7 ms·
When Truman Capote’s lies caught up with him
- lioeters 4y agohttps://archive.is/zG4XB https://archive.is/zG4XB
- ahelwer 4y agoThis is true of basically all literary journalism. How do so many interesting things happen to these people that they can write about it? Easy, they make it up. David Foster Wallace is another example, said as someone who enjoys his essays. And David Sedaris, not that he really styles himself as a journalist.
- jackstraw14 4y agoWhich stuff in DFW's essays did he make up?
- woodruffw 4y agoThis is from memory, but ISTR people claiming that Wallace's characterizations in essays like "Shipping Out" are mostly fictionalized for (successful!) literary value. Edit: Found it: Franzen thinks that his dialogues were implausible[1]. [1]: https://www.theawl.com/2011/10/a-supposedly-true-thing-jonathan-franzen-said-about-david-foster-wallace/#.t1qt4lyho https://www.theawl.com/2011/10/a-supposedly-true-thing-jonat...
- EamonnMR 4y agoThe article digging into Sedaris was especially silly since it's clear that he's a comic (and a great one at that) and the fact that he may have taken NPR for a ride just makes him funnier.
- dingusdew 4y ago[dead]
- iamthepieman 4y agoWhich article is this?
- EamonnMR 4y agoEmbarrassingly I can't find it now. It was styled as am expose that proved that elements of Santaland diaries were untrue.
- shellothere 4y agoHis wild and delightful caricatures are often so absurd it’s comical to imagine someone reviewing each under a microscope seeking evidence of exaggeration or falsehood… that’s sort of the point!
- giardia 4y agoSteinbeck too (Travels With Charley).
- rcme 4y agoDFW’s essays are more about his personal insights into the subject rather than the subject itself. I’m sure not everything written is 100% word-for-word accurate, but I don’t get the impression he embellishes too much because he doesn’t have to. The subjects of his essays are quite mundane: a mediocre cruse, a middling tennis player, 4H, etc.
- moioci 4y ago> a middling tennis player... If you're referring to the 2006 NYT piece on Roger Federer, I think you're not supporting the "quite mundane" characterization https://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/20/sports/playmagazine/20federer.html?unlocked_article_code=iF0rsrBJyMT1M1OSrCCxn8Ms9LFcXOkJKZp1rvuzAl_T_c2eL6JPbm5UTha_fWOTO-hB-HonxXL5a6OC9s82kQady9bcB6-B4CvYo9W1ZEIyrBm-lafxb9QlAeUkL6AYhDyFjp9WTCKbvDPX4scnduUv2gOOzUHCWqmt-jJHLG4E-YfwgyD4BCcvpvNGTn-L8HCPuaZRKAHWHNJrJ0uO_aCvCVOyghzoWiFytUqGuv3If91RI0jkJmTqC-HzBgx5nyAkZ5QjY8fJ-6b6JJYJ7GR6WK6rpX7QTDddfH1qpcPw3Z2Gadk_eXY7k_mMKw65GubaNBl3yyBcpNDO2i9l&smid=share-url https://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/20/sports/playmagazine/20fed...
- rcme 4y agoI was talking about the essay "Tennis Player Michael Joyce's Professional Artistry as a Paradigm of Certain Stuff about Choice, Freedom, Discipline, Joy, Grotesquerie, and Human Completeness" Michael Joyce's highest ranking was 64.
- Beldin 4y ago64 in what? 64th worldwide is obviously not a middling player; 64th of his local club probably falls shy of that lofty moniker. Perhaps you meant "middling professional player"? Because I don't think there's enough money to be made to pay for expenses and support you year-round if you do not crack the top-100.
- rcme 4y agoYou should read the essay, I think you’d like it. Your comment strikes the heart of the matter. Yes, Michael Joyce was the 64th best in the world. He’s reached a level of tennis that almost every other player in the world can only dream of. Joyce’s ability to play tennis was rivaled only by a small handful of people in the entire world. And yet… not many will ever hear of Michael Joyce. He won’t be able to earn a sustainable wage playing the game. Ultimately, he might be even worse off than the 64th best player at a local club. So what’s the point? Why does Joyce do it?
- geepound 4y ago>This is true of basically all literary journalism. How do so many interesting things happen to these people that they can write about it? Easy, they make it up. It is not all made up. >“There is just a very shallow truth in facts,” he told me. “Otherwise, the phone directory would be the Book of Books.” https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/04/24/the-ecstatic-truth https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/04/24/the-ecstatic-t...
- everybodyknows 4y agoHunter S. Thompson, Fear And Loathing On The Campaign Trail. As he put it in a later television interview: "There was a rumor in Philadelphia about Ed Muskie being addicted to ibogaine. I know, I started it."
- boppo1 4y agoYeah, that book is 75% fiction, at least. But it's a fun read.
- lordleft 4y agoJust want to say that it's one of my favorite twists of history that the guy who wrote Breakfast at Tiffany's invented "true" crime.
- rcme 4y agoWhy? Breakfast at Tiffany’s is a remarkable book. If you’ve only seen the movie you might get the wrong impression of the book. I had to turn the movie off after just a few minutes.
