In this article, Ebs Burnough asserts that Truman Capote’s “In Cold Blood” – an initial part of which was published in The New Yorker in 1965 – “catapulted [him] from a mere darling of the literary world to a full-fledged global celebrity on a par with the likes of rockstars and film legends.”

Capote had read a New York Times article about the brutal murder of a family in Kansas. He set out to investigate, in 1959 going to visit the affected Kansas community. By 1965 his “non-fiction novel” was almost complete; he was waiting for the final moment when the 2 young men convicted of the crime were executed.

Capote was deeply affected by the executions, says Burnough, who has long been a fan and is creator of the 2019 documentary, The Capote Tapes. The deaths, Burnough goes so far as to say, precipitated Capote’s decline into drug and alcohol addiction.