Oneida Public Library
Oneida Public Library

Oneida Public Library invites a select group to investigate all-American skullduggery and untimely death on Thursday evenings at 7:00 p.m., May 5-June 9, in the adult-enrichment seminar called “In Cold Blood: True Crime, an American Genre,” a five-session non-fiction reading and discussion series sponsored by the New York Council for the Humanities.

Participants will read and discuss non-fiction literary accounts of actual capital crimes that have shocked and appalled Americans, from the days of the New England Puritans up to the present day. Premier among the readings will be Truman Capote’s masterwork, “In Cold Blood,” which this year marks the fiftieth anniversary of its initial publication. Other, shorter selections, will come from Harold Schechter’s anthology in the Library of America series, “True Crime: An American Anthology.”

The New York Council is providing copies of both books for participants to borrow. These books will be handed out to preregistered participants at an introductory session May 5 at 7:00 p.m.

Discussions will be guided by Dr. Tom Murray, Ph.D., the OPL’s Assistant Director, and will focus on the literary works’ accounts not just of the actual killings but also of the writers’ (and society’s) reactions to the crimes and attempts to interpret their causes and motivations. Every generation of Americans has had its “crime of the century,” and the series will reveal remarkable similarities as well as widely divergent interpretations.

In addition to Capote’s pioneering work of “new journalism” that recounts the circumstances before and after the savage murder of the Clutter family in 1959, participants will discuss, among other selections, Cotton Mather’s take on Puritan criminals, newspaper accounts of sensational 19th-century murders, Celia Thaxter’s poetic telling of the 1873 Isles of Shoals murders, Damon Runyon’s “medium-boiled” account of a 1920’s “crime of the century,” on up to Dominick Dunne’s autopsy of the 1989 Menendez Brothers case in Beverly Hills.

Restorative refreshments will be served at each discussion.

The discussion group is limited to 15 people. Those interested can sign up now at the OPL circulation desk or call (315) 363-3050.

The adult reading and discussion program “In Cold Blood” at the OPL is made possible by the New York Council for the Humanities and co-sponsored by the New York Library and the Library of America.

For more information, stop by the Oneida Library, 220 Broad St., call(315) 363-3050 or consult the OPL web site at www.midyorklib.org/oneida

By martha

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