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The Hindu
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Hindu
The Outsider: how Frederick Forsyth used facts to inform his fiction
The conventional spy genre's analog charm has withstood the test of time largely due to its universal entertainment value. The generous helping of hair-raising action coupled with overt acts of machismo, prevalent in novels like those of Alistair MacLean feed into a primal, adrenaline-pumped, cycle of pleasure derived from doses of violence. Ian Fleming romanticised the genre, with James Bond conforming to a patriarchal society's constructions of ideal masculinity. But his characters also serve as vehicles of wish fulfilment and modes of deferred rebellion through their highly individualistic and anti-establishment tendencies. Conversely, in John le Carre's writing, the psychological impact of an existence defined by betrayal and confusion takes centre-stage. In his work, spectacle is replaced with characterisation, fantasy with reality, and sympathy with empathy. Free-flowing narratives In a genre thus alternatively populated by action and emotion, acclaimed British spy-thriller writer Frederick Forsyth's novels, much like him, identify as 'the outsiders'. Forsyth (1938-2025) does not resort to scenes of gaudy violence or high-octane fights, instead choosing understated motion and smooth efficiency as his tools of tension. His narratives are neither rigidly structured nor conventionally plotted, thereby imbuing them with a free-flowing, procedural linearity. His central characters generally cannot be boxed into the good-bad dichotomy, and often behave as emblems or caricatures rather than emotional human beings who can be empathised with. In spite — and often because — of this blatant and conscious flouting of established 'rules' and tropes, Forsyth's classic novels are not only critically acclaimed hallmarks of the genre, but also remain equally entertaining for the modern Hollywood action-addled reader base. Much of this enduring appeal and feeling of contemporaneity almost 60 years since their writing can be attributed to Forsyth's unique style of amalgamating a spy-thriller with a non-fiction novel. Also referred to as 'faction' — a portmanteau of the words fact and fiction — the non-fiction novel is characterised by its mode of presenting real historical events in a dramatic format. Forsyth's appropriation of faction largely adheres to a more developed style of the genre popularised by the likes of Truman Capote. Archetypal faction novels include Capote's InCold Blood (1965) and Norman Mailer's The Executioner's Song (1979). Forsyth, who in the 1960s worked as a journalist for Reuters and the BBC before going freelance, was not only in the epicentre of the then-rapidly emerging form of New Journalism, but also debuted as a writer with the non-fiction book The Biafra Story (1969) — one of the first eyewitness accounts of the war from a Biafran perspective. It thus comes as no surprise that when he turned towards fiction in order to make ends meet, Forsyth's proclivity towards the journalistic mode of writing imbued his thrillers with certain key non-fictional aspects. Realist fiction The Day of the Jackal (1971) opens with the dramatisation of a real-life assassination attempt on French President Charles de Gaulle by members of the OAS (Secret Army Organisation), who opposed his decision to grant freedom to Algeria. The Odessa File (1972) includes pages-upon-pages of information on the socio-political scenery of the world post the Third Reich's fall. The entire first act of The Negotiator (1989) is designed to paint an accurate and expansive picture of the geopolitical chessboard during the Gulf oil crisis, and even features real figures like Margaret Thatcher and Mikhail Gorbachev. These interludes, while language-wise dry and heavy-handed, prioritise journalistic insight and economy of words, and are purposefully designed to inform more than entertain. Forsyth's decision to thus incorporate his intricate and accurate knowledge of the inner workings of world powers and their covert operations into his novels serves not only to add to their verisimilitude and urgency, but also allows him to treat historical events as the first domino fall — Jackal's events are written as the fictional consequences of the factual failed assassination attempt. In his historical epic Shei Shomoy (1983) (Those Days), Sunil Gangopadhyay tackles an issue