humanity. Humans are capable of committing vicious atrocities and at the same time of doing amazing, wonderful things. Can I believe in the complete goodness of humanity or in the utter depravity?

Or, can I stay in that mess and hope that God can guide us to a place of goodness (because we do not seem capable of doing it ourselves).

What is In True Blood about? It is about us, in all of our glory and all of our horror.

Don't Judge Yet

You can’t judge a book by its cover. There is nothing like the classic, trite sayings that roll off the tongue so easily. It allows us to break into a depth of wisdom without having to do any real work. We can even say, “you can’t judge a book…” and not even finish the phrase and still look smug as if we have just tapped into a profound well of knowledge. This is good because after all, “A stich in time…”

I have been thinking about the book judging industry as I have been reading Truman Capote’s happy, fun book In Cold Blood. This is my first time reading it; I have not yet finished the book but I am struck with the detail that Capote puts into the work. He has gotten to know the people, the Clutter family, the detectives involved with the case, the town, and perhaps most notably, the murders. I have been pleasantly surprised at the depth and listening that clearly went into this work.

It seems that Capote is trying to offer a picture of everyone involved, trying to tell the story at great depth and trying to avoid large brush strokes. As a reader I am pulled to have a kind of affinity towards the killers learning their story and at the same time horror at their crime. Capote is not asking the reader to forgive the murders (at least I don’t think so… I have not yet finished the book), but is asking the readers to understand.

This morning, lying in Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center is Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the young man suspected, along with his now deceased brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev, of perpetrating the bombings of the Boston Marathon. Already a number of theories are flying about. Already people are jumping to conclusions, judging, speculating, and assuming things about them. Some believe that the Tsarnaev brothers have had contact with a radical Islamic group. Others believe that the Chechen roots of the family have something to do with it. I am sure that there are even those who look at the Tsarnaev brothers and do not see them as Caucasian, but rather as a darker skin ethnicity and play the race card.

A lot of people are seeing what they want to see, believing what they want to believe, and are judging the book by the cover.

I am not suggesting that acts of terrorism should be explained away and forgiven. I am suggesting that we hold off our judgments because (1) the brothers are suspects and thus presumed innocent until proven guilty and (2) we cannot read minds (at least most of us can’t read minds… heh, heh)

I would love it if each person could sit down with Dzhokhar and have a good conversation without judgment, but that is unrealistic. I hope a journalist will have the opportunity to tell Dzhokhar’s story  so the rest of the world will have an opportunity to understand and to have some kind of relationship with him.

This is what we need to do; we need to enter into a relationship, listen, ask questions, learn, and share. Unfortunately that is not possible to on such a massive scale. Again, I look to the world of journalism and hope and pray the New York Post has nothing to do with this individual. Regardless, we cannot judge the book by the cover. We do not know the whys. Before calling for gruesome executions, condemning someone to hell, cursing a presumed faith tradition, attacking the family, attacking the ethnicity, or doing anything else that is a part of the mob mentality code of ethics (there is a oxymoron), we need to try to understand. If Dzhokhar is guilty Justice still needs to happen, but there is a difference between justice and blind rage. Compassion is essential and compassion comes out of relationships and understanding. That is a part of what makes us human and helps us to rise above such events of tragedy.

There Must Be Another Way

I received these two quotes from my Dad yesterday (do you see where my brilliance comes from?). Close followers of my blog know that I have an affinity towards Wink and Girard. In light of the violence in Bosten yesterday these are good things to read. Wish I thought of finding them.

Violence is the ethos of our times. It is the spirituality of the modern world. It has been accorded the status of a religion, demanding from its devotees an absolute obedience to death. Its followers are not aware, however, that the devotion they pay to violence is a form of religious piety. Violence is so successful as a myth precisely because it does not seem to be mythic in the least. Violence simply appears to be the nature of things. It is what works. It is inevitable, the last and, often, the first resort in conflicts. It is embraced with equal alacrity by people on the left and on the right, by religious liberals as well as religious conservatives. The threat of violence, it is believed, is alone able to deter aggressors. It secured us years of a balance of terror. We learned to trust the Bomb to grant us peace ... It, and not Christianity, is the real religion of America. .....Walter Wink

from  http://www.christendom-awake.org/pages/hemer/violence.htm

John Hemer MHM commentary on Girard:   People do not simply desire what others have, they desire what others desire.

