I enjoyed reading this installment of the newsletter but wanted to point out that the statement "a significant amount of [In Cold Blood] was fictionalized" doesn't bear scrutiny. A significant amount of research has been devoted to this topic, including an early attempt by a University of Kansas professor, Philip Tompkins, to check out Capote's sources. He found factual discrepancies only concerning very minor facts, such as how much Nancy Clutter's horse sold for after the family's deaths. Tompkins' article is here:
Tompkins, Phillip K. "In Cold Fact." Esquire, June 1966, pp. 125, 127, 166-71.
I suggest doing some reading about this and am happy to correspond if I can be of help.
Lana Whited
author of Murder in Fact: Disillusionment and Death in the American True Crime Novel (2020)
I enjoyed reading this installment of the newsletter but wanted to point out that the statement "a significant amount of [In Cold Blood] was fictionalized" doesn't bear scrutiny. A significant amount of research has been devoted to this topic, including an early attempt by a University of Kansas professor, Philip Tompkins, to check out Capote's sources. He found factual discrepancies only concerning very minor facts, such as how much Nancy Clutter's horse sold for after the family's deaths. Tompkins' article is here:
Tompkins, Phillip K. "In Cold Fact." Esquire, June 1966, pp. 125, 127, 166-71.
I suggest doing some reading about this and am happy to correspond if I can be of help.
Lana Whited
author of Murder in Fact: Disillusionment and Death in the American True Crime Novel (2020)
lwhited@ferrum.edu