similar to that faced by Forsyth — writing a fictional story set in a world defined by fact. Both authors end up taking similar approaches. Gangopadhyay states in the afterword that the characters of his novel exist as emblems, meant to embody specific socio-cultural ideologies and institutions — the 'protagonist' Nobinkumar is a personification of Time itself. Similarly, Forsyth deliberately crafts one-dimensional characters, whose identities are defined by what they personify. In Jackal, The Jackal represents the Outsider, de Gaulle the Establishment, the OAS the Opposition, and Lebel the Idealist. None of them undergo a transformation, and none of them tread a character arc. Imperfect like life Historical characters and events are central to both novels, with the authors deciding to conduct their stories alongside the established course of history, often intertwining but generally not contradicting it. Similarly, both Gangopadhyay and Forsyth forego adopting any codified, traditional narrative. In both novels, the authors are unafraid to depict days passing by without any significant developments. The primary focus is always on the logical progression of events and the realistic passage of time, irrespective of the impact this has on the story beats. The original question, then, still remains — in the face of such extensive rule-breaking, why do these novels work? The answer might be simple. It is a truth undeniable that real life rarely adheres to the rules of literature. Normal people do not become heroes following a 12-step programme. The sum of our lives does not always fit squarely into character arcs. Tragedy does not discriminate between the righteous and the flawed — it comes for everyone. And because facts never die, Forsyth's fiction will not either. In essence, the 'imperfections' in his novels are perfected by the imperfections of our lived reality, and if there is any lesson to be learned from the width of the master's bibliography, it is that of spontaneity, motion, and enjoying the journey without worrying about its destination. Archisman Ghosh studies English at St. Xavier's College, Kolkata
Business of Fashion
28-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Business of Fashion
Jonathan Anderson's Grunge Aristocracy at Dior
PARIS — The enormous tent constructed in the Place Vauban for Jonathan Anderson's debut at Dior was printed with a silvery evocation of the past, a monochrome image of Christian Dior's decorous couture salon. Fast forward to the present, 75 years later. That tent had been exhaustively climate-controlled to allow for the hanging of two paintings by Jean Siméon Chardin, the 18th century artist who is regarded as the master of the still life. He was a favourite of Dior's, Anderson's too. The Chardins were his idea. So was the inspiration for the showspace, clad in velvet like the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, home to one of the finest collections of European art from the 13th to the 19th century. One Chardin came from the Louvre, the other from the National Gallery of Scotland. Reflect for a moment on the logistics involved in transporting monstrously valuable works of art to a tent packed with an unruly, heatstruck audience for one hour on a Friday afternoon in Paris and you'll maybe garner some notion of the political and financial power that a fashion conglomerate like LVMH, which owns Dior, now wields. Ah yes, the present. Dior Menswear Spring/Summer 2026. (Spotlight/ And the future? Well, for that single stretch of showtime, it rested in Anderson's hands. He's been cast as Dior's saviour in a challenging market — and is the first to oversee women's, men's and haute couture collections since Monsieur Dior himself first experimented with menswear. Unsurprisingly, Anderson has been soft-pedalling expectations. 'You have to, because no one gives anyone any time anymore,' he conceded at a preview earlier this week. In another exchange, he said, 'My idea is to be slightly optimistic, it's not going to happen overnight. We have to be realistic today.' But his attempt at lowering the temperature was clearly unsuccessful. His audience was littered with pop stars, movie stars and a full platoon of fashion peers, many of whom were on their feet at show's end. Dior Menswear Spring/Summer 2026. (Spotlight/ Anderson was insistent that Dior was something alien to him. 'It's not a character that I know.' But that's what seduced him. 