In honor of--or rather in order to market--the new Capote film, The New York Times is running something called "A Sponsored Archive," with free links to some of its most important pieces published about him over the years.
(Normally, they charge for archive stories.)
Can't wait for the film. In Cold Blood has been in my top five books ever since I read it about five years ago. And I do hope to knock it off its pedestal one day. Eager to see Hollywood's take on the ghastly compromises he made to create it.
(And as a bonus for visiting the site, you might get to see it much earlier. If you live in Denver, just clicking on it will generate an invite to a free preview screening this Thursday. I assume similar previews are set in other cities.
I am still wading through the archives, but the two richest pieces I found so far are A Book in a New Form Earns $2-Million for Truman Capote, published two weeks before the book, and The Story Behind a Nonfiction Novel, an interview by George Plimpton. The intro to the latter:
"In Cold Blood" is remarkable for its objectivity - nowhere, despite his involvement, does the author intrude. In the following interview, done a few weeks ago, Truman Capote, presents his own views on the case, its principals, and in particular he discussed the new literary art form which he calls the nonfiction novel. . .
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Note: Had to break my weekday silence to let you know about the free tix, and cause it's nearly 11 p.m. and I'm done working for the day. So one more in a sec, since I'm here.
Update:
Trailer for Capote. And great story in the Times: Answered Prayers: How 'Capote' Came Together.
Synopsis from RT:
In November, 1959, Truman Capote ( Philip Seymour Hoffman), the author of Breakfast at Tiffany's and a favorite figure in what is soon to be known as the Jet Set, reads an article on a back page of the New York Times. It tells of the murders of four members of a well-known farm family—the Clutters—in Holcomb, Kansas. Similar stories appear in newspapers almost every day, but something about this one catches Capote's eye. It presents an opportunity, he believes, to test his long-held theory that, in the hands of the right writer, non-fiction can be compelling as fiction. What impact have the murders had on that tiny town on the wind-swept plains? With that as his subject—for his purpose, it does not matter if the murderers are never caught—he convinces The New Yorker magazine to give him an assignment and he sets out for Kansas. Accompanying him is a friend from his Alabama childhood: Harper Lee (Catherine Keener), who within a few months will win a Pulitzer Prize and achieve fame of her own as the author of To Kill a Mockingbird.
Though his childlike voice, fey mannerisms and unconventional clothes arouse initial hostility in a part of the country that still thinks of itself as part of the Old West, Capote quickly wins the trust of the locals, most notably Alvin Dewey (Chris Cooper), the Kansas Bureau of Investigation agent who is leading the hunt for the killers. Caught in Las Vegas, the killers—Perry Smith (Clifton Collins Jr.) and Dick Hickock (Mark Pellegrino)—are returned to Kansas, where they are tried, convicted and sentenced to die. Capote visits them in jail. As he gets to know them, he realizes that what he had thought would be a magazine article has grown into a book, a book that could rank with the greatest in modern literature. His subject is now as profound as any an American writer has ever tackled. It is nothing less than the collision of two Americas: the safe, protected country the Clutters knew and the rootless, amoral country
inhabited by their killers. Hidden behind Capote's often frivolous façade is a writer of towering ambition. But even he wonders if he can write the book—the great book—he believes destiny has handed him. "Sometimes, when I think how good it could be," he writes a friend, "I can hardly breathe."
Dutton (Penguin) in early 2009. 
