‘Never let the truth get in the way of a good story’ heralds the promotional poster of a Hollywood box office bomb from 2006 entitled The Hoax which starred Richard Gere, an actor well-familiar with large-scale fakery.

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The plot of the movie involves an author – Clifford Irving – who scams his publishing company into advancing him copious amounts of money to write a fake biography of eccentric American billionaire Howard Hughes. Despite contrary protests to his publisher, the movie’s protagonist author is a scamster running a massive ruse, had never met or talked to Hughes, nor had he gained the billionaire’s personal approval to commit his colorful life story to the printed word. Reportedly, the movie’s unedited cut includes scenes, later deleted before release, of an actor who portrayed American literary giant Truman Capote, an author most renowned for writing ‘In Cold Blood’ which literary critics, as if wedded together by some singularly minded consensus, proclaimed as the finest example of ‘true-crime non-fiction’ in the canon of twentieth-century American literature.

There exists, however, a curious parallel between the movie plot of The Hoax and the morally questionable method of operation employed by Capote for his acclaimed novel ‘In Cold Blood’, purported to a be a ‘true’ account of events in the aftermath of some brutal murders which took place in a remote Kansas farming town in 1959.

Apparently, Capote and his literary masterpiece went beyond the boundaries of mere artistic license while recounting what was alleged to have been a true-to life narrative.

Soon after the publication of ‘In Cold Blood’ in 1966, a piece appeared in Esquire magazine which critically cast doubt on the authenticity of Capote’s superbly written accounts, claiming Capote “completely fabricated quotes and whole scenes.”

Actually, what Esquire magazine failed to report is that when it comes to considering “Truman Capote”, the fabrication resonates more darkly, and goes much, much deeper.

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