Truman Capote
(1924-1984) - original name Truman Streckfus Persons
American novelist, short story writer, and playwright. Capote gained
international fame with his "nonfiction novel" IN COLD BLOOD (1966), an
account of a real life crime in which an entire family was murdered by
two sociopaths. The Louisiana-Mississippi-Alabama area provided the
setting for much of Capote's fiction.
"Until one morning in mid-November of 1959, few Americans - in fact,
few Kansans - had ever heard of Holcomb. Like the waters of river, like
the motorists on the highway, and like the yellow trains streaking down
the Santa Fe tracks, drama, in the shape of exceptional happenings, had
never stopped there." (from In Cold Blood)
Truman Capote was born in New Orleans, as the son of a salesman and a
16-year-old beauty queen, Lillie Mae Faulk. His father, Archulus "Arch"
Persons, worked as a clerk for a steamboat company. Persons never stuck
at any job for long, and was always leaving home in search for new
opportunities. The unhappy marriage gradually disintegrated. When Capote
was four, his parents eventually divorced.
The young Truman was brought up in Monroeville, Alabama. He lived
some years with his relatives, one of whom became the model for the
loving, elderly spinster of the author's novels, stories, and plays.
"Her face is remarkable - not unlike Lincoln's, craggy like that, and
tinted by sun and wind," described Capote in A CHRISTMAS MEMORY (1966)
his distant relative Sook, Nanny Rumbley Faulk. Sook was
sixty-something, "small and sprightly, like a bantam hen..." Capote's
mother, Lillie Mae, wrote letters and telephoned to her son, often
crying that she had no money and no husband.
In his childhood Capote made friends with Harper Lee, who portrayed
him as Dill in her world famous novel To Kill a Mockingbird. "Dill was a
curiosity. He wore blue linen shorts that buttoned to his shirt, his
hair was snow white and stuck to his head like duckfluff; he was a year
my senior but I towered over him. As he told us the old tale his blue
eyes would lighten and darken; his laugh was sudden and happy; he
habitually pulled at a cowlick in the center of his forehead."
Truman Capote, 1924
After Capote's mother married again, this time a well-to-do
businessman, Capote moved to New York, and adopted his stepfather's
surname. He attended the Trinity School and St. John's Academy in New
York, and the public schools of Greenwich, Connecticut. At the age of
seventeen, Capote ended his formal schooling. He found work at the New
Yorker, where he attracted attention with his eccentric style of dress.
"... I recall him sweeping through the corridors of the magazine in a
black opera cape, his long golden hair falling to his shoulders: an
apparition that put one in mind of Oscar Wilde in Nevada, in his velvets
and lilies." (Brendan Gill in Here at The New Yorker, 1975)
Capote's early stories were published in quality magazines and in
1946 he won the O.Henry award. His first novel, OTHER VOICES, OTHER
ROOMS (1948), depicted a boy, Joel Knox, growing up in the Deep South.
Joel is "too pretty, too delicate and fair skinned". He seeks his father
but falls into a relationship with a decadent transvestite. The book
gained a wide success and created controversy because of its treatment
of homosexuality. During this time Capote had already established his
fame among the cultural circles as the thin voiced, promising young
writer, who could brighten up parties with his sharp and clever remarks.
Next year Capote went to Europe, where he wrote fiction and
non-fiction. Among his major works was a profile of Marlon Brando.
Capote's travels accompanying a tour of Porgy and Bess in the Soviet
Union produced THE MUSES ARE HEARD. These European years marked the
beginning of Capote's work for the theatre and films. In 1949 appeared A
TREE OF NIGHT, which gathered together short stories published in
Harper's Bazaar, Mademoiselle, and other magazines. When the director
John Huston was making The Asphalt Jungle (1950), Capote met Marilyn
Monroe, who acted in the film. "With her tresses invisible, and her
complexion cleared of all cosmetics, she looked twelve years old, a
pubescent virgin who had just been admitted to an orphanage and is
grieving her plight." (from Marilyn Monroe: Photographs 1945-1962 by
Truman Capote)
In the 1950s Capote wrote THE HOUSE OF FLOWERS, a musical set in a
West Indies bordello. Capote's lyrical style and melancholy marked his
novel THE GRASS HARP (1951). In the story an orphaned boy and two old
ladies observe life from a china tree. Eventually they come down from
their temporary retreat, unlike Cosimo Piovasco di Rondò in Italo
Calvino's novel The Baron in the Trees (1957). The book was adapted into
screen in 1996, starring Piper Laurie, Sissy Spacek, and Walter Matthau.
