In five days, Holcomb, Kansas will mark the fiftieth anniversary of the deaths of the Clutter family — Herb and Bonnie and their two youngest children, Kenyon and Nancy — at the hands of Richard Hickok and Perry Smith. The crime rocked the sleepy little town, and served as the catalyst of an entirely new literary genre — the nonfiction novel.

That book, In Cold Blood, revolutionized crime writing, and its author, Truman Capote — already quite well known in literary circles — became a household name.  Capote befriended several Holcomb residents in his research for the book, and even invited several of them to his infamous Black and White Ball, the party of the century.

And the residents of Holcomb now say they wish the book had never been written.

OK, really? Really, Holcomb?

I don’t know why this inflames me so much. Intellectually I understand the source of the conflict. The good people of Holcomb thought Capote was writing a factual piece of journalism.  They didn’t understand what he set out to do — nothing less than invent a new genre by telling a true story by using fictional techniques. So, the result shocked them. Capote had people saying things they never said, doing things they didn’t do, and I imagine that was quite a surprise.

But Capote did not dishonor the Clutters’ memory. He made a monument to them that lives on to this day. (Come on, how many people really needed to click on those links I provided up there in the first paragraph?)

I wonder how much of the “reviling” going on in Holcomb is directed more at Capote’s friendship with the killers. He became fairly close to Smith, and while he never really got on with Hickok in the same way, he did spend a lot of time with both of them prior to their executions, which he witnessed.

But that had to happen, if Capote’s book was to be honest and whole.

I guess it’s a question of art — how far does the artist go in order to create? What limits are we willing to impose on our artists?

See, I’m of the camp that answers to the first “As far as she needs to go” and to the second, “None, except those we all abide by as citizens subject to the law.” I don’t think an artist should get a pass for murder, just to write authentically about it, for instance.

But fictionalizing a story in order to make it more real — while it sounds odd to nonartists, I suppose — is not something I’m willing to let an artist get castigated for.

I wouldn’t know about Nancy Clutter’s sweetly innocent affection for her boyfriend and how she loved riding her horse, if not for Capote. I wouldn’t know how Bonnie dealt so stoically with her health issues, in order to keep her family’s lives running more smoothly, if not for Capote. I wouldn’t have the faintest clue how a personality like Hickok could get Smith to go along with his moronic plan, if not for Capote. I wouldn’t have any understanding of Smith — the real horror of his story — if not for Capote.

I’d see all these people as cardboard cut-outs, little paper dolls, two dimensional and completely lacking in nuance, if not for Capote.

So, yeah, I think that’s something worth commemorating.