In Cold Blood

1. In Cold Blood “I’m an alcoholic. I’m a drug addict. I’m homosexual. I’m a genius.” Capote Interview “I was so different from everyone, so much more intelligent and sensitive and perceptive. I was having fifty perceptions a minute to everyone else’s five. I always felt that nobody was going to understand me, going to understand what I felt about things. I guess that’s why I started writing.” -Truman Capote

2. Capote’s Life • Brief Biography • Truman Streckfus Persons, born September 30, 1924, in New Orleans. • Grew up in small rural town of Monroeville, Alabama. Took on stepfather’s name, Joe Capote. Began writing at age 8. • Closest childhood friend was Nelle Harper Lee, who later wrote To Kill a Mockingbird, in which “Dill” is based on Truman.(In Cold Blood is dedicated to Harper Lee.) • Dysfunctional Family: Father, small-time con man; Step-father, imprisoned for embezzlement; Mother, committed suicide. • Died August 27, 1984, in Los Angeles

3. Capote’s Career • Quit schooling at age 17. Moved to NYC. • “I was determined never to set a studious foot inside a college classroom. I felt that either one was or wasn’t a writer, and no combination of professors could influence the outcome.” • Worked 2 years as office boy at the The New Yorker Magazine. • Won O.Henry Memorial Award in 1946 for short story. (Later, won 3 more.) • “I had to be successful, and I had to be successful early.”

4. In Cold Blood “I wanted to produce a journalistic novel, something on a large scale that would have the credibility of fact, the immediacy of film, the depth and freedom of prose, and the precision of poetry.” Capote put his effort into several projects, even working for six months on one idea, but none of them measured up to his concept of the non-fiction novel. “Then one morning in November, 1959, while flicking through The New York Times, I encountered on a deep-inside page, this headline: ‘Wealthy Farmer, 3 of Family Slain’…It suddenly struck me that a crime, the study of one such, might provide the broad scope I needed to write the kind of book I wanted to write.” Capote worked six years on In Cold Blood.

5. Capote on the Nonfiction Novel “I’m talking about reporting that is as interesting as fiction, and done as artistically.”

6. In Cold Blood: The Story Divided into four parts, total of 86 scenes, constantly alternating viewpoint.

7. In Cold Blood: The Aftermath Publication Capote earned up to $2million through magazine, book, and film rights. In Fall 1965, The New Yorker printed the entire 135,000 word story in four installments. Random House published it in Jan 1966. The Party of the Century Capote gave a black-and-white masked ball” at the Plaza Hotel for his “closest 500 friends”. It was billed the greatest party there ever was. “It was the talk of New York. The elevator operators, the cab drivers, the doormen, as soon as they saw you with a mask or headdress, they said, "Going to Truman's ball, huh?“”

8. Capote Interview 2