Representing Reality

I'm reading Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. It isn't a book to be taken lightly. Review tomorrow.

But I have something to say about it today. It's dark. Obviously, since it's based on true events, and Capote doesn't going to extremes to make it worse than it is. These guys were just really messed up, and that is what makes the book both fascinating and horrifying.

So today I've been finishing it. There I was, lying in my bed, taking it all in, and I realized that it was having an effect on me. My own thoughts were quite dark...the thoughts I was having about my own life, that is, and I felt a sense of hopelessness. I felt like I was a bad person, that maybe I had more in common with these men who coldly killed a family than I thought.

I had yet to finish the story, but I put the book down for a while. And then something inside me said it's not you, but it is the book. The book was having an impact on how I felt because these men were so bad and what they did and how they did it was so horrible. I still finished it (I only had about fifty pages or less to go at that point). But now I feel more aware of what I want to read and why I want to read it, and I think that I should be more careful in the future of what I do choose to put into my mind.

Don't get me wrong. The book is well written, and I don't think Capote was trying to be either sensationalistic or opportunistic when he wrote it. He was very objective, in my opinion, anyway. But it doesn't change the fact that it is a story about a very cold blooded twosome, and now I need to read something uplifting to get the taste out of my mouth. And maybe, even if a story is true, and maybe, even it that same story is compelling and interesting, maybe not all reality needs to be represented. I'm not sure. In any case, I'm much more aware of the impact such stories have on my own psyche, and I'm going to be careful what I read in the future.