Chapter summaries Alexandra Petri's US History Alexandra Petri

Chapter 67 Summary: “In Cold Blood If Truman Capote Didn’t Think the Murderer Guy Was Kind of Hot”

⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This guide contains detailed spoilers for the entire novel. Proceed only if you've finished reading or are comfortable knowing the plot.

Summary

Alexandra Petri re-imagines Truman Capote’s landmark true-crime book In Cold Blood through a modern comedic lens. The central premise is that Capote’s famously obsessive reporting on the 1959 Clutter family murders was fuelled less by journalistic duty and more by his personal crush on one of the killers, Perry Smith. Petri exaggerates Capote’s reported attachment, turning the narrative into a one-sided love story. The chapter parodies the self-serious tone of the original while exposing the awkward, unspoken attraction that Capote allegedly harboured. It suggests that the entire nonfiction novel might have been an elaborate excuse to share a car ride, a motel room, or a meaningful glance with Smith. Petri folds in anachronistic voice, internet-era slang, and absurd hypotheticals (“What if Capote just wanted to kiss him?”) to puncture the myth of objective crime writing. The result is a cheeky revisionist history that reframes a pillar of American literature as a badly disguised crush, forcing readers to reconsider how author bias—especially romantic or physical attraction—can shape the stories we tell about violence.

Key Events

Petri recontextualises Capote’s research trip – The journey to Kansas is presented not as a fact-finding mission but as a road trip fueled by personal interest in Smith.
The Clutter murder scene is quickly glossed – Petri focuses on Capote’s reactions rather than the crime itself, emphasizing his fixation over the violence.
Capote and Smith’s prison interviews become awkward romantic encounters – Every conversation is reinterpreted as flirting, with Capote reading subtext into Smith’s words.
The “cold blood” title is repurposed – Petri suggests the real cold blood was Capote’s dispassionate treatment of the victims compared to his warmth toward the murderer.
The hanging scene is recast as a breakup – Smith’s execution is framed as the tragic end of an unrequited crush, not a legal punishment.
A meta reflection at the end – Petri steps back to ask what it means that the most famous American crime book may have been a love story in disguise.

Character Development

This chapter does not develop characters in the traditional novelistic sense. Instead, Truman Capote and Perry Smith are satirised as archetypes:

Truman Capote: Portrayed as a writer whose professional objectivity is a thin mask for romantic fixation. He is obsessive, awkward, and comically unaware of his own biases. The chapter frames him as a crush-stricken teenager rather than a literary genius.
Perry Smith: Remains a largely silent object of desire. His violent history is downplayed, and he is described through Capote’s adoring eyes—artistic, sensitive, misunderstood. Petri exaggerates the real Smith’s charisma to make the parody land.
The Clutter family and legal system: Pushed to the background. They serve as obstacles to Capote’s fantasy, not as people with their own stories.

Because the chapter is a parody, the “development” is really a flattening of historical figures into comedic masks that reveal one possible hidden motive behind Capote’s work.

Themes, Symbols, or Motifs

Objectivity versus subjectivity in true crime: The chapter argues that every true-crime narrative is coloured by the author’s emotions. Capote’s alleged crush becomes a symbol for all the unconfessed biases that shape reporting.
The “male gaze” repurposed: Petri flips the usual dynamic by having a gay male author gaze at a male killer, subverting the typical heterosexual attraction often implied in crime coverage.
Irony of the title: In Cold Blood originally denotes the killers’ lack of emotion. Petri reinterprets it as Capote’s cold dismissal of everyone except Smith, highlighting how selective empathy can distort a story.
Absurdity as critique: By taking Capote’s crush to its logical extreme, Petri exposes the absurdity of treating any murderer as a romantic figure. The chapter is both a laugh and a warning.
Meta-commentary on literary fame: Capote’s book made him a celebrity; the chapter suggests that the book’s success may owe as much to the author’s emotional investment as to its literary merit.

Why This Chapter Matters

Though brief, Chapter 67 performs several important functions in Alexandra Petri’s US History:

It satirises a canonical text, using humour to challenge the reverence often granted to In Cold Blood. Petri reminds us that no historical or literary account is purely factual.
It explores the ethics of true crime writing, asking whether it is ever appropriate to sympathise with a killer at the expense of victims. This echoes ongoing debates about the “murderer as celebrity” phenomenon.
It recenters the author’s perspective, which is a recurring theme in the book: how personal desires, identity, and prejudice shape the history we record.
It provides a comedic breather, balancing the darker chapters with levity, while still delivering a sharp critique of American media and literary culture.
It references a real-world controversy—Capote’s documented closeness to Smith—and amplifies it for comic effect, making readers reconsider what they thought they knew about the case.

In short, the chapter uses parody to dismantle a sacred cow, forcing readers to re‑examine the motives behind one of the twentieth century’s most celebrated works of nonfiction.

Study Questions & Answers

Question: How does Petri’s chapter critique the concept of objective journalism in In Cold Blood? Answer: By exaggerating Capote’s personal attraction to Perry Smith, Petri argues that every journalist brings biases to their work. Capote’s “objective” account is reframed as a love letter, suggesting that true crime can never be fully neutral—especially when the author becomes emotionally invested in a subject.
Question: Why does Petri choose to focus on Capote’s crush rather than the Clutter family murders? Answer: She uses the crush as a satirical device to expose the uncomfortable underbelly of the original book: that Capote spent far more time with Smith than with the victims. The focus on attraction is a deliberate distortion that highlights how the killer can become the story’s protagonist at the expense of those killed.
Question: What does the chapter imply about the relationship between author identity and historical narrative? Answer: The chapter suggests that an author’s sexuality, personal desires, and identity inevitably shape the stories they choose to tell and how they tell them. Capote’s queer identity (and the closeted nature of mid‑century America) may have influenced his empathy for an outsider like Smith. Petri’s parody makes this influence explicit, arguing that history is always a product of the historian’s own lens.