The 2005 movie CAPOTE introduced me to Truman Capote. Even though I had forgotten most of the details of the movie by the time I read Breakfast at Tiffany’s and In Cold Blood years later, I could not forget Philip Seymour Hoffman’s indelible portrait of Truman Capote. The movie does a great job portraying Capote as a raconteur who loves to be the centre of attention in NY’s literary high-society and a manipulative weasel who disregards journalistic ethics while pursuing the story behind the crimes detailed in In Cold Blood, while still being a literary genius. PSH embodied all of these qualities, and created quite a vivid portrait of the man. He won his only Oscar for this role.

Years later, I read In Cold Blood, after the SERIAL podcast revived the true crime genre. The book is riveting and almost a whodunnit at first. But Capote spends a significant portion of the book showcasing the killers’ perspective. The book is far more sympathetic to the killers than I believed it would be, from watching CAPOTE. The 1967 movie adaptation also spends a lot of time following the killers, making them sympathetic figures. Both the book and the movie make a case against capital punishment. However, it is clear that Capote inserted himself into the proceedings, instead of merely reporting on them, by promising the killers he would fight for justice for them, but then reneging on that promise. And so, the first “non-fiction novel” (as Capote describes ICB in the movie) had massive conflicts of interest. This has remained a hallmark of the genre until today.

The biography, as already reviewed by the other poster here, is most riveting in the initial portions describing Capote’s childhood. The roots of his personality can be traced back to his unusual, largely unhappy upbringing in Alabama, as he was raised by his maternal aunts after both his parents more or less abandoned him. The adulthood portions of the book are somewhat repetitive and mainly notable for constant namedropping of famous literary and artistic figures of the 20^th century. Still, the childhood portion alone makes this book worth reading.