'It's like buying a chateau in the South of France that you saw on a website, a very British thing to do. It's beautiful, but it needs so much renovation. You have to start somewhere, and as you go, you realise, 'Wow! It's amazing what they did in the 18th century with door handles,' and then you find the next thing and the next thing.' And those 'next things' were the years of input from all the designers who have worked for Dior over the decades. To isolate the most striking carryover from the past in Anderson's debut collection: Maria Grazia Chiuri's wildly successful book tote reappears rendered as the covers of specific titles, In Cold Blood, Bonjour Tristesse, and, luridly best of all, Dracula. ('Because it's Irish,' he said archly.) He compared the learning process to doing a PhD in Dior. What did he come away with? 'I feel the name is bigger than the individual designer. It was always like that. So that was the whole idea for me.' Dior Menswear Spring/Summer 2026. (Spotlight/ There will undoubtedly be plenty of people who look at what Anderson showed on Friday and question his concept of permanence. 'My idea was to decode it to recode it,' he explained, sort of. 'That's how the collection was built.' Take the first look, practically a manifesto in one outfit. 'How I feel I'm going to tackle men,' Anderson declared. 'Formality, history, the material, Irishness.' The cargo shorts were panniered with the extravagant folds of the Delft dress from 1948, originally carved from 15 metres of duchesse satin, duplicated for today in undyed denim. The jacket featured the classic Bar silhouette, cut here from Donegal tweed. The model sported a formal stock tie. 'An English stock,' Anderson explained, 'the French is looser. I like the idea of something that makes you lift your head up. There's an etherealness to the formality.' The shoes were based on the sandals he wore to school in the summer. In other words, a weird but winning fusion which spanned the decades between the Frenchman and the Irishman. Dior Menswear Spring/Summer 2026. (Spotlight/ 'For me, it's about a quiet radicalism,' Anderson said. 'For the customer, this is already going to be something that is pretty wild, but in my head, it's normal.' Why is it easy for me to imagine Christian Dior saying something similar 75 years ago? And if my proposed compatibility still seems like a bridge too far, there's their shared obsession with the 18th century. 'I got the guy who's been sourcing things for me for years to find me the best 18th century menswear, and then we meticulously recreated it. There was no point in changing the fit. When I saw it, I thought, 'That's Dior. Let's just put it up there as a thing.'' Like his own version of Martin Margiela's 'Replications' which he loved so much when he was starting out in fashion. Rebecca Mead's profile in the New Yorker earlier this year quoted Anderson saying this: 'Authenticity is invaluable. Originality is nonexistent. Steal, adapt, borrow. It doesn't matter where one takes things from. It's where one takes them to.' So Anderson showed his delicately toned, edibly alluring duplication of the jacket and waistcoat from an aristocrat's summer day look for the court of Louis XV with a dress shirt, black jeans and unlaced Dior trainers. Dior Menswear Spring/Summer 2026. (Spotlight/ Like that first look, it was a provocative encapsulation of the idea of personal style, or how you put things together to express yourself. A midnight blue velvet tail coat over chambray jeans, for instance. Or a delicately frogged white shirt over white jeans. Artistry and calculated artlessness, all of it set to a sensational Frederic Sanchez soundtrack that swung from Springsteen to Little Simz. Velvet, denim, sandals and a stock tie – 'I would love to be able to wear that,' Anderson said. 'Every time I've done a menswear show, I've always wanted to be able to do something I would love to be able to pull off. For me this is a fantasy, because it has to be. I find each person in the show equally attractive because I think they embody the 'thing.' I believe it, and if I believe it, then I want to dress like it.' Fashion as an act of faith: Anderson mastered that challenge at Loewe, and, if early reactions are any indication, he'll be able to translate that mastery to Dior. Dior Menswear Spring/Summer 2026. (Spotlight/ Finding the future in the past is not a particularly novel concept, but if I think for a moment that everything Anderson has done is almost like a movie, it clarifies how he was able to draw such an extraordinary cast of characters to Loewe and his own brand. One of them, director and frequent collaborator Luca Guadagnino, has been tracking him all week with a film crew. The designer talked about the looks in the show that were pure youthful street as his acknowledgement of Jean-Luc Godard and the nouvelle vague that transformed French cinema and French style, from New Look to New Wave. Anderson said it's also about him getting used to living in Paris, trying to work out what he loves about the city. 