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
with some explanation of context, in the following article by Emily Temple: https://archive.is/eEG4V
a little sample:
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 That talent is now officially withdrawn.