I did not know that William S. Burroughs trashed Truman Capote because of In Cold Blood, but now I know, and I'm definitely on Burroughs's side of this one.
You know, I read In Cold Blood back in undergrad days. It haunted me, but something felt off; I could never say what exactly, and it wasn't until many many years later that I started to learn something more about how Capote went about writing it. I had an unfortunate glimmer of interest in "true crime" for a bit—it seemed a natural sort of thing to read, after reading lots of detective fiction in earlier years—but it never got too far (thank the gods) and In Cold Blood didn't exactly send me back to the bookstore looking for more stuff like it. I guess the book left me...well, cold.
~Chara