The book (above) I finished this morning is the kind of book I don't read that often. It's Truman Capote and the Legacy of In Cold Blood by Ralph F. Voss, who's a good friend of mine.
But I also am a fan of the "nonfiction novel" In Cold Blood. I'm pretty sure I've read some of Capote's shorter works sometime in my life, but his masterpiece was a result of him finding a small article in the New York Times about the grisly murders in western Kansas. Based on a hunch and backing from William Shawn of The New Yorker, he traveled to Kansas, researched the story, and turned it into a literary gold mine.
I didn't know much about Capote, but I do now. And after reading the book, I want to check out the two films of Capote and Infamous because I'm interested to see how the filmmakers chose to portray the man, how he went about composing the work, how the relationship between Capote and Harper Lee is presented, and how his presence in rural Kansas is portrayed.
For me, someone who reads mostly non-fiction, one of my favorite chapters in Voss's book is Chapter 4: The Myth of the Nonfiction Novel. And because I'm very interested in how native Kansans still feel about the book that is indelibly linked with their state, I really enjoyed the final chapter, Ch. 8: The Legacy in Kansas.
If you're a fan of Capote or In Cold Blood, I suspect this book is pretty much required reading, especially because of Ch. 5: The Gay Subtext of In Cold Blood.
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