In Cold Blood
Truman Capote · 1966
Capote invented the "nonfiction novel" with this account of the 1959 Clutter family murders in Kansas, doing six years of reporting and transforming it into prose of harrowing, novelistic beauty. It redefined what journalism could be and made literary nonfiction a genre of its own.
The case against
Capote called it nonfiction and then invented its final scene, the graveyard meeting that gives the book its consolation. Quotes were reconstructed from memory; he took no notes. His tenderness for Perry Smith bends the moral weight away from the Clutters, and the book needed the hangings to end, a fact Capote understood and waited on.
Non-Fiction · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
if this one calls to you, so will these →