Capote's first important film work was collaboration with John Huston on
Beat the Devil (1954).
Following return to the United States, Copote wrote BREAKFAST AT
TIFFANY'S (1958). Its central character, Holly Golightly, is a young
woman, who comes to New York seeking for happiness. She has a nameless
cat and a brother named Fred. The narrator, an aspiring writer who has
the same birthday as Capote (September 30), follows Holly's life, filled
with colorful characters. "What I've found does the most good is just to
get into a taxi and go to Tiffany's. It calms me down right away, the
quietness and the proud look of it; nothing very bad could happen to you
there..." The novel is constructed as a memory of events, that happened
about 15 years earlier. Holly has left the country before the end of the
war, and the narrator has not seen her since. Breakfast at Tiffany's was
made into a successful film, directed by Blake Edwards and starring
Audrey Hepburn. George Axelrod updated the story to the 1960s and later
told: "Nothing really happened in the book. All we had was this glorious
girl - a perfect part for Audrie Hepburn. What we had to do was devise a
story, get a central romantic relationship, and make the hero a
red-blooded heterosexual."
Increasing preoccupation with journalism formed the basis for the
bestseller In Cold Blood, a pioneering work of documentary novel or
"nonfiction novel". The work started from an article in The New York
Times. It dealt with the murder of a wealthy family in Holcomb, Kansas.
Sponsored by the magazine, Capote interviewed with Harper Lee local
people to recreate the lives of both the murderers and their victims.
During the process he became emotionally attached to both killers.
However, this did not prevent him from telling the story with utmost
objectivity.
The research work and writing took six years to finish. Capote used
neither a tape recorder nor note pad, but emptied his interviews and
impressions in notebooks at the end of the day. He also recorded last
days of the death-obsessed criminals. (See Norman Mailer's journalistic
works The Armies of the Nigh, Miami and the Siege of Chicago, Of Fire on
the Moon.) Richard Brooks' screen adaptation of the book, with its
black-and-white photography, avoided all sensationalism. The trial scene
was re-enacted at the Finney County Court House in the Garden City,
where the actual trial had taken place. Brooks also used the real jury
who had convicted Perry Smith and Dick Hicock.
Among Capote's other works from the 1960s is the classic A Christmas
Memory, a story about a seven-year-old boy, Buddy, his cousin, an
eccentric old lady, and a tough little orange and white rat terrier
called Queenie. Buddy and his cousin are each other's best friends,
whose special relationship is symbolized by baking of fruitcakes, a kind
of a Proustian Madeleine remembrance. The story gained a huge success as
a television play. After the publication of In Cold Blood, Capote
planned to write a Proustian novel to be called "Answered Prayers". This
plan never materialized. Problems with drink and drugs, and disputes
with other writers, such as Gore Vidal, exhausted Capote's creative
energies.
In interviews, Capote negative anecdotes about the people he knew
distanced him from his friends. "I had a big discussion with Saul Bellow
about Richard Wright," Capote said in 1974. "I said, Richard Wright was
a good friend of mine and do you know what Saul Bellow said? He said,
"Huh! Well, Wright just became a victim of these heavyweight
intellectuals. I used to see him carting around books on Wittgenstein.
He was convinced he was an intellectual." I thought that was very sad
and pathetic." (The Critical Response to Truman Capote by Joseph J.
Waldmeir, 1999)
Answered Prayers remained unfinished, but three stories from the
novel appeared in Esquire in the 1970s. The surviving portions were
republished in 1986. Capote's autobiographical book presented such
real-life as Colette, the Duchess of Windsor, Montgomery Clift, and
Tallulah Bankhead, but its depiction of the smart set was characterized
in The New York Times as "a socio-pornographic ''Ragtime'' rife with the
low cackle of camp." MUSIC FOR CHAMELEONS (1981) was a collection of
short pieces, stories, interviews, and conversations published in
various magazines. Truman Capote died in Los Angeles, California, on
August 26, 1984, of liver disease complicated by phlebitis and multiple
drug intoxication. His life and work inspired Bennett Miller's film
Capote (2005), based on the Gerald Clarke biography from 1988, and Have
You Heard? (2006), based on George Plimpton's interviews.
