The Gang That Wouldn't Write Straight: Wolfe, Thompson, Didion, Capote, and the New Journalism Revolution by Marc Weingarten Page A
Authors: Marc Weingarten
Tags: Fiction, Literary, General, Biography & Autobiography, Literary Criticism, American, Language Arts & Disciplines, Journalism, Mailer; Norman - Criticism and Interpretation, Wolfe; Tom - Criticism and Interpretation, Didion; Joan - Criticism and Interpretation, American Prose Literature - 20th Century - History and Criticism, Capote; Truman - Criticism and Interpretation, Reportage Literature; American - History and Criticism, Journalism - United States - History - 20th Century
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example this passage from the first third of the book, when Al Dewey investigates the crime scene:
During this visit Dewey paused at an upstairs window, his attention caught by something seen in the near distance—a scarecrow amid the wheat stubble. The scarecrow wore a man’s hunting-cap and a dress of weather-faded flowered calico. (Surely an old dress of Bonnie Clutter’s?) Wind frolicked the skirt and made the scarecrow sway-made it seem a creature forlornly dancing in the cold December field. And Dewey was somehow reminded of Marie’s dream. One recent morning she had served him a bungled breakfast of sugared eggs and salted coffee, then blamed it all on “a silly dream”—but a dream the power of daylight had not dispersed.
Shawn was skeptical of such fanciful speculative prose; how could Capote possibly know what Dewey had been thinking at that moment? Or anyone else’s thoughts, for that matter, especially those of the dead Clutters? In point of fact, Capote couldn’t vouch for the Clutters, but everything else panned out; the
New Yorker
fact checker found Capote to be the most accurate writer whom he had ever worked with.
“There were inaccuracies, sure,” said Hope. “He had events happening in different locations and so forth, but none of that really bothered me. What bothered me was that he overplayed certain characters, such as Al Dewey, but I think that Al perhaps let himself be used by Truman in a sense.” Bill Brown thought that Capote’s portrayal of the Clutters was so off the mark as to be virtually unrecognizable.
The 135,000-word story ran in four parts in four consecutive issues of
The New Yorker
beginning with the September 25, 1965, issue; the series was a hit, busting all previous sales records for the magazine. When Random House published it in book form as
In Cold Blood
, it heralded the arrival of a new form, what Capote called the “nonfiction novel,” and netted its author $2 million in paperback and film sales.
Even after the story was published to great fanfare, William Shawn remained uncomfortable with the decision to run it in
The New Yorker
. For a magazine that prided itself on ironclad accuracy, there was too much unsubstantiated fact, too much fanciful speculation on Capote’s part. Many years later Shawn would still rue the day he gave the green light to Capote’s notion.
THE GREAT AMERICAN MAGAZINE
“T iny Mummies” notwithstanding, there was a time when Clay Felker worshiped
The New Yorker
. In the forties, when Felker was in high school,
The New Yorker
was word-perfect, everything he could ever ask for in a magazine. The narrative nonfiction of Hersey, Ross, Liebling, and other
New Yorker
contributors represented the apex of creative journalism, the way good stories should be written. It was also a literary refuge from the local newspapers, which he found intellectually listless and uninspired. Growing up in Webster Groves, Missouri, an affluent bedroom suburb ten miles southwest of St. Louis, Felker had to make do with the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
, a paper that had fallen mightily in the decades since former owner Joseph Pulitzer worked his magic. Felker, a baseball fan, stuck with the paper’s sports pages.
Clay Schuette Felker was born on October 2, 1925 (for years he claimed it was 1928), and reared in a household with two University of Missouri journalism school graduates. Felker’s father, Carl, a nonpracticing lawyer, was the managing editor of the
Sporting News
, at that time exclusively a baseball magazine, as well as the editor of the
Sporting Goods Dealer
, a monthly trade publication. His mother was a former newspaper editor who had quit her career to raise her family. Felker wasted little time in establishing himself as a budding publisher, setting up his first newspaper at the age of eight—“the publishing equivalent of a lemonade stand,” he recalled.
Felker’s earliest exposure to professional journalism came during highschool, when
During this visit Dewey paused at an upstairs window, his attention caught by something seen in the near distance—a scarecrow amid the wheat stubble. The scarecrow wore a man’s hunting-cap and a dress of weather-faded flowered calico. (Surely an old dress of Bonnie Clutter’s?) Wind frolicked the skirt and made the scarecrow sway-made it seem a creature forlornly dancing in the cold December field. And Dewey was somehow reminded of Marie’s dream. One recent morning she had served him a bungled breakfast of sugared eggs and salted coffee, then blamed it all on “a silly dream”—but a dream the power of daylight had not dispersed.
Shawn was skeptical of such fanciful speculative prose; how could Capote possibly know what Dewey had been thinking at that moment? Or anyone else’s thoughts, for that matter, especially those of the dead Clutters? In point of fact, Capote couldn’t vouch for the Clutters, but everything else panned out; the
New Yorker
fact checker found Capote to be the most accurate writer whom he had ever worked with.
“There were inaccuracies, sure,” said Hope. “He had events happening in different locations and so forth, but none of that really bothered me. What bothered me was that he overplayed certain characters, such as Al Dewey, but I think that Al perhaps let himself be used by Truman in a sense.” Bill Brown thought that Capote’s portrayal of the Clutters was so off the mark as to be virtually unrecognizable.
The 135,000-word story ran in four parts in four consecutive issues of
The New Yorker
beginning with the September 25, 1965, issue; the series was a hit, busting all previous sales records for the magazine. When Random House published it in book form as
In Cold Blood
, it heralded the arrival of a new form, what Capote called the “nonfiction novel,” and netted its author $2 million in paperback and film sales.
Even after the story was published to great fanfare, William Shawn remained uncomfortable with the decision to run it in
The New Yorker
. For a magazine that prided itself on ironclad accuracy, there was too much unsubstantiated fact, too much fanciful speculation on Capote’s part. Many years later Shawn would still rue the day he gave the green light to Capote’s notion.
THE GREAT AMERICAN MAGAZINE
“T iny Mummies” notwithstanding, there was a time when Clay Felker worshiped
The New Yorker
. In the forties, when Felker was in high school,
The New Yorker
was word-perfect, everything he could ever ask for in a magazine. The narrative nonfiction of Hersey, Ross, Liebling, and other
New Yorker
contributors represented the apex of creative journalism, the way good stories should be written. It was also a literary refuge from the local newspapers, which he found intellectually listless and uninspired. Growing up in Webster Groves, Missouri, an affluent bedroom suburb ten miles southwest of St. Louis, Felker had to make do with the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
, a paper that had fallen mightily in the decades since former owner Joseph Pulitzer worked his magic. Felker, a baseball fan, stuck with the paper’s sports pages.
Clay Schuette Felker was born on October 2, 1925 (for years he claimed it was 1928), and reared in a household with two University of Missouri journalism school graduates. Felker’s father, Carl, a nonpracticing lawyer, was the managing editor of the
Sporting News
, at that time exclusively a baseball magazine, as well as the editor of the
Sporting Goods Dealer
, a monthly trade publication. His mother was a former newspaper editor who had quit her career to raise her family. Felker wasted little time in establishing himself as a budding publisher, setting up his first newspaper at the age of eight—“the publishing equivalent of a lemonade stand,” he recalled.
Felker’s earliest exposure to professional journalism came during highschool, when
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