SOURCE: "An American Tragedy and In Cold Blood," in Thought, Vol. XLVII, No. 187, Winter, 1972, pp. 569-86.

In the following essay, McAleer contrasts An American Tragedy with Truman Capote's crime novel In Cold Blood.

When Truman Capote's In Cold Blood was published in 1965 the London Sunday Express hailed it as "one of the stupendous books of the decade." The New York Review of Books agreed. Capote's book was "the best documentary of an American crime ever written." And in Harper's Rebecca West wrote: "Nothing but blessings can flow from Mr. Capote's grave and reverend book." Yet the editor of the Atlantic Monthly, Edward Weeks, who might be supposed to know something about factbased novels since Nordhoff and Hall wrote the Bounty trilogy at his behest, demurred: "In In Cold Blood," he wrote, "Truman Capote is providing the readers with a high-minded, aesthetic excuse for reading about a mean, sordid...