Answered Prayers?

Last night, I watched Capote. I like it enough that this was a repeat viewing. The film is about the true story of how Truman Capote wrote In Cold Blood, his famous "non-fiction novel", and how the experience affected him. The subject matter is bleak and depressing, but it is a good story and the film pulls it off very well. I thought Phillip Seymour Hoffman's performance in the title role was brilliant, too.

As a book, In Cold Blood was the first of its kind. It is based on the true story of the 1959 murders of four members of an innocent family in rural Kansas. Capote's goal was to write a non-fiction book that stayed as accurate as possible to the events, but gave the characters the depth and emotion that could be found in a work of fiction, hence the "non-fiction novel". In Cold Blood took six years to finish and was an incredible success when it was released. It is considered a classic today.

Capote traveled to Kansas and thoroughly researched for his book. This included many interviews with the two killers. The true accuracy of the book is debatable. As Capote interviewed Perry Smith (one of the killers), he felt a connection to Smith and a very strong friendship grew between the two of them. That would explain the sympathetic portrayal of Perry Smith in the book. During the research stage, Capote never wrote anything from his interviews down on paper or used tape recorders, so he could have easily changed events and details to suit his potential bias. It could have also been that Perry Smith put his own spin on what happened and it wasn't Capote at all. Capote would probably have been vulnerable because of his feelings for Smith. After all, if Perry Smith was capable of murder, wouldn't he be capable of being that manipulative?

After the killers were executed and In Cold Blood was published, Capote became an alcoholic for the rest of his life and never completed another book. His last, unfinished work, called Answered Prayers, begins with this quote:

"More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones."

It is sadly ironic because the publishing of In Cold Blood could be considered an answered prayer for Capote, but it left him an unhappy shell of who he once was. Or perhaps his prayer was answered, but in an unexpected way.