Truman Capote and the Birth of a Genre
A staple of entertainment in American homes in 2019 is watching the true stories of terrible crimes. Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes, Wild Wild Country, and Making a Murderer are all examples of popular installments in the true crime genre to grace the myriad screens of Netflix users, and that is still scratching the surface. Between these, their less popular counterparts, and recent fictional stories drawing heavily upon real life events (like Once Upon a Time in Hollywood), tales of gruesome and heinous crime captivate audiences and notably insist on one thing: the truth of what they represent.
While the dramatization and novelization of crime are as old as those forms of storytelling, the modern genre of true crime owes a lot to the work of Truman Capote whose 1966 work In Cold Blood helped pioneer the very form of the nonfiction novel. Just as many films or television programs will flash a disclaimer before they begin, Capote places one in his “acknowledgements” before his novel begins: “All the material in this book not derived from my own observation is either taken from official records or is the result of interviews with the persons directly concerned.”
While certainly the novel is intended to be read for some modicum of enjoyment, or perhaps the satisfaction of human interest in what drives one to kill another, its insistence on its own veracity is essential to the genre as it remains essential in other such pieces of entertainment. What is most striking about Capote’s work is the process it took to write it — four long years of journalistic effort.
All this effort apparently served to displace his prior lackluster reputation. According to an article run in American Heritage Magazine in time for the fortieth anniversary of the novel’s publication Capote was known in “literary circles as a colorful but minor celebrity better known for appearances at fashionable parties and on TV talk shows than for his books.” He has a little recognized body of work outside this monolith of American literature.
Almost more significant than Capote himself is that which descended from him: Hunter S. Thompson, Norman Mailer, and Tom Wolfe are all American novelists who produced work following In Cold Blood which developed further the form of the non-fiction novel. That same form later would develop into the kind of literary non-fiction or literary journalism that flourishes on the Internet of 2019.
With this in mind, even the most mundane stories of literary journalism today may have some connection to a genre which originated in a fascination with crime and the dogged reporting that produced the first foray into an uncharted literary space. As an exploration of genre, then, understanding Capote is imperative to understanding the work journalists do today: seamlessly blending the creativity of the novelist with the dedication of truth of a reporter. At the core of all of it lies the same mission: the insistence on truth counterbalanced with the curiosity that turns pages.