'I'm on Île Saint-Louis and there's something about this idea of tight grey corridors that have light at the end. No matter when you see people, they're always backlit. And everything looks great backlit. I find it fascinating because it feels like cinema somehow, and really that is how we approached the challenge.' Dior Menswear Spring/Summer 2026. (Spotlight/ The city is currently plastered with posters of artist Jean-Michel Basquiat and footballer Kylian Mbappé, the faces of the new Dior man (or, as Anderson says of Mbappé, 'a new vision of France'). 'I have to find a new language,' Anderson said. 'It's going to take time, and I don't want to be rushed. Anything is possible. At the end of the day, it's a job. And you always have to remind yourself that you love the work and you're gonna get the job done.' Consider this debut a great appetiser for the much more complicated meal to come. Dior Menswear Spring/Summer 2026 Dior Menswear Spring/Summer 2026 look 1. 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Yahoo
24-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Patton Oswalt Jokes His Daughter Alice, 16, Is 'Lethally Adventurous' After She Goes Swimming with Sharks
Patton Oswalt jokes his daughter is "lethally adventurous" after his daughter went swimming with sharks The actor went on to joke that his daughter has a "dark sense" of going towards danger He shares his 16-year-old daughter Alice with late wife Michelle McNamaraPatton Oswalt's daughter is not taking after her famous father. Appearing on Jimmy Kimmel Live, the actor, 56, spoke with guest host Diego Luna about his 16-year-old daughter Alice and shared that she's pretty adventurous for a teenager. 'She's like lethally adventurous. She'll always run toward the most dangerous thing she can find," Oswalt says of his daughter, whom he shares with late wife Michelle McNamara. "Last week she went swimming with sharks off of Hawaii in a cage," he continues. "Sent me footage. Like, 'I'm swimming with sharks, Dad!' I'm like, 'I don't know if you're my daughter because that is so [terrifying].' Never miss a story — sign up for to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories. However, Oswalt admits that this isn't the first time he's realized that his daughter likes to live on the wild side. 'Even when she was little, she had this dark sense of going towards danger," he says. "When she was little, she went to camp. Her mom was like, 'Now listen, when you get to camp, just send us a quick note to say, 'I'm alive.'' 'She waited two weeks and then sent us a note. And this was the note that she sent. It says 'I'm alive,'" Oswalt laughs, showing a picture of the handwritten note. "That's all she mailed us. She waited two weeks for a perfect punchline." Back in February, the actor shared how he's keeping the memory of his late wife alive for Alice. Oswalt shared with PEOPLE that he's saved all the books that inspired his late wife, true crime writer Michelle McNamara, for his teenage daughter. "I saved all the books that really influenced Michelle for her to read," he shared with PEOPLE. "A lot of authors that really landed with her, and one of them was Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, which she read and loved." "But, it's not like, here are all the true crime books you should read," he added. "It's like these are the myriad books that shaped your mom and also, which by default shaped you. So that's kind of what we're doing." Oswalt wed his late wife in 2005 and welcomed Alice four years later. McNamara died suddenly in her sleep in April 2016 at age 46 from a combination of prescription medications and an undiagnosed heart condition. Oswalt has since remarried, tying the knot with Meredith Salenger in November 2017. Read the original article on People
Yahoo
25-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
The first rule of ICE Club? Don't talk about ICE Club. And treat all migrants as criminals.
