The Generated Truth: Capote's Lexicon

Since I started reading In Cold Blood I haven't been able to ignore that my vocabulary skills are way beneath an author's such a Truman Capote's. There are many books, especially the type I've read as a kid, in which few words that I don't know appear and when they do, they play an unimportant role in the sentence so you can just read over them or get their meaning from the context. It's worked so far for me to look up occasionally a word in my laptop's or kindle's dictionary for the sake of curiosity, but for this book I've had to actually learn the meaning of words I didn't know for me to get some sort of understanding of Capote's work. As I'm still reading the beginning of the book, a lot of what Capote writes is characterization or description of the characters and the setting, building up the scene for the awaited homicide to happen. Unlike a news report or journalistic writing, the book, composed by feature articles, shows the events in a juicer way. Nancy isn't just a straight-A student or a cat-loving loser, she's a girl who values her gold watch under her cat and her going-steady ring. She helps her acquaintances learn baking or organize school activities. Then there's Kenyon, who more than just a woodworker liked to go spend time alone in the basement. Capote's way of writing (his syntax, tone and register) makes the scenes he shows deeper in meaning and simply more vivid. So far in the book as much has happened to write a paragraph for a typical journalistic report on the crime, but the author goes beyond the simple facts that would make the subjects stereotypes and depicts them as real people the reader wants to understand. A diverse diction and specific words that portray the situation make In Cold Blood a more critical way of showing what happened in Holocomb, Kansas.

By reading random sentences throughout the book, I realized that the writing style and understanding it is essential for apprehension of the book. For example, this sentence would have no meaning for me had I not looked up the definition of many words: "An itinerant buffalo hunter, Mr. C. J. (Buffalo) Jones, had much to do with its subsequent expansion from a collection of huts and hitching posts into an opulent ranching center with razzle-dazzle saloons, an opera house, and the plushiest hotel anywhere between Kansas City and Denver" (pg. 32). If reading it quickly, I would have gotten that the town grew and became sort of a sophisticated place with an opera. While I wouldn't have been wrong, I would've missed out on a lot of the essence of the sentence. The town grew from a Midwest settlement that started out from travelers who lived in huts and traded what they hunted. It became an extravagant southern village, I assume that with a New Orleans style, and now, it's a place where two criminals pass by and barely notice it. Olathe is not the subject of the book but Capote's description of it shows how communicative writing gets to the reader. Other "simpler" sentences are as well expressive because of Capote's techniques. Capote writes, "Herb was hard-headed, a slow man to make a deal; Johnson had worked over a year to clinch this sale" (pg. 47). As he juxtaposes the characters, Capote describes the situation, rather than just saying, "Johnson had worked hard to make this deal with Mr. Clutter." As most books do, In Cold Blood begins with describing the setting and the characters that will matter in the rest of the book, and the way Capote does it gives a deeper understanding of what is happening. Aspects like word choice or syntax give what would seem like simple sentences an implied meaning.

These are the words I had to look up in the last fifteen pages I read (between pages 30 to 45 approximately):

Opulent: luxurious, lavish.