Kill Your Idols: "In Cold Blood"

No, the whole point was to write an entertaining book, explore a writing style and earn a lot of money, I think. Dick, you concede that so-called "new journalism" was in its infancy as a form. You also say that the result of Capote's efforts was "groundbreaking." Yet you insist his work is flawed for using the very latitude that distinguished this then fairly new form of writing.

Isn't that the same as saying new journalism is flawed because it isn't traditional journalism? Is it OK to even have such a distinction?

 

To me, the defense of "In Cold Blood" - that you could see Capote's biases, and realized you weren't getting the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth - is same defense that keeps being made for the Esquire piece on the Northern Illinois shooter we've discussed on here, i.e. that readers would have found it obvious that a portion was fabricated. I just don't buy that line of defense.

New journalism, as practiced by Gary Smith or Tom Junod or Susan Orlean, is not necessarily flawed. It's been fact-checked and the writer presumably has not intentionally inserted mistruths or inaccuracies. Truman Capote, on the other hand, did. But it was still valuable, historically. It was a starting point. "In Cold Blood" was meant to entertain, but the reason it was entertaining was because it was true. It wouldn't be a great novel.

 

Capote went to great lengths not to describe himself as a journalist but as a literary artist who was exploring reporting as an art form. To nitpick insignificant reporting mistakes, factual errors (A FIVE-DAY LAPSE!) or the way he romanticized some of the characters is to miss the point entirely.

 

Credited. Like I said, it was groundbreaking. I think it's a valuable work. I think it's a starting point.

 

I've found, honestly, that most people will bend their personal "rules" about truth and accuracy to support art that moves them. I mean, the entire final scene of this book is fabricated. Not exaggerated or stuffed with colorful details to give the reader a richer experience, but flat out made up. And when it ran in The New Yorker, I don't for a second think people thought "Oh, Capote is taking some license here and there, but this is mostly true." They thought it was true because that's what they'd come to expect from The New Yorker. And perhaps some of those expectations were unrealistic for the time, considering that we know Joseph Mitchell didn't exactly convey dialog as it really happened, but I honestly believe this has become an after-the-fact defense of Capote's work because people were moved by its brilliance. Oh, we knew all along it wasn't TOTALLY true.

 

A few good reads on the topic of "truth" vs. "Story truth."

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/02/the-art-of-fact-checking.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/magazine/the-fact-checker-versus-the-fabulist.html?pagewanted=all


http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2012/02/the_lifespan_of_a_fact_essayist_john_d_agata_defends_his_right_to_fudge_the_truth_.html

 

Eliot Fremont-Smith, in his NY Times book review of In Cold Blood (Jan. 10, 1966), notes that Capote took no notes and taped no interviews during the six years in which he wrote the book:

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=F10F11FB3A5F1A7493C2A8178AD85F428685F9

 

Asinof vehemently — angrily — defended his book using the same logic. "My sources were an amalgamation of hundreds of conversations, impossible to document!" he once told author Gene Carney.

Thanks to the Chicago History Museum, I've been able to read through Asinof's existing notes and source material for "Eight Men Out." It's about two boxes' worth, lighter than you'd think, maybe, for such a detail-rich story. He wrote handwritten notes to himself in the margins of his typed interview transcripts asking how he could make the answers seem more dramatic. (As Yogi said, you could look it up! Anyone can go to the CHM and view them.) The interviews of Abe Attell and Happy Felsch don't reveal anywhere near the type of detail that he includes in the book. So I don't get the sense that he ever let the truth get in the way of a good story. If you read Asinof's late 1970s memoir "Bleeding Between the Lines," an account of his struggles to get "Eight Men Out" published (and to sell the film rights, which hadn't happened up to that point), he's even more pointed about his goals in writing the book: He's trying to write a dramatic novel, not history.

Keep in mind that "Eight Men Out" was published three years before "In Cold Blood." So I'm making a comparison between two contemporary authors whose stated goals were to, essentially, not be "journalists" or "historians" but to be "literary artists."

And they did a great job at that, for what it's worth. Those books are classics for good reason.

But it's not "nitpicking" to say they made major errors of factual accuracy ... or even flatly made shit up. And that, to me, undermines the credibility of their work because the reason these two books are so beloved is because most readers assume the facts are straight and the original writing/storytelling is what sets it apart.

I think we know by now that's not the case.

 

I reject Eliot Fremont-Smith's premise.

 

I accept it when considering the final sentence: Squabbling over "the definition of a new or possibly not new literary form" is infinitely less interesting than the book. He's completely right about that.

Here's the part I question:

Having not read the book in years, I'll ask this: What insights does "In Cold Blood" offer that are "far more important" than mere facts?

And what makes "In Cold Blood" better than if Capote (or someone else) had written a truthful account using "superb, sensitive, perceptive and stunning reportage"?

 

This is a different era, but I have a difficult time understanding why Capote and Asinof and the others even wanted to make things up. Half the fun and challenge of writing narrative nonfiction is nailing everything down.

Also: Thanks for the great insights. That's one great thing about this board. We're arguing some arcane journalistic point, and along comes someone with specific extensive experience to draw from.

 

Yeah, see, that's what I reject. For me, "In Cold Blood" is most interesting as a starting point for the discussion on what is required of a nonfiction novel. That's why it's still important. Not necessarily because of Capote's particular insights into the mindframe of the condemned or the challenge of solving a crime.

I'm like you, though. It's been a while since I read it. After the PSH movie, I think.