Yet more evidence that Truman Capote fictionalized parts of In Cold Blood—his celebrated 1966 “nonfiction novel.” But does it really matter?
Unless there’s a larger discrepancy than what’s reported here by the Wall Street Journal, then, well…no. Capote was well-known for his belief that “the taking of notes, much less the use of a tape recorder, creates artifice and distorts or even destroys any naturalness that might exist between the observer and the observed, the nervous hummingbird and its would-be captor.” He committed everything to memory; as soon as an interview was over, he quickly wrote down everything he’d been told. Quite honestly, I’m astonished he got as much right as he did.
Maybe that’s why it doesn’t bother me that, nearly 50 years after In Cold Blood was published, people are still getting their panties in a bunch over its author’s “journalistic sins.” Of course, the fact that the book is an absolute feast of finely tuned prose doesn’t hurt, either.