A bird sits on a security fence at the Chase County Detention Facility in 2021. (Max McCoy/Kansas Reflector) Jails are hard places made necessary by people like Ernest Hoefgen. Few are likely to remember Hoefgen now, but back in September 1943 the 31-year-old escaped from the city jail at Cottonwood Falls. He'd been picked up for assault, according to newspaper accounts, and was using an alias. In reality, Hoefgen was an escapee from the Texas state prison at Huntsville, where he had been serving a life sentence for murder. Stick with me, because this is not a story about a murder that took place eight decades ago, but about due process in America in 2025. I've been thinking a lot lately about the Constitutional guarantee of due process, which means everyone should have access to fair and adequate legal proceedings when the government threatens to deprive us of life, liberty or property. This is regardless of what Kristi Noem, director of Homeland Security, may say it and habeas corpus are. Our thinking about courts and jails and their role in American society has been shaped by Hoefgen and other criminals like him. The reason 'In Cold Blood' stays with us, apart from Truman Capote's writing, is that it's a story of a farm family in western Kansas who were murdered in a sensational way. It leaves us asking, why? Movies, books and television also tend to blur our thinking about who is a criminal and who is not. If you're in jail — or a detention center, as they're likely called now — you must be a criminal, right? Well, no. There are plenty of people being processed in our jails right now who have committed no crime but who have violated relatively minor civil codes, comparable to getting a ticket from the city for the height of your grass. But unlike policing lawn care, there's a gold rush related to immigration enforcement. There's a billion-dollar detention industry hungry to fill beds with Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees, and civil liberties are being eroded in the process. ICE doesn't like to talk about how much it pays facilities, or to have any of its contractors talk about how much they make per day for each detainee. Apparently, the first rule of ICE club is don't talk about ICE club. But let's talk first about how jails are supposed to function. In 1938, Hoefgen killed carpenter George Richet with a hatchet from Richet's own toolbox. Hoefgen and a teenage girlfriend, Sylvia Phipps, were hitchhiking near Wichita Falls when the carpenter gave them a lift, according to the Associated Press. Hoefgen later told investigators he didn't know why he killed Richet, who still had $8 in cash when his body was found by railway workers. The case remained unsolved for two years. Both Hoefgen and Phipps were later picked up on forgery charges at Scottsbluff, Nebraska, found guilty, and sentenced to prison. In 1940, Phipps told the matron at the women's reformatory she wanted to talk to investigators because she had witnessed the killing of Richet in Texas. When questioned, Hoefgen confessed. We know all this about Hoefgen because of due process. The evidence against him was carefully detailed in court filings, he had advice from lawyers, and his court proceedings were open to the public and the press. Hoefgen was sent to Huntsville to serve his life sentence, but he escaped — twice. After the second escape, he ran back to his home state of Kansas, where he married a local girl named Pauline and got into trouble at Cottonwood Falls. After escaping from the city jail, he stole another car and picked up a hitchhiker, 18-year-old Kansas State University student Bruce Smoll. When Smoll became suspicious, according to a United Press story, Hoefgen shot him to death. Rabbit hunters found the body a month later in a cornfield near Peabody, about 40 miles southwest of Cottonwood Falls. Based on a hunch from Smoll's father that Hoefgen may have been involved in his son's death, and tips from Pauline's parents, investigators found Hoefgen living in Denver and returned him to Marion County, where he was charged with Smoll's murder. Hoefgen's story is full of odd details that, if you put them in a movie, would shatter the audience's suspension of disbelief. When he and Phipps were in the county jail at Gering, Nebraska, awaiting trial on the forgery charges, they allegedly hatched a ridiculous jailbreak plot by hiding notes to one another in bananas and tomatoes. My interest in Hoefgen is because his last murderous jail escape began in Cottonwood Falls. The Chase County Detention Center at Cottonwood Falls has received attention lately as being the last and largest ICE-contracted jail facility in Kansas. The 148-bed facility was built to turn a profit for this central Kansas county of 2,500, and it has been mostly full since the mass deportations began under the Trump administration. Back in 2021 and again earlier this month, I wrote about my discomfort with a picturesque Kansas county profiting from the misery of ICE detentions. Four years ago, the rate paid per day of inmate detention was $62. Curious about how much Chase County is now receiving to house detainees, I filed a Kansas Open Records Act request for the facility contract. I was told to take a hike. 