Holly's existance not so shallow as may first be assumed.
Remember, Capote, in spite of everything, was a small town Southern guy.
And In Cold Blood was a breakthrough book. Nobody had ever written a murder story like that before, that is, using the novelist's tools of the trade. Norman Mailer called it the product of a bankrupt imagination, then copied the exact same technique twenty years later with Executioner's Song, but did a lousy job of it.
In Cold Blood Bonus Trivia: Capote spent months in Kansas interviewing everyone involved. However, when he sensed hostility regarding his "lifestyle," he called his childhood/life long friend, Harper Lee (author of To Kill a Mockingbird) who promptly got on a train for Kansas with her father's old .45 and acted as his bodyguard for the duration of the interviewing process.
Regarding Holly, the first term that came to mind was brittle, defined in the sense of brittle laugher. When I say shallow, it's not the fluffy headed type of shallow, where there is no knowing any better. It's where you understand greater meanings, yet do not persue them. You attempt of to fill the emptiness with busyness, meaningless doings.
I'm sure "In Cold Blood" is a great read for many people. Delving into difficult, dark subjects is in some ways necessary, for some, for others...
Maybe I'm strange, but I mull & have for as long as I can remember. Writing my response to you brought another murder back into my mind, one that happened around the same time as Capote's book was published. The adults didn't talk about it around children, but you'd catch them talking about it with each other in hushed tones. I grew up in a small town & young women were just not found dead in a pool of their own blood, with over 30 stab wounds, not in small town, middle America. Diane had been a neighbor & my favorite babysitter when I was younger. Her murder has never been solved.
Anyway, I try to be careful about the kinds of things I bring into my psyche to mull about.
Your bonus trivia, LOL Yes, I can see that!