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.

• Goals
• 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 Clutters 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
Capotes 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
• Authors presence, authors task, authors
  involvement.
• readers presence, readers task, readers
  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
Todays 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?