More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones

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「The enemy was anyone who was someone he wanted to be or who had anything he wanted to have.」 I think when Truman Capote wrote down this sentence in his famous work In Cold Blood, he was likely to know that his own enemy was not Nelle Harper Lee or her To Kill a Mockingbird, or his writer boyfriend, or any other people. His sole enemy that needed killing was his own conscience and morals screaming inside of him. Betrayal was such an ugly word, and Truman Capote, as a well-known author and a respected upper-class man, wanted to have nothing to do with it. But how could he resist the temptation of being THE author that could potentially change people’s writing forever, and the fame and fortune that came along with it? After all, he needed all that to convince himself that he was not a loser, nothing like the ruthless murderer Perry. He was a smooth talker (with a high-pithed voice), an excellent joke teller (with obvious camp mannerisms), a suave socialite who was desperate for people’s attention, praise and admiration. He was somebody, a success.

But Perry’s miserable, traumatized childhood was a reminder of his own. He was still that poor abandoned kid no matter how high he was up on the social ladder. He could feel the strong connection between them two, so he couldn』t help being nice to him. So natural, wasn』t it? Indeed, he made friends with Perry partly because he wanted to use him to serve his own purpose (to write a book about Perry and make himself legendary), but the natural bond formed on the basis of their similar experiences was also undeniably right there, making him soft and weak. In Truman’s own words, 「It’s as if Perry and I grew up in the same house, and one day he stood up and went out the back door, while I went out the front.」, and that seemed to make all the difference.

Perry was not some heartless axeman or anti-social psychopath. He even tried to talk Dick out of this robbery thing. He lost it because Mr. Clutter treated him as a merciless, disgusting pest even though he had done something nice for him and his families -- to put a pillow under his tied-up son’s head to make him feel more comfortable for example. He had not meant any slaughter before Mr. Clutter’s contemptuous look was cast upon him, which greatly hurt his long-broken self-esteem. Perry apparently didn』t see himself as a cold-blooded murderer, so when he heard that Truman’s book was entitled In Cold Blood, he felt wounded and betrayed because a) he had been being lied to the whole time and b) he had thought that Truman was the only trusted friend who truly understood him but to his disappointment Truman just turned out to be like everyone else -- regarding him as inhumane.

Truman went to Perry’s execution. At least he summoned up his courage to face him and say farewell in the end, but I am sure that this horrified scene would appear time and time again in his worst nightmare, or perhaps even keep him awake all night.

Does any one of us really wish to have a plain, ordinary life in the first place? Or we just compromise or delude or comfort ourselves when we don』t have what it takes to lead a glamorous and enviable one. If I got the look and charisma, why wouldn』t or shouldn』t I use them to be a Casanova? If I were luckily endowed with the flair and the opportunity as Truman Capote -- to author a book that would be a milestone in literature history and overshadow all my contemporary writers, I couldn』t see why I would walk away from it. Call it greed, lust, vanity, or whatever you want to, but it’s human nature to be one of those things. We are gregarious, so recognition becomes vital to our survival. It is as much a curse as a blessing.

How far would one go to attain what he desires? Truman Capote urgently wanted an execution of Perry so his book would have an effective ending. He reminds me of the teacher in the movie Dans La Maison, who probably in nature was a voyeur (but who isn』t anyway?) that lost his moral compass and encouraged his student to spy on a family to feed his sick curiosity and relieve the agony caused by his own inability to write a good book. But we always have to pay for what we』ve done eventually. No wonder we have created a higher being that would have mercy upon us. Redemption or repentance is for every one of us sinners.