'Due to being a federal contracted agency,' Sheriff Jacob Welsh wrote in an email, 'there are contract restrictions which I am not allowed to disclose any information about the contract.' Requests, he said, were to be sent directly to ICE. Welsh did not respond to a request to cite the KORA exemption he felt applied in the situation or to provide the language in the federal contract that forbade him from discussing the contract. I did contact ICE for the contract but received an automated out-of-office reply from spokeswoman Yasmeen Pitts O'Keefe. The email said she would respond when she returned 'Monday, May 21.' As of Friday, I had not received a response from O'Keefe or any other ICE representative. Max Kautsch, a First Amendment lawyer at Lawrence, told me that Welsh's responses showed a lack of concern for open records and state law. 'The sheriff's response violates the Kansas Open Records Act,' Kautsch said, 'because he does not 'cite the specific provision of law' authorizing denial of the request,' which he must do under Kansas law. There are legitimate exemptions to KORA that allow the use of federal law to deny requests, such as how public universities can deny some requests for student information under Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. 'If the sheriff insists on denying the request based on guidance he's received from the federal government, he must come clear to the public and cite that authority, as KORA requires,' Kautsch said. 'He also would need to explain why he is unable to produce even a redacted version of the requested records.' Welsh's response raises concerns about open government. 'These circumstances suggest, at a minimum, that the sheriff is indifferent to open records laws, attention to detail, or both,' Kautsch said. 'That conclusion is bolstered by the fact that the inmate information portal on the sheriff's website says access to records held by the Chase County Jail is purportedly governed by the 'Kentucky Open Records Act.' Their office is in Cottonwood Falls, Kansas. If the sheriff's office can't be bothered to properly identity its own state law on its own website, perhaps it is to be expected that it wouldn't know how to respond to a KORA request, either.' Why Kentucky? I don't know. Perhaps the template for the inmate portal was borrowed from the Muhlenberg County Detention Center. To get a better understanding of what ICE detainees at Chase County and elsewhere go through, I contacted Kansas City, Missouri, immigration attorney Michael Sharma-Crawford. For years, Sharma-Crawford told me, Chase County was the only immigration detention facility for most of Kansas and Missouri. There are now more counties being contracted, he said, especially in Missouri. In Kansas, for-profit CoreCivic is attempting to repurpose a shuttered prison in Leavenworth for ICE detention, but it has faced legal challenges and has not yet opened. The issue with the current wave of detainments, Sharma-Crawford said, is the speed at which deportations are being carried out and the difficulty in tracking cases through the system. Migrants are typically given a handful of documents upon their arrest containing the specifics against them. Without access to those papers, it's difficult for an immigration attorney to evaluate a case, he said, or to track a migrant's case online. In many instances, he said, jails meant to house criminal detainees are unprepared to deal with civil immigration cases. He commended Chase County on being willing to fax immigration documents to attorneys, while allowing the detainees to keep the originals, and to facilitate attorney-client phone calls. 'I'd take 12 Chase Counties compared to other facilities,' Sharma-Crawford said. Access to legal counsel is an important Sixth Amendment right, he said, and this is especially important when deportation may now occur three weeks or less from the time of arrest. 'If you're from Mexico, you have to move quickly,' he advised. 'If you don't know what your status is, you should talk to an immigration attorney.' He also suggested having important documents, like birth certificates, at the ready, and being prepared to seek a second legal opinion when necessary. Sharma-Crawford said the immigration system was broken and that things were building to a chaotic crescendo. The administration's goal, he said, is to artificially clog the system and then claim it is impractical to give every detainee a hearing. But as late Justice Antonin Scalia said, due process applies to everyone. It's something average Americans should take to heart, no matter where they were born. It's something that is being lost among the current rhetoric about crime and immigration. The vast majority of ICE detainees, he said, are held on civil charges. 'I don't defend people against criminal charges,' Sharma-Crawford said. If we don't protect the due process rights of migrants now, he said, we might be denying due process for everyday civil infractions tomorrow, such as allowing your grass to grow too high. 'At some point, this leads to abbreviated trials' and other erosions of due process, he said. The prospect of CoreCivic opening a thousand-bed facility at Leavenworth terrifies him. The previous prison operated by CoreCivic in Leavenworth was described as a 'hell hole' of abuse and mismanagement. The city of Leavenworth sued to stop the facility from being reopened as an ICE detention facility, but on Thursday a federal judge dismissed the case. While Chase County did not provide answers to my questions about how lucrative its ICE contract was, a 2024 report by the American Immigration Council provides some clues. It estimated the average daily rate for detention to be $237 per person, with single adults spending an average of 55 days in detention. The rate for Chase County, of course, might differ. But with nobody willing to talk, who knows? Communities such as Cottonwood Falls and Leavenworth must weigh the price of monetizing ICE detainment in the age of Trump against the fundamental American values of fairness and compassion. Leavenworth wouldn't directly share in the per-day rate as Chase County does, but there is the lure of jobs and economic development. It is a devil's bargain, a Faustian pact, the civic equivalent of 30 pieces of silver. Back in 1943, Hoefgen pleaded guilty in Marion County District Court to the murder of K-State student Smoll. He was sentenced to death. Hoefgen was hanged shortly after 1 a.m. Friday, March 10, 1944, on a newly constructed gallows in a warehouse at the Kansas State Penitentiary at Lansing. His last meal had been fried chicken. He declined requests to speak to reporters and showed little emotion as he was led up the 13 fated steps, an eyewitness from the Associated Press reported. Hoefgen was the first person to be executed by Kansas since 1870. The death penalty is currently legal in Kansas, but it hasn't been used since 1965. The most notorious murderers executed at the Lansing gallows were 'In Cold Blood' killers Dick Hickok and Perry Smith. While it's easy to see the story of Hoefgen as that of a criminal who got what he deserved, it's also a saga of Constitutional due process. He was repeatedly brought before the courts in the downward spiral of his life, afforded lawyers, treated humanely and even given fruit while in custody. Whether you agree with capital punishment or not, there was no abbreviation of justice. County jails were typically places where criminal defendants were sent to await their trials or where those convicted of misdemeanor crimes served sentences of a year or less. They were not places for defendants in civil cases. Criminal cases can result in punishment that includes jail time, while civil cases typically involve settling disputes. The migrants now being rushed through the deportation pipeline deserve the full protection of due process. If we deny them legal representation and access to courts by accelerating their cases through a broken system, we are betraying core American values. We risk turning justice into an unthinking machine run by idealogues and fueled by the monetization of detainment. It is either due process for all, or due process for none. Max McCoy is an award-winning author and journalist. Through its opinion section, the Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.
Express Tribune
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Express Tribune
Cold blood, warm attachments
The human psyche has always been an interesting subject, one that allows us to question what we are supposed to understand about ourselves. While reading Truman Capote's In Cold Blood might leave one in shock and disgust at the human psyche, but perhaps what is even more shocking is Capote's thought process while he was writing this novel and his connection to the murderers. The book in itself was a 'grand literary experiment' but a closer analysis allows us to explore the various themes in this book such as Capote's views, the book's themes, its structure, and the portrayal of characters. In his 1968 interview about his book, Capote confesses he knew the murderers 'better than they knew themselves' and that he wanted 'the film to be shot in the Clutter home.' This depicts Capote's connection with the two killers because of his interactions with them and his emotional attachment with Perry which was truly fascinating, because it makes me realise that Capote wrote the novel as an omniscient narrator, but was never really objective while writing. It was only after watching the interview, did I come to the realisation that Capote might have been an unreliable narrator. While he did follow a traditional journalistic style when it came to reporting the facts of the case and offered deep insights into the characters' lives, the fact that he interviewed the killers and was somehow associated with them depicts that he himself might have been emotionally or mentally troubled. This was quite interesting because I wasn't just interested in psycho-analysing Dick and Perry, I was also interested in psycho-analysing Capote because I started to notice that maybe he's presenting certain personal qualities — like having a traumatic childhood or being emotionally sensitive — through Perry's character and other themes in the novel. Reading this book felt like following a thriller movie that follows a typical storyline where you start off with the perfect American family and the American dream, how that is suddenly shattered, and then you have the entire investigation process. As someone who loves to watch psychological thrillers, this was a great piece of nonfiction for me because it is something that I enjoyed reading (while ignoring the chilling fact that Capote is closely attached to the killers) and it followed a proper structure that evokes emotions in the readers. The book is structured in such a way that it builds suspense as you read through it and this is done through the use of dramatic irony (the fact that the readers know that the Clutters are about to die), the pacing of the book (alternating facts and extended scenes in the first two chapters), and the use of descriptive words and imagery. Before I elaborate upon this, just the fact that