William S. Burroughs Sends Anti-Fan Letter to In Cold Blood Author Truman Capote: “You Have Sold Out Your Talent”

On July 23, 1970, William S. Bur­roughs wrote Tru­man Capote a let­ter. “This is not a fan let­ter in the usu­al sense — unless you refer to ceil­ing fans in Pana­ma.” Instead, Bur­rough­s’s mis­sive is a poi­son pen let­ter, blis­ter­ing even by the high stan­dards of New York lit­er­ary cir­cles. Of course, Capote, author of Break­fast at Tiffany’s and In Cold Blood, was no stranger to feuds. He often trad­ed wit­ty, ven­omous barbs with the likes of Gore Vidal and Nor­man Mail­er. Yet Burroughs’s let­ter comes off as much dark­er and, with the ben­e­fit of hind­sight, much more unnerv­ing.

As Thom Robin­son thor­ough­ly details in his arti­cle for Real­i­tyS­tu­dio, the two had a long and com­pli­cat­ed past filled with pro­fes­sion­al jeal­ousy and per­son­al dis­dain. They first met when Bur­roughs was a strug­gling writer and Capote was work­ing as a copy boy at The New York­er in the ear­ly 1940s. Bur­roughs was no doubt ran­kled by Capote’s mete­oric rise to lit­er­ary star­dom just after the war, thanks to some high­ly-praised short sto­ries that appeared in Harper’s Bazaar and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. Bur­roughs and his fel­low Beat writ­ers ridiculed Capote in their pri­vate let­ters. In a let­ter to Allen Gins­berg, Jack Ker­ouac described Capote’s work as “full of bull on every page.” When Kerouac’s On the Road was pub­lished, Capote dis­missed the book by say­ing, “[it] isn’t writ­ing at all — it’s typ­ing.”

When Naked Lunch was final­ly released in Amer­i­ca in 1962, three years after its pub­li­ca­tion in France, William S. Bur­roughs became a lit­er­ary icon. (Hear Bur­roughs read Naked Lunch here.) At the same time, Capote was start­ing to devel­op a genre he called cre­ative non-fic­tion, which would even­tu­al­ly cul­mi­nate with In Cold Blood. When talk­ing about his book in a 1968 inter­view with Play­boy, Capote com­pared Burroughs’s writ­ing with his own. In Cold Blood “is real­ly the most avant-garde form of writ­ing exis­tent today […] cre­ative fic­tion writ­ing has gone as far as it can exper­i­men­tal­ly. […] Of course we have writ­ers like William Bur­roughs, whose brand of ver­bal sur­face triv­ia is amus­ing and occa­sion­al­ly fas­ci­nat­ing, but there’s no base for mov­ing for­ward in that area.” At anoth­er point, Capote quipped, “Nor­man Mail­er thinks [he] is a genius, which I think is ludi­crous beyond words. I don’t think William Bur­roughs has an ounce of tal­ent.”

So when Bur­roughs put pen to paper in 1970, he already had plen­ty of rea­sons to dis­like Capote. In the let­ter, though, Bur­rough­s’s ire was specif­i­cal­ly direct­ed at Capote’s dubi­ous ethics in writ­ing In Cold Blood, a book that Bur­roughs described as “a dull unread­able book which could have been writ­ten by any staff writer on The New York­er.” (Note: You can read an ear­ly ver­sion of In Cold Blood in The New York­er itself.)

The spine of In Cold Blood is the first-hand account of con­vict­ed killers Dick Hick­ock and Per­ry Smith. Capote spent hours inter­view­ing them and in the process grew close to them, espe­cial­ly Smith. In spite of this, Capote did lit­tle to help their defense. (This is the sub­ject of not one but two movies, by the way, Capote and Infa­mous.) Crit­ic Ken­neth Tynan, in a scathing review for The Observ­er, cried foul. “For the first time an influ­en­tial writer of the front rank has been placed in a posi­tion of priv­i­leged inti­ma­cy with crim­i­nals about to die, and–in my view–done less than he might have to save them,” he wrote. “An attempt to help (by sup­ply­ing new psy­chi­atric tes­ti­mo­ny) might eas­i­ly have failed: what one miss­es is any sign that it was ever con­tem­plat­ed.” The fact of the mat­ter was that the book worked bet­ter if they died. Though Capote’s biog­ra­ph­er Ger­ald Clarke argued that there was lit­tle that the writer could have done to save the two, he con­ced­ed that “Tynan was right when he sug­gest­ed that Tru­man did not want to save them.”

Seem­ing­ly repulsed by Capote’s entire project, Bur­roughs took the Tynan’s cri­tique one step fur­ther. He argued that Capote not only sold out his sub­jects but served as a mouth­piece for those in pow­er.

I feel that [Tynan] was much too lenient. Your recent appear­ance before a sen­a­to­r­i­al com­mit­tee on which occa­sion you spoke in favor of con­tin­u­ing the present police prac­tice of extract­ing con­fes­sions by deny­ing the accused the right of con­sult­ing con­sul pri­or to mak­ing a state­ment also came to my atten­tion. In effect you were speak­ing in approval of stan­dard police pro­ce­dure: obtain­ing state­ments through bru­tal­i­ty and duress, where­as an intel­li­gent police force would rely on evi­dence rather than enforced con­fes­sions. […] You have placed your ser­vices at the dis­pos­al of inter­ests who are turn­ing Amer­i­ca into a police state by the sim­ple device of delib­er­ate­ly fos­ter­ing the con­di­tions that give rise to crim­i­nal­i­ty and then demand­ing increased police pow­ers and the reten­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment to deal with the sit­u­a­tion they have cre­at­ed.

For some­one who had fre­quent­ly been on the wrong end of the law and for some­one who spent his life giv­ing voice to the mar­gin­al­ized, this was an anath­e­ma. Bur­roughs then deliv­ered a chill­ing, voodoo-style curse:

You have betrayed and sold out the tal­ent that was grant­ed you by this depart­ment. That tal­ent is now offi­cial­ly with­drawn. Enjoy your dirty mon­ey. You will nev­er have any­thing else. You will nev­er write anoth­er sen­tence above the lev­el of In Cold Blood. As a writer you are fin­ished. Over and out.

Bur­roughs’ curse seemed to have worked. 1970 was the high-water mark of Capote’s career. He nev­er wrote anoth­er nov­el after In Cold Blood, though he labored for years on a nev­er com­plet­ed book called Answered Prayers. He spent the rest of his life on a down­ward alco­holic spi­ral until his death in 1984.

You can read the entire let­ter, which is kept at the Bur­roughs Archive of the New York Pub­lic Library’s Berg Col­lec­tion, below:

July 23, 1970
My Dear Mr. Tru­man Capote
This is not a fan let­ter in the usu­al sense — unless you refer to ceil­ing fans in Pana­ma. Rather call this a let­ter from “the read­er” — vital sta­tis­tics are not in cap­i­tal let­ters — a selec­tion from mar­gin­al notes on mate­r­i­al sub­mit­ted as all “writ­ing” is sub­mit­ted to this depart­ment. I have fol­lowed your lit­er­ary devel­op­ment from its incep­tion, con­duct­ing on behalf of the depart­ment I rep­re­sent a series of inquiries as exhaus­tive as your own recent inves­ti­ga­tions in the sun flower state. I have inter­viewed all your char­ac­ters begin­ning with Miri­am — in her case with­hold­ing sug­ar over a peri­od of sev­er­al days proved suf­fi­cient induce­ment to ren­der her quite com­mu­nica­tive — I pre­fer to have all the facts at my dis­pos­al before tak­ing action. Need­less to say, I have read the recent exchange of genial­i­ties between Mr. Ken­neth Tynan and your­self. I feel that he was much too lenient. Your recent appear­ance before a sen­a­to­r­i­al com­mit­tee on which occa­sion you spoke in favor of con­tin­u­ing the present police prac­tice of extract­ing con­fes­sions by deny­ing the accused the right of con­sult­ing con­sul pri­or to mak­ing a state­ment also came to my atten­tion. In effect you were speak­ing in approval of stan­dard police pro­ce­dure: obtain­ing state­ments through bru­tal­i­ty and duress, where­as an intel­li­gent police force would rely on evi­dence rather than enforced con­fes­sions. You fur­ther cheap­ened your­self by reit­er­at­ing the banal argu­ment that echoes through let­ters to the edi­tor when­ev­er the issue of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is raised: “Why all this sym­pa­thy for the mur­der­er and none for his inno­cent vic­tims?” I have in line of duty read all your pub­lished work. The ear­ly work was in some respects promis­ing — I refer par­tic­u­lar­ly to the short sto­ries. You were grant­ed an area for psy­chic devel­op­ment. It seemed for a while as if you would make good use of this grant. You choose instead to sell out a tal­ent that is not yours to sell. You have writ­ten a dull unread­able book which could have been writ­ten by any staff writer on the New York­er — (an under­cov­er reac­tionary peri­od­i­cal ded­i­cat­ed to the inter­ests of vest­ed Amer­i­can wealth). You have placed your ser­vices at the dis­pos­al of inter­ests who are turn­ing Amer­i­ca into a police state by the sim­ple device of delib­er­ate­ly fos­ter­ing the con­di­tions that give rise to crim­i­nal­i­ty and then demand­ing increased police pow­ers and the reten­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment to deal with the sit­u­a­tion they have cre­at­ed. You have betrayed and sold out the tal­ent that was grant­ed you by this depart­ment. That tal­ent is now offi­cial­ly with­drawn. Enjoy your dirty mon­ey. You will nev­er have any­thing else. You will nev­er write anoth­er sen­tence above the lev­el of In Cold Blood. As a writer you are fin­ished. Over and out. Are you track­ing me? Know who I am? You know me, Tru­man. You have known me for a long time. This is my last vis­it.

The polaroids above were tak­en by Andy Warhol.

via: Fla­vor­wire/Let­ters of Note/Real­i­tyS­tu­dio

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

William S. Bur­roughs Reads His First Nov­el, Junky

William S. Bur­roughs on the Art of Cut-up Writ­ing

William S. Bur­roughs Explains What Artists & Cre­ative Thinkers Do for Human­i­ty: From Galileo to Cézanne and James Joyce

550 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing one new draw­ing of a vice pres­i­dent with an octo­pus on his head dai­ly.