Coming from a dysfunctional family, Capote made a brilliant writing career and became famous throughout the world for his novel The Cold-blooded Murder. In the article we will consider in detail the work of this person.
Childhood
The biography of Truman Capote began in New Orleans, Louisiana. He was the son of 17-year-old Lilly May Folk and seller Arculus Streckfus. His parents divorced when he was 4 years old and was sent to Monroville, Alabama, where his mother's relatives raised him for the next four to five years. He quickly became friends with a distant relative of his mother, Nanny Rumbley Folk. In Monroeville, he became friends with his neighbor Harper Lee, who remained his best friend throughout his life.
As a single child, Truman Capote learned to read and write before entering first grade. He was often seen at the age of 5 with a dictionary and a notebook in his hands - it was then that he began to practice writing stories.
Short story period
Capote began writing full-length short stories at about 8 years old. In 2013, Swiss publisher Peter Haag discovered 14 unpublished short stories written when Capote was a teenager in the New York Public Library Archive. Random House published them in 2015, entitled "The Early Stories of Truman Capote."
Between glory and obscurity
Random House, the publisher of The Other Voices, Other Rooms, began with the publication in 1949 of Truman Capote's book “Voices of Grass”. In addition to Miriam, this collection also includes short-story short stories first published in The Atlantic Monthly (August 1947).
After Votes of Grass, Capote published a collection of his travel books, Local Color (1950), which included nine essays originally published in journals between 1946 and 1950.
Christmas Memory, a largely autobiographical story that took place in the 1930s, was published in Mademoiselle magazine in 1956. It was released as a stand-alone hardcover publication in 1966 and has since been published in many publications and anthologies. Quotes from Truman Capote from this book are often used as material for publications devoted to the real biography of the writer.
"Other voices, other rooms"
The literary fame of Truman Capote began with the publication of the semi-autobiographical novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms. Then the general public drew attention to the feeble, slightly eccentric homosexual, who would later conquer the New York bohemia with her vivid literary style and incomparable sense of humor.
The plot of this novel is dedicated to 13-year-old Joel Knox, who recently lost his mother. Joel leaves New Orleans to live with his father, who left him at the time of his birth. Arriving at Scully Scully, a huge decaying mansion in rural Alabama, Joel meets his sullen stepmother Amy, the lecherous transvestite Randolph and provoking Idabel, the girl who becomes his friend. He also sees a spectral strange lady with "living curls", watching her from the top window.
Despite Joel’s questions, his father’s whereabouts remain a mystery. When he was finally allowed to see his father, Joel was stunned to find that he was suffering from quadriplegia. As a result, his father fell down the stairs after he was accidentally shot by Randolph. Joel escapes with Idabel, but picks up pneumonia and eventually returns to Scully-Scully.
Truman Capote: "Breakfast at Tiffany's"
“Tiffany's Breakfast: A Short Novel and Three Stories” (1958) incorporates the title story and three shorter stories: “Flower House”, “Diamond Guitar” and “Christmas Memory”. The main character of the novel, Holly Golightly, became one of Capote's most famous creations, and the prose style of the book prompted Norman Mailer to call Capote "the most perfect writer of my generation."
Initially, the story itself was to be published in the July 1958 issue of Harper's Bazaar, a few months before its publication in book form by the publisher Random House. But Hearst’s Harper’s publisher began to demand changes to Capote’s tart literary language, which he reluctantly made, because he liked the photographs of David Atti and the design work of Harper's Bazaar art director Alexei Brodovich that should have accompanied the text.
But, despite his efforts, the story was still not published. His authorial literary language and storyline were still considered “unsuitable, ” and there was concern that Tiffany, a major advertiser, would react negatively to the publication of the book. Offended by Capote, he resold the novel to Esquire magazine in November 1958.
Truman Capote: "Cold-blooded Murder"
The writer was inspired by a 300-word note published on November 16, 1959 in The New York Times for the new book, "Cold-blooded Murder: The True Story of the Massacre and Its Consequences" (1965). It described the inexplicable murder of the Clatter family in rural Holcombe, Kansas, and a quote from the local sheriff was attached: "The psychopathic killer seems to have worked here."
Fascinated by this short news, Capote traveled with Harper Lee to Holcomb and visited the scene. Over the next few years, he met everyone who participated in the investigation, and most of the residents of a small town and region. Instead of taking notes during the interview, Capote memorized every conversation and painstakingly wrote down all the memorable quotes of the