Compelling literary analysis featuring a unique personal perspective on the material.
The latest in the Bookmarked series is an examination of the book that left an indelible legacy while launching a new genre.
In Cold Blood was a popular sensation even before it was published, via the publicity surrounding its serialization in the New Yorker, to whom Capote had suggested a piece about the effect of the murders on the survivors and the community. The author expanded his reporting—with crucial assistance from childhood friend Harper Lee—into a very different book, one that focused more on the murderers and seemed to romanticize one of them. Its veracity was questionable, its impact and influence undeniable. St. Germain acknowledges the impact of the book on his academic career and writing as well as its prominent place in the literary landscape. “Capote spiked a vein,” writes the author, “and out came a stream of imitators, a whole bloody genre, one of the most popular forms of American nonfiction: true crime.” St. Germain also notes how Capote created America’s “love affair with killers,” which brings up a deeply personal wound: His mother was murdered, by his stepfather, and he spent his formative years as a writer trying to avoid the subject before tackling it head-on in Son of a Gun, his outstanding memoir. “As a piece of writing, a piece of art, [In Cold Blood] is almost perfect,” writes the author. “As journalism, it’s a sensationalized, unethical disaster. As an act of documentary, a historical account, it’s appallingly biased….I hate its legacy. The problem isn’t that Capote fell in love with a murderer. The problem is that everyone else did, too.” Taking readers through the book, the movie, the journalism and documentaries surrounding it, and his own trip to Kansas to bear witness, St. Germain effectively shows how Capote glorified the killers and where he invented certain elements to advance the story.
Compelling literary analysis featuring a unique personal perspective on the material.Pub Date: March 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-63246-123-0
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Ig Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.
The iconic model tells the story of her eventful life.
According to the acknowledgments, this memoir started as "a fifty-page poem and then grew into hundreds of pages of…more poetry." Readers will be glad that Anderson eventually turned to writing prose, since the well-told anecdotes and memorable character sketches are what make it a page-turner. The poetry (more accurately described as italicized notes-to-self with line breaks) remains strewn liberally through the pages, often summarizing the takeaway or the emotional impact of the events described: "I was / and still am / an exceptionally / easy target. / And, / I'm proud of that." This way of expressing herself is part of who she is, formed partly by her passion for Anaïs Nin and other writers; she is a serious maven of literature and the arts. The narrative gets off to a good start with Anderson’s nostalgic memories of her childhood in coastal Vancouver, raised by very young, very wild, and not very competent parents. Here and throughout the book, the author displays a remarkable lack of anger. She has faced abuse and mistreatment of many kinds over the decades, but she touches on the most appalling passages lightly—though not so lightly you don't feel the torment of the media attention on the events leading up to her divorce from Tommy Lee. Her trip to the pages of Playboy, which involved an escape from a violent fiance and sneaking across the border, is one of many jaw-dropping stories. In one interesting passage, Julian Assange's mother counsels Anderson to desexualize her image in order to be taken more seriously as an activist. She decided that “it was too late to turn back now”—that sexy is an inalienable part of who she is. Throughout her account of this kooky, messed-up, enviable, and often thrilling life, her humility (her sons "are true miracles, considering the gene pool") never fails her.
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2023
ISBN: 9780063226562
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
SEEN & HEARD
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