Capote does not directly begin with the killer's plan and rather paints this cozy image of the Clutters, allows the readers to empathise with the family and portrays them as people rather than mere victims of a crime. Moreover, as a reader you are already familiar with the tragic inevitability right from the beginning because Capote uses phrases such as 'unaware that it would be his last,' and the title of his first chapter is literally 'The Last To See Them Alive'. This creates a constant atmosphere of tension and suspense where you are waiting for the tragic event to unfold. Capote's writing style was something that appealed to me because he incorporates various forms of descriptive and creative imagery in his pieces. Right from the beginning of the novel, he uses words such as 'aimless,' 'haphazard,' 'stark,' 'falling-apart post office' and the 'depot with peeling sulphur-coloured paint' and 'flaking' to describe various elements of the town. This parallelism between nature and the setting with the events in the book, has been a great technique when it comes to writing. While reading this piece, I instantly remembered Shakespeare's Macbeth and how nature started to revolt against Macbeth when he was going to commit the murders with the winds howling and the weather changing to something terrible. This idea of nature somehow responding to one's criminal activities is fascinating and reflected in Capote's description of the town. Capote does begin the novel with words such as "the hard-blue skies,' and 'desert-clear air,' which later contrasts with the physical description of the town. Additionally, the physical decay of the town also mirrors the moral decay that is going to happen as the story proceeds and this depicts the idea of how nature or the setting closely follows the events that happen in a literary piece. The book focuses on certain themes such as the American dream (appearance vs reality), trauma, relationship dynamics, murder, and justice which are depicted through the characters and their interactions with each other. Analysing the idea of the American dream as presented in the book, the readers are introduced to this perfect American family and it seems like the family they introduce in American movies as we can tell by Capote's description, 'whereupon Nancy had behaved like one; curtsying in her hoop-skirted costume, she had asked if she might drive into Garden City. The State Theatre was having a special, eleven-thirty, Friday-the-thirteenth "Spook Show," and all her friends were going. In other circumstances Mr Clutter would have refused. His laws were laws, and one of them was: Nancy and Kenyon too must be home by ten on week nights, by twelve on Saturdays. But weakened by the genial events of the evening, he had consented' (Capote 8). As a reader, one can tell that the Clutter's life deeply contrasts with Dick and Perry's past and present life. It could be said that Capote is trying to shed light upon a systematic issue regarding class differences in America and might be criticising the concept of the American dream. While America is the 'land of opportunity and freedom' and the American dream stands for equality, that is not the reality as depicted through Dick and Perry's lives. Belonging to low income households and suffering from different traumas, Capote depicts how negative experiences and lack of opportunities shape a person's future in America and questions the credibility of the American dream. Moreover, Capote presents Dick and Perry's relationship as a complicated one and the progression of their relationship throughout the book was interesting to analyse. As readers, we are aware that Perry has had a rough past and seems to be a bit more emotional than Dick as observed through his actions and his constant anxiety after committing the murders. In comparison, Dick is presented as a macho man who does not appear to exhibit any emotion and often looks down upon Perry by referring to him using nicknames such as 'baby' and 'sugar'. While reading their interactions and noticing Dick's use of these nicknames towards a grown man, it constantly felt like Dick was more dominant and assertive and would be condescending towards Perry. And throughout all of this, it seemed as if Perry simply ignored or accepted Dick's attitude towards him because he might have been slightly attached to Perry. However, we also observe Dick's blatant disregard for Perry when he claims that Perry was the one who committed the killings. As a reader, I sympathised with Perry at that moment. Additionally, there were other instances in the book where I realised that I did sympathise with Perry and was channeling all of my anger at Dick because maybe Capote presented the characters in this way. It led me to question whether Capote did this on purpose and did try to paint a less evil version of Perry. This book was a very different kind of read. Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, John Hersey's Hiroshima, and other pieces of non-fiction that I enjoyed reading as much as this, because they don't incorporate that element of suspense and thrill that Capote manages to create. While these other texts focus on different themes and ideas, Capote's blending of traditional journalism with creative writing and nonfiction makes this novel interesting and something that one enjoys reading. Syeda Fizza Jafri is a media student and freelance writer. All facts and information are the sole responsibility of the writer.
