10.13.08 | In Cold Blood [day1]

1. 10.13.08 | In Cold Blood [day1] Schedule: • Attendance & Questions? • ICB Background • Discussion question • HW – read Capote, section 1. Goal[s]: • Analyze ways in which blurring line between fact and fiction influences experiences as well as theories of immersion.

2. Immersion recap. • Metaphors of submersion or “space travel” require two planes, two realities. • Native, actual reality of everyday life. • The possible, textual reality supported by media. • So far, its been pretty easy to maintain that separation. • What happens, though, when the possible world is based on fact?

3. In Cold Blood [1965] • Based on the real life multiple homicide of the Clutter family of Holcomb, KS in 1959. • Capote read the 300-word news story in the NY Times and decided it sounded like the foundation for a great novel. • He lived in Holcomb and meticulously researched the family, their community, their death, and their killers. • Capote was assisted by his friend Harper Lee, who had just published To Kill a Mockingbird. “ Holcomb, Kan., Nov. 15 [1959] (UPI) -- A wealthy wheat farmer, his wife and their two young children were found shot to death today in their home. They had been killed by shotgun blasts at close range after being bound and gagged ... There were no signs of a struggle, and nothing had been stolen. The telephone lines had been cut. ” —The New York Times

4. New Journalism • Began several years prior to the Clutter’s death in the mid-late ’50s, though took full force in the 60s & 70s. • Tom Wolfe described it as “reporting as having an esthetic dimension.” • Research and fact based narratives using novelistic conventions. • Many suspected, as Wolfe himself acknowledges, “The bastards are making it up!” as people were unaccustomed to the degree of access NJ authors got. • “the journalistic and literary old guards began to attack this new journalism as ‘impressionistic’” despite the intense research needed.

5. New Journalism research • “The most important things one attempted in terms of technique depended upon a depth of information that had never been demanded in newspaper work. Only through the most searching forms of reporting was it possible, in non-fiction, to use whole scenes, extended dialogue, point-of-view, and interior monologue.” [21] • To get factual “extended dialogue, point-of-view, and interior monologue” often NJ authors had to immerse themselves in the lives of the characters, actually “be there when dramatic scenes took place, to get the dialogue, the gestures, the facial expressions, the details of the environment” [21]. • Wolfe argues this produces a kind of aesthetic work that benefits from “the simple fact that the reader knows all this actually happened” [Wolfe 34]. “The kind of reporting they were doing struck them as far more ambitious, too. It was more intense, more detailed, and certainly more time consuming than anything newspaper or magazine reporters, including investigative reporters were accustomed to” [21].

6. Capote’s “non-fiction novel” • Capote did not identify himself with the NJs, largely because he saw himself as a novelist doing research rather than a journalist doing novel-style. He coined the term “non-fiction novel” to describe ICB. • Capote researched for 6 years, lived with the chief of police, and conducted thousands of interviews. • He trained himself to memorize conversations in order to have more intimate interactions. • The book begins with an “Acknowledgements” section stating “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, more often than not numerous interviews were conducted over a period of time. • In interviews, Capote insisted that his work, while representing only one perspective on what happened, his, it was 100% factually-based.

7. Fact vs. narrative • Truth vs. aesthetics • Reporting vs. style • Objectivity vs. subjectivity • Author’s presence, author’s task, author’s involvement. • reader’s presence, reader’s task, reader’s involvement. • Empathy, sympathy, morality • Knowledge production, investigations, trials. • Character? Plot? Setting? Themes? Can we talk about them the same way? Does knowing the background of this story affect the way we read it?

8. Today’s discussion: • Capote dedicates a rather lengthy portion of the book to describe characters who we know before hand will be dead or far away from Holcomb. • Did you find that these descriptions of the Clutters and of Perry and Dick were something that you cared about? • Why do you think that Capote describes these characters in the beginning rather than build them up throughout the investigation?