- DieBruderBauer 4y agoThe movie is beyond racist. If you don't believe me just watch it. You don't even need to be an identitarian to see it's horrifically outdated.
- rcme 4y agoIn the movie, Mickey Rooney plays a horrible caricature of a Japanese man, Mr. Yunioshi. But in the book, Mr. Yunioshi is just a Japanese man, not a racist stereotype.
- noah_buddy 4y agoGone with the Wind is horrifically racist yet quite reasonably justifiable to watch on its merits.
- cmurf 4y agoWhat merits?
- jwozn 4y agoI understand your sentiment, and agree with it in some contexts, but look what HBO Max added as an intro [1]: "a prime text for examining expressions of white supremacy in popular culture ... it is precisely because of the ongoing, painful patterns of racial injustice and disregard for Black lives that Gone with the Wind should stay in circulation and remain available for viewing, analysis and discussion. ... an opportunity to think about what classic films can teach us." [2] 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gone_with_the_Wind_(film)#Analysis_and_controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gone_with_the_Wind_(film)#Anal... 2. https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/12/opinions/gone-with-the-wind-illuminates-white-supremacy-stewart/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/12/opinions/gone-with-the-wind-i...
- savryn 4y agothis bit from a diff article made me lol-- 'When I wrote 'In Cold Blood' many were critical,' Capote said. 'I spent six years on that book wandering the plains of Kansas and nearly went mad but I saw it through. (Fellow author Norman) Mailer called it 'a failure of the imagination,' and now I see that the only prizes Norman wins are for that very same kind of writing. I'm glad I was of some small service to him.' ----- great capote interviews are Paris Review 17 and especially controversial Playboy 1968 interview....holy moly you can't believe the actual meat and saucy opinions this guy really said out loud Compare to the insipid 'i love puppies and rainbows' interviews of writers today, ughhhh
- __jf__ 4y ago1968 interview: https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/books/truman-capote-playboy-interview/ https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/books/truman-capote-playboy-in... Playboy: How do you react to those critics who deride the form of documentary crime writing employed in In Cold Blood as inferior to the novel? Capote: What can I say, except that I think they’re ignorant? If they can’t comprehend that journalism is really the most avant-garde form of writing existent today, then their heads are in the sand. These critics seem unable to realize, or accept, that creative fiction writing has gone as far as it can experimentally. It reached its peak in the Twenties and hasn’t budged since. Of course, we have writers like William Burroughs, whose brand of verbal surface trivia is amusing and occasionally fascinating, but there’s no base for moving forward in that area—whereas journalism is actually the last great unexplored literary frontier. … Playboy: The gulf between someone of your background and two such brutal criminals would seem impossible to bridge. But you’ve said, “Hickock and Smith became very, very good friends of mine—perhaps the closest friends I’ve ever had in my life.” How did you establish rapport with them? Capote: I treated them as men, not as murderers. To most people, a man loses his humanity the minute they learn he’s a murderer; they could be talking with him one moment and then the next someone would whisper, “Do you know he killed five people?” and from that moment on, the man would become unreal to them, an uncomfortable abstraction. But I find it relatively easy to establish rapport with murderers; in the past few years, I’ve interviewed more than 30 of them in all parts of the country. Before I began In Cold Blood, I knew nothing about crime and wasn’t interested in it; but once the book was under way, I began interviewing murderers—or homicidal minds, as I call them—in order to have a basis of comparison for Smith and Hickock; and I met many more recently while doing a television documentary on capital punishment. The second we begin talking, I find that they are ordinary men with extraordinary problems, set apart only by their ability to kill; in some it’s a total lack of conscience, in others a passionate destructive drive. But I have found a certain pattern. One common denominator, for example, is their fetish for tattoos. I have seldom met a murderer who wasn’t tattooed. Of course, the reason is rather clear; most murderers are extremely weak men who are sexually undecided and quite frequently impotent. Thus the tattoo, with all its obvious masculine symbolism. Another common denominator is that murderers almost always laugh when they’re discussing their crimes. I’ve met few killers who didn’t start laughing when I finally managed to force them to discuss the murder—which isn’t easy. When Perry Smith started to tell me about the murder of the Clutter family, for example, he said, “I know this isn’t funny, but I can’t help laughing about it.” Just a while ago, I interviewed a 21-year-old boy named Bassett in the San Quentin death house who is extremely intelligent. He’s a slight, thin boy, with a delicate face and figure, a college student, and he writes poetry and short stories. He murdered his mother and father when he was 18; he’d been planning to do it since he was 10 years old. And when he started telling me about how he killed his parents, he began laughing and cracking little jokes, just as though he was telling me the most humorous story. They’re mostly like that; they’ll tell you how they cut someone’s throat and it’s as if they were watching a clown slip on a banana peel. … Playboy: You don’t agree, then, with the adage that it’s better for a dozen guilty men to go free than for one innocent man to be unjustly convicted? Capote: It’s a charming sentiment, but more apropos in the halcyon days of yore, when our cities had not yet been turned into jungles and a citizen could still stroll the streets in safety. I’m afraid that today, for the very self-protection of our society, it’s better that one innocent man be punished than that a dozen guilty men go free. It’s unfortunate, but that’s the harsh reality we face.