Club de Lectura Enjoy Reading 10/11/2016: We are going to read ...
Truman Garcia Capote
(September 30, 1924 – August 25, 1984), born Truman Streckfus Persons, was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. After his parents divorced when he was four he was brought up by relatives in Monroeville, Alabama where he met Harper Lee. The two remained friends and neighbours and in Lee’s famous novel To Kill a Mockingbird Capote is portrayed as the character Dill. In 1933 Capote’s mother married New York businessman Joseph Capote and after officially being adopted by his step father, changed his surname. Capote began his professional career writing short stories. The critical success of one story, Miriam (1945) resulted in a contract to write the novel Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948). Capote earned the most fame with In Cold Blood, a journalistic work about the murder of a Kansas farm family in their home. After the success of his early works, Capote began to move in higher and higher social circles. Unusual for the time, he was openly gay, and would be seen with fellow authors, critics, business tycoons and members of high society, both in the U.S. and abroad. However eventually this was to lead to his downfall and, according to the coroners, he died of "liver disease complicated by phlebitis and multiple drug intoxication" at the age of 59. Source: iblist.com
The Early stories of Truman Capote (2015) This collection of more than a dozen pieces showcases the young Capote developing the unique voice and sensibility that would make him one of the twentieth century’s most original writers. Recently rediscovered in the archives of the New York Public Library, these short stories provide an unparalleled look at Truman Capote writing in his teens and early twenties.
The Shadows in Truman Capote’s Early Stories, Hilton Als “Truman Capote stands in the middle of his motel room, watching the TV. The motel is in the middle of the country—Kansas. It’s 1963. The crummy carpet beneath his feet is stiff, but it’s the stiffness that helps hold him up—especially if he’s had too much to drink. Outside, the Western wind blows and Truman Capote, a glass of scotch in hand, watches the TV. It’s one way he gets to relax after a long day in Garden City or its environs as he researches and writes “In Cold Blood,” his nonfiction novel about a multiple murder and its consequences. Capote began the book in 1959, but at first it wasn’t a book; it was a magazine article for The New Yorker. As originally conceived by the author, the piece was meant to describe a small community and its response to a killing. But by the time he arrived in Garden City—the murders had been committed in nearby Holcomb—Perry Smith and Richard Hickock had been arrested and charged with slaying farm owners Herbert and Bonnie Clutter and their young children, Nancy and Kenyon; as a consequence of that arrest, Capote’s project shifted focus, got more involved...” See more...
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Early Stories of Truman Capote by Truman Capote, book review, Andrew Johnson 14 Things You Didn’t Know About Harper Lee and Truman Capote’s Friendship, Ginni Chen Truman Capote is dead, Albin Krebs