In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
**Overview of *In Cold Blood* by Truman Capote**
*In Cold Blood* is a groundbreaking work of nonfiction literature by Truman Capote, originally published as a four-part article in *The New Yorker* and later released as a book in 1966. The narrative centers around the shocking 1959 murders of the Clutter family in Kansas, exploring the lives of the victims and the psychological profiles of their killers, Dick Hickock and Perry Smith. Capote's immersive research involved extensive interviews and close relationships with those connected to the case, including the murderers themselves while they awaited execution. This intense engagement led him to create a new literary form, often referred to as the nonfiction novel, blurring the lines between fact and fiction.
The book received considerable acclaim, winning the Edgar Allan Poe Award and igniting discussions about ethics in journalism and the portrayal of violence. Its impact was further solidified by a 1967 film adaptation directed by Richard Brooks, which retained much of Capote's narrative but emphasized the themes of capital punishment and morality. While the film attracted critical attention and was nominated for several Academy Awards, it faced competition from other contemporary works and ultimately did not win any. *In Cold Blood* remains a significant work that highlights the complexities of American society during a time of increasing polarization and violence.
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Published 1966
Author Truman Capote
A national best-seller and literary experiment, based on a multiple murder, adapted into a motion picture. In this work, Capote combined his abilities as stylist, storyteller, and reporter to tell the story of two drifters and their four murder victims in a new form: the nonfiction novel.
Key Figures
Truman Capote (1924-1984), author
The Work
Originally published as a four-part article in The New Yorker, In Cold Blood had made Truman Capote a millionaire and a national celebrity even before the book’s highly touted publication. Capote was fascinated by the mystery of the brutal, seemingly unmotivated 1959 murders of respected, prosperous Kansas farmer Herbert Clutter, his wife, Bonnie, and their two teen-age children, Nancy and Kenyon. Encouraged by New Yorker editor William Shawn, Capote followed the case for years, living in Kansas much of the time, interviewing scores of people (at first accompanied by his friend, the novelist Harper Lee), and eventually becoming confidant to Dick Hickock and Perry Smith, the two men convicted of the murders, as they waited on death row during a series of appeals. Capote became especially close to Smith, whose lonely childhood, physical self-consciousness, and artistic aspirations resonated with the writer. Published serially just months after the executions of Smith and Hickock, Capote’s project had accumulated unprecedented interest, partly because of its sensational subject matter but also because of Capote’s established literary reputation, his personal flamboyance, and his widely publicized claims that he was creating a paradoxical new literary form, the nonfiction novel. In 1967, Pax Enterprises/Columbia produced a film adaptation of In Cold Blood that closely follows Capote’s narrative design, his interest in the psychological makeup of the criminals (especially Smith), and his commitment to realism (director Richard Brooks even staged the murder scene at the Clutter’s home). However, the film omits much of Capote’s close, almost anthropological attention to the Clutter family’s small-town life, focusing instead on the flight and subsequent capture, trial, and execution of Hickock and Smith. As in the novel, the film waits until deep into the narrative to present the Clutter murders, which are “recalled” by Smith as a testimonial flashback. In contrast to Capote’s subtle rhetorical stance, Brooks adds the character of a reporter, who operates as the film’s conscience, questioning the morality of capital punishment, thus making explicit the implied irony of the title.
Impact
Although described as nonfiction on trade lists, In Cold Blood won the 1966 Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Allan Poe Award. Capote’s precise methods would be almost impossible to replicate he claimed a self-taught ability to recall and thus transcribe, with nearly perfect accuracy, hours of interview material and insisted that he had constructed his novel exclusively from observed or recorded detail but his interest in blurred genres was shared by other novelists, journalists, and filmmakers committed to exploring American social life in new ways. Capote’s aggressive self-promotion and extravagant literary claims fostered a situation in which the use of fictional techniques in nonfiction forms and the ethics of making art (and money) from murder could be debated. The strong sense of “two Americas” that characterized In Cold Blood became emblematic of an increasingly polarized nation, split apart by suspicion, intolerance, and violence.
The film version of In Cold Blood was more revision than experiment, a solid, capably produced studio film in content reminiscent of the earnest social problem films of the 1950’s, driven by psychological explanation and liberal argument (in this case, against capital punishment), and in form characterized by moody, highly stylized black-and-white photography evocative of 1940’s film noir. Although sufficiently admired to have been nominated for four major Academy Awards Brooks, for both Director and Original Screenplay; Conrad Hall, for Cinematography and Quincy Jones, for Original Musical Score the film received none and was overshadowed in 1967 by another story of a criminal couple loosely based on fact: the more popular, more violent, more radical, and thus far more controversial Bonnie and Clyde. In Cold Blood did launch the careers of a pair of talented, previously unknown young actors, Scott Wilson (Hickock) and Robert Blake (Smith), who portrayed, with sensitivity and imagination, the two damaged, ruthless men who intrigued Capote and much of the nation in the mid-1960’s.
Related Work
In Armies of the Night (1968), Norman Mailer offers his version of a fact-based literary experiment, labeling the form novel-as-history, history-as-novel. Although personally antagonistic and publicly dismissive of each other’s work, Mailer and Capote nevertheless shared many goals.
Additional Information
For a collection of contemporaneous reviews, interviews, and related essays, see Truman Capote’s “In Cold Blood”: A Critical Handbook (1968), edited by Irving Malin; for a return, decades later, to memories of the project by many participants, see “Capote’s Long Ride,” by George Plimpton, in the October 13, 1997, issue of The New Yorker. In both sources, Capote’s methods and his accuracy are both praised and questioned.