Almost all human conflict is the result of people modelling themselves, (albeit unconsciously) on others and then entering into rivalry with others. All human conflict is about wanting what someone else has and desires – money, land, prestige, a spouse, a friend, power etc. every human society is threatened by this desire which becomes rivalry which leads to conflict.

The Bible is in fact the story of the slow, painstaking and sometimes faltering escape from the idea of a God who is violent to a God who is love and has absolutely nothing to do with violence.

The Bible comes to birth in a society where this scapegoating mechanism is fully operational, but it is the genius of Biblical revelation that it slowly unmasks this process and shows it up for what it is and offers an alternative. Societies use one sort of violence to expel another sort. The violence expelled is deemed ‘bad’, the violence used to expel it is deemed ‘good’. This is basically what we mean by myth. Not fiction, nor the product of a primitive imagination. Myth tells of a violent event, but tells it from the point of view of the society which benefited from that event, and therefore veils and vindicates the violence. No one in a society where myth holds sway is aware that the facts have been tampered with or coloured, so people in such societies are not hypocrites. But the more biblical influence works on a society, the less myth is likely to work. The OT, slowly at first, tells of these events, but tells them from the point of view of the victim. This is not universally clear in the OT, but is dazzlingly clear in the Gospels. The central event in world history is the Son of God becoming the victim of this process, and then rising 

His is the voice of everyone, every individual, every society which has tried to solve its problems by scapegoating; the voice of reason, the voice of political common sense, the voice which speaks up for the ‘common good’. It is the voice of pogroms, ethnic cleansings and final solutions, and has been heard countless times in history and has resulted in untold human suffering. But it is not the voice of the gospel. The gospel speaks with another voice, with the voice of the victim. That’s why the Gospel as well as being a unique piece of theology is a unique piece of anthropology.

It's Only a Flesh Wound

Once again I got out of the routine of my usual weekly posts. I’m going to blame the Easter madness that tends to consume a pastor’s life. Now that we are past that time I can get back to the important things, like this blog.

I’m currently reading, TheAnticipatory Corpse, by Jeffery Bishop. So far it is a very good book that is taking a deep and careful look at the treatment of death in the medical field. I haven’t gotten to the end yet, but I am presuming that everyone is dead by the last chapter. I’ll let you know.

One of the areas Bishop looks at is when a person is declared “dead.” I don’t want to get into the details of that argument right now, instead I would like to consider the idea of when a person stops “living.”

The idea of “living” is a moving target. One could use a simple physiological approach and say that as long as the heart is beating and the brain is working than the individual is alive. Others, like me, may claim that there is more to “living” than pumping blood and sending electrical singles around one’s body. I prefer to take a more philosophical view asking what the purpose of life might be.

If someone is in the ICU and is being kept alive (physiologically speaking) by machines I would argue that the individual is not “living.” This doesn’t mean the individual is dead – I think dead would mean the individual has no chance to live ever again. It means the person is not engaging with life at the potential with which he or she can. This also means that there are many people who are healthy but are not living (think the individual who spends a large percentage of time on a couch in front of a glowing box with a steady stream of drool dripping from his or her mouth). The fun part begins when we ask what it means to “live.” Does it mean interacting with people? Does it mean the individual is self-aware? Does it mean the individual has autonomy over his or her life (making the question of suicide interesting – perhaps it is a final act of living…)? Living is more complicated when taking more than a mechanical view of the body.

When looked at philosophically one may not be living when admitted to an ICU but continues to hold a potential to return to living and thus is not dead. Yet if the individual is being kept alive by machines and will die if unplugged then I would suggest that the individual stopped living for some time and now is waiting to die, or is actively dying. For many it would be much easier to stay with the physiological and claim that someone is no longer living if the heart stops working and/or if the brain stops doing its thing. Yet I think that is avoiding the bigger question of what it means to live in sickness and in health.

Look, we are all going to die in the end, sorry to spoil it for you. What will you do to live? Reading my blog is a good start.