I'm alternating time these days between Gerald Clarke's biography of Truman Capote and Jonathan Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven, which tells the story of how two fundamentalist Mormon brothers came to murder their sister-in-law and her baby daughter one fine July day in 1984. This is not as disconnected as it may sound--Krakauer's book is one of the latest and most successful examples of a journalistic genre that Capote himself invented with his 1959 bestseller about the murder of a wealthy Kansas farming family, In Cold Blood.

Capote is remembered today as the founder of the "true crime" genre; In Cold Blood is considered to be the inspiration for countless narrative recreations of real wrongdoing, the most famous of which is Norman Mailer's Pulitzer Prize-winning Executioner's Song (1979). Ironically, though, Capote approached the Clutter family's story not because he was interested in writing about crime, but because he was interested in creating a genre; he believed that by writing a book about the Clutter murder, he could resolve aesthetic issues that had plagued him for some time: "This book was an important event for me," he wrote. "While writing it, I realized I just might have found a solution to what had always been my greatest creative quandary. I wanted to produce a journalistic novel, something on a large scale that would have the credibility of fact, the immediacy of film, the depth and freedom of prose, and the precision of poetry."

Capote elaborated his theory of the "non-fiction novel" in a 1966 interview with George Plimpton for the New York Review of Books, observing that crime was not what interested him, so much as the potential narrative force of certain kinds of human events: "after reading the story [of the Clutter murder] it suddenly struck me that a crime, the study of one such, might provide the broad scope I needed to write the kind of book I wanted to write. Moreover, the human heart being what it is, murder was a theme not likely to darken and yellow with time." Despite Capote's reputation as the inventor of "true crime" writing, then, crime was actually incidental to his project. "The motivating factor in my choice of material--that is, choosing to write a true account of an actual murder case--was altogether literary," he told Plimpton.

The decision was based on a theory I've harbored since I first began to write professionally, which is well over 20 years ago. It seemed to me that journalism, reportage, could be forced to yield a serious new art form: the 'nonfiction novel,' as I thought of it. .... When I first formed my theories concerning the nonfiction novel, many people with whom I discussed the matter were unsympathetic. They felt that what I proposed, a narrative form that employed all the techniques of fictional art but was nevertheless immaculately factual, was little more than a literary solution for fatigued novelists suffering from 'failure of imagination.' Personally, I felt that this attitude represented a 'failure of imagination' on their part.

Erin, did you ever read Mikal Gilmore's memoir, "Shot in the Heart"? It's a really superb book, I think you'd like it if you're reading in this direction anyway.

Ms. O'Connor, You might enjoy a recent compilation of interviews with some contemporary stars of the book-length nonfiction genre: "The New New Journalism" by Robert S. Boynton. It features interviews with Krakauer, Eric Schlosser, Susan Orlean, and William Langewiesche, among others, and features a nice, informative introduction that mainly concerns that other prophetic dandy of the genre -- Tom Wolfe. It's a fun read because it's interesting to hear how the writers actually went about collecting all their information.

Dear Erin,
As much as I have mindlessly read over the years "nonfiction novels",I have never lost my discomfort over them,that feeling that something should be either/or:why not use the term "factual fiction"?
Clarke's bio is excellent,a chronicle of the waste of a great writer's life,wasted by that writer himself(the little braggart in "To Kill A Mockingbird".
By the way,Erin,there was a talk show host in the late '60's named Dick Cavett,and on one magical night he had as his guests Lester Maddox,Jim Brown...and Truman Capote.It's true.