IN COLD BLOOD by Truman Capote
1924 – 1984
On November 16, 1959, the New York Times
published the following account of the murders.
“Holcomb, Kan., Nov. 15 [1959] 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
Capote’s research
The killers, Richard "Dick" Hickock and
Perry Smith, were arrested not long after
the murders, and Capote ultimately spent
six years working on the book. It is
considered the originator of the nonfiction novel and the forerunner of the
New Journalism movement.
NOFICTION NOVEL
The nonfiction novel is a literary genre,
formally established in 1965 with Truman
Capote's publication of In Cold Blood. In
theory, the genre represents real events,
while narrativizing these events with
techniques of fiction.
NEW JOURNALISM
New Journalism was a style of 1960s
and 1970s news writing and journalism
which used literary techniques deemed
unconventional at the time.
CHARACTERISTICS
Wolfe (1973) identified the four main
devices New Journalists borrowed from
literary fiction:
 Telling the story using scenes rather than
historical narrative as much as possible
 Dialogue in full (Conversational speech
rather than quotations and statements)
 First-person point of view (from inside the
head of a character)
 Recording everyday details (which
indicates the status of character's lives)

Despite these elements, New
Journalism is not fiction. It maintains
elements of reporting including strict
adherence to factual accuracy and
the writer being the primary source.
To get "inside the head" of a
character, the journalist asks the
subject what they were thinking or
how they felt.
FICTION
Fiction is the telling of stories which
are not entirely based upon facts.
More specifically, fiction is an
imaginative form of narrative
THE BOOK

Best-seller que tornou o escritor famoso
mundialmente.
Morreu no limbo, asfixiado pelo próprio
vício.
REFLETINDO...
A Sangue Frio" - monumental em seu
processo.
Capote entrevistou, bisbilhotou relacionou-se
com os policiais e com os criminosos;
reconstruiu em detalhes diálogos, geografias,
feições, pensamentos, temperamentos e
lembranças.
REPERCUSSÃO
A repercussão de “A Sangue Frio” foi imediata e retumbante. De
acordo com Gerald Clark, seu biógrafo, Capote ganhou pelo menos
dois milhões de dólares com a obra e ficou rico.
Ele foi assunto de todas as revistas e jornais americanos
importantes e manteve polêmica com críticos e colegas. Mas a
história desse assassinato brutal foi a última coisa que Capote
escreveu de importante.
Nos 19 anos seguintes, ele viveu às custas da sua própria sombra.
Mas não é pouco. “A Sangue Frio” inaugurou um método de
investigação perfeito, que deveria ser retomado, urgente, pelo bom
jornalismo.
Personalidade
Soa irônico dizer que uma das características mais
interessantes de um jornalista é seu poder de enganar.
 Truman fazia com que as pessoas acreditassem
piamente no que ele dizia, ainda que nem tudo fosse
verdade.
 Foi assim que conseguiu realizar uma obra-prima da
literatura.
 Egocêntrico, vaidoso, centro das atenções, prodigiosa
memória, efeminado, irônico, exibicionista. Dissimulado,
fingido.


Breakfast at Tiffany’s
In 1961, the novella was adapted into a
major film by the same name starring
Audrey Hepburn and directed by Blake
Edwards. The movie is set in
contemporary times (i.e., in the year it
was made) and not in the 1940s.
DIFFERENCES

Holly's sexual liberation ( Hays code)
In 1961, the movie studio couldn't reveal
that Holly slept with and lived with several
men at various points in the novella,
although they could say that Paul, or Fred
as Holly calls him, is "kept" by a married
woman (a character created entirely for
the movie).
The ending of the story

The book discreetly mentions Holly being
pregnant as a result of her relationship with
Jose, the Brazilian diplomat.
In the novella, although the unnamed Paul
claims to be in love with Holly, it appears to be a
largely platonic and unrequited love, and he has
no choice but to let her go to Brazil. Holly lets
the cat go, goes to Brazil, and is never heard
from again.