Kill Your Idols: "In Cold Blood"

Cranberry's tone was perhaps, uhh, not optimal, but he's absolutely correct that the only historical significance in the Clutter murders — outside of the participants and families involved — is that Truman Capote happened to write a book about them.

Otherwise, none of us would have ever heard of them.

That said, he was writing about an event that actually happened. I don't know who he owes it to, but my gut tells me he owes somebody the truth when telling a story of real-life events ... no matter how he tells it.

 

Any yet it is the very people like cranberry and Buck who end up deciding what is "history" and what is not with this kind of attitude. Howard Zinn wrote a whole goddamn book about this kind of attitude, that the events of the little people don't matter in the eyes of the powerful, and therefore the facts get tailored to fit whatever narrative those people want "history" to reflect. The fact that there are millions of murders that did not interest rich celebrity writers enough to pry themselves away from the Manhattan nightlife does not mean they are not a part of history, and that their impact doesn't have repercussions and ripples that go beyond the communities where they occur.

History is what happened. It's not what people wanted to happen to fit their worldview. It's one thing to tell true stories by gathering as much information as humanly possible, knowing you could never truly capture every detail and therefore you are writing history knowing it involves selective editing. It's another thing entirely to invent things you know did not happen because it makes for a better "story" and that it won't matter, really, because it's not Abraham Lincoln, y'all. Capote wanted the cache of "a true story" without sticking to the facts, because sticking to the facts and finding something beautiful within those narrowly drawn lines is much, much harder. He mostly did, he was just too arrogant or lazy to care because he was dealing with Kansas rubes and figured My art is so much more important than these messy little people. At least Norman Mailer had the dignity to slap "fiction" on the Executioner's Song at the last minute, knowing he had fudged many of the details.

 

I think his obligation is primarily to his audience, and he promoted his work as nonfiction. Therefore, he owes his audience the truth. Not his larger, artistic vision of the truth but the actual truth.

I still don't think it's belittling people to acknowledge that all events are not of equal historical significance. My home run when I was 10 is not equal to Chris Chambliss' home run in 1976.

 

I also agree 100% with this.

Whatever Capote's goals in attempting to write a "nonfiction novel," it's either nonfiction or it's not. You can't make shit up and then call it "nonfiction."

 

For those on this thread who have read "Devil in the White City", how do you feel about the scenes focused on Holmes? The book is presented as non-fiction, but there's no way he could have gotten some of the specific details he presents in that book. They actually kind of remind me of the details presented in the opening of the Esquire shooter article that we've discussed here. It's the main reason I didn't love it the way many people do.

 

"Devil in the White City" is one of my favorite books of the past ten years -- probably because it reads as fiction. That's an interesting question you pose; I'm going to go back and look at some of the Holmes stuff tonight. I'll come back to this thread later.

 

I read ONE book in the last few years and dre has to come on here and sully it. Asshole.

 

I read it several years ago, but I remember wondering how Larson could know some of what he was presenting in the book.

What about 'Argo'? Are we outraged by the fictionalized sections of the movie? Like 'In Cold Blood,' the entire ending of the movie is made up.

 

Your home run is not equal to Chambliss' home run, I will concede this.

Had you murdered the second baseman as you rounded the diamond, it would be much harder to argue this was not an event worthy of a tiny scrawl on the great tapestry of "history." Each man's death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind, etc. (And I would still argue, without a murder, that the details of your home run matter if I want to pretend it's nonfiction. Otherwise I'll just write a short story.) Whatever form a storyteller chooses to take when they try to pen "history," they ought to at least respect that these are real lives involved -- and taken from the earth, forever -- in situations like this, not characters in a play.

Capote wanted to pen a great story that people would think had weight because it was "true." It's the the same thing David Sedaris does, he's just not writing about people getting murdered. Frey tried to sell A Million Little Pieces as a novel and no one would touch it. When he repackaged it as a memoir, every agent wanted it and it blew up. It's not hard to figure out why people make things up, yet want to still tell you it's true because the "story truth" is actually "more true" than what really happened. Calling it "truth" gives it more weight with more people. More weight equals more money. More fame. And Capote was very interested in those things, far more than he was interested in any of the actual lives depicted in In Cold Blood. It's a beautiful, breathtaking book. It's just too bad he cared more about himself than he did its subjects.

Maybe it took us awhile, with a few bumps in the road, to get here to the present standards of literary non-fiction, but defending In Cold Blood as anything more than a novel closely resembling real people does a diservice to all the people who work really, really hard to tell stories within the lines of what actually occurred.

 

There is a part of me inside that cringes at every "re-created" situation or conversation in any historical nonfiction work. (And I know I'm guilty of writing them, too.)

I guess where I draw the line is in the perception of sincerity in the author's effort. Yes, I know that's a completely subjective factor which relies as much on the author's personality and public interviews as his/her writing or research. But if I feel like the author — as Larson did in "Devil in the White City" — is trying his/her best to get to the heart of the truth despite a lack of documentation or information available, then I'm more liable to give him/her the benefit of the doubt.

 

I think I got lumped in with someone else. I don't think I said Capote gets a pass on details or facts.
I just say that not all events are equally significant ot humankind as a whole.

And I point out that 'true' movies and documentaries often jettison or change facts in order to make themselves more appealing to an audience or in an attempt to illuminate a 'larger truth.' I don't defend that; I simply point it out, and I don't think it's treated with the seriousness it is when it happens in print.

 

Ahh yes, the Great Tim O'Brien Debate of 2010. I remember it well.