Kill Your Idols: "In Cold Blood"

Perhaps. But I don't have any delusions that the discussion is important or relevant to anyone except writers who may be considering authoring a nonfiction novel.

Anyway, narrative nonfiction has been around for as long as there's been storytelling. Capote was a pied piper, not a groundbreaking stylist — he inspired others in his generation and afterward to use a style of writing that is normally reserved for fiction (and maybe for good reason.)

He didn't invent a new form of writing, no matter what critics called it at the time. Hell, Asinof had just used the same style on a different subject three years earlier. And Asinof wasn't the first to do it, either.

 

I disagree that the books were beloved because of their truthiness. I think people like great writing that brought to life historical events in a way strict non-fiction could not. I think the factual errors in Asinof's book are far more egregious in that they've helped to distort our understanding of a significant historical event. In Cold Blood had no truly significant historical event to distort. It was a murder mystery. I'm still trying to understand why I should care that Dewey wasn't as quick to act on a prison tip as he should have been or that biases toward he and Perry Smith were evident in Capote's portrayal of the men.

 

It's extremely relevant to readers, though. Of course, they would have little interest in discussing it like we do. But it's relevant to them because the discussion centers around what they ultimately will receive: Truth. Fiction. Something in-between.

 

You seem to be arguing that lesser incidents demand lesser adherence to facts. I can't get on board with that. I mean, I get it: If you're going to play around, don't play around with something in which the facts as you establish them are likely to become ingrained in the history books. But that's too result-dependent, to me. Adherence to accuracy is a unifying demand on journalism, as applicable to the Clutter murders or the Bulls-Spurs game last night as it is to 9/11 or a presidential election.

 

Do you care that the entire final scene in the book is fabricated? Like, the whole last chapter?

I also find the idea that "In Cold Blood had no truly significant historical event to distort" to be incredibly condescending. A whole family was slaughtered in their home. The fact that it happened in bumfuck Kansas certainly did not make it any less "historical" to Beverly or Eveanna, who had to live with the aftermath. The world was not Capote's plaything.

 

On journalism, perhaps, but what about new journalism? Do you even accept that there can be such a genre? Capote wasn't trying to be a journalist or attempting to write a non-fiction account. There was a reason he left notebooks and tape recorders out of the process.

 

Again: Then why not write a novel?

 

Not in the least.

Condescending to assert that all events don't carry equal historical significance? There are families slaughtered every week, most of them forgotten by everyone but the Beverlys and Eveannas by the time the next one occurs. The historical significance of the Clutter family murder, the only reason anyone outside of Kansas brings it up today, is 99.9 percent due to the fact that Capote chose to examine it in a book. The world, in fact, was Capote's plaything. He owed nothing to Beverly or Eveanna.

 

Because he was interested in exploring what he considered a new art form? To challenge himself creatively?

 

This is spot on.
Every event does not carry equal historical significance.

But what obligation does Capote owe to the facts and the audience?
I think he was trying to show that there was a pontentially gripping story in every event, regardless of historical significance, but did he prove that if he had to change the facts to make it work?

 

It's a real bummer when the little people and their lives get in the way with our art.

Another martini, Kathy Graham?

 

It has nothing do with little people or class or anything like that.
Are you going to honestly argue that all events have equal historical significance?
In a case of murder, which has historical signifiance, my murder or the president's murder?
Of course there would real emotional impact if I were murdered. It would be important to my family and friends. It would be news in my town and county. It wouldn't be news across my state let alone the nation.
It would have personal importance to the people who know me. It would have no historical importance.