From New Journalism to Fiction: Truman Capote's Narrative Innovations in In Cold Blood

Abstract

This paper investigates the techniques used by Capote in the practice of New journalism, a form of non-fiction narrative which emerged in the 1960s. The paper aims at proving the fictionality of Capote's In Cold Blood through delineating the borderline between New journalism and fiction and through exploring Capote's narrative innovations. To ensure the validity of this objective, the researcher employs the formalistic approach through applying some of Gerard Genette's devices to Capote's In Cold Blood. Utilising scene by scene construction, authorial silence, rhetorical dialogues and anachrony through the use of flashback and flash forward techniques, camera eye, convicts' interviews, cross-examination, montage and creative reportage, Capote engages his readers powerfully, creating a suspenseful detective novel. Though in a detective novel, readers must be given the same opportunity to solve the mystery of crime as the police themselves, Capote does not offer readers the same evidence at the same time it is made available to the detectives, something which weakens his story line. The paper concludes that because of Capote's new novelistic experience, he innovates a new approach. He experiments with many artistic techniques which surpass Genette's approach; he builds on it and takes a step forward through new manipulations of other cinematic techniques. These narrative innovations add to the making of a detective novel. Capote employs objectivity to escape story line flaws and to represent reality that owes much to fiction than new journalism