After looking into the key points and what the book is about I want to look into the background of the writer himself to see if this can help aid my design. I also want to look at the period of time that the murders happened in to see whether that will impact my style.
In Cold Blood was first published in January 1966, detailing the 1959 murders.
Truman Capote:
An American professional writer from Louisiana, he began making waves with his debut novel Other Voices, Other Rooms. His novella Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1958) was adapted into a popular film, and his book In Cold Blood (1966) was a pioneering form of narrative non-fiction. Capote spent his later years pursuing celebrity and struggled with drug addiction. He died in 1984 in Los Angeles, California.
While researching and interviewing people for In Cold Blood, Truman, with his flamboyant personality and style, had a hard time initially getting himself into his subjects' good graces. He worked with his friend Harper Lee to write about the impact of the murder of 4 members of the Clutter family on their small farming community. Lee and Capote managed to interview the suspects of the murder. Hickock and Smith hoped that Capote would help them escape the hangman's noose and were upset to hear that the book's title was In Cold Blood, which indicated that the murders had been premeditated.
In Cold Blood became a huge hit, both critically and commercially. Capote used a number of techniques usually found in fiction to bring this true story to life for his readers. It was first serialised in The New Yorker in four issues with readers anxiously awaiting each gripping instalment. When it was published as a book, In Cold Blood was an instant best-seller.
Capote had however been affected by the journey that In Cold Blood had taken him on, and he was never the same, psychologically and physically. He turned to substance abuse to calm his nerves.
(http://www.biography.com/people/truman-capote-9237547#in-cold-blood)
Historical Events in 1960's America:
- The Great Society (John F Kennedy)
- The war in Vietnam
- The fight for civil rights
- The radical 60's
- Post-war economic boom
Holcomb Kansas:
Small farming town with a close knit community.
Psychedelic 60's:
The psychedelic movement began in the mid 1960’s and had an effect, not just on music, but also on many aspects of popular culture. This included style of dress, language and the way people spoke, art, literature and philosophy.
The name “psychedelic” refers to drugs that were popular with the youth culture of the time. The visual motifs of psychedelic art include Art Nouveau-inspired curvilinear shapes, illegible hand-drawn type, and intense optical colour vibration inspired by the pop art movement.
Op art, short for Optical art, is a style of abstraction that relies on geometric shapes, lines, and colour juxtapositions to create optical illusions for the viewer. Gaining popularity in the 1960s, such art often features patterns, grids, and effects like curving or diminishing objects. The Op art movement was driven by artists who were interested in investigating various perceptual effects.
Pop art and pop culture refers to the products of the mass media evolving in the late 1950s and 60s and also to the works of art that draw upon popular culture: packaging, television, advertisements, comic books, the cinema. Pop art attempted to break down the barriers between high (old-fashioned) art and contemporary culture.
(https://visualartsdepartment.wordpress.com/psychedelic-60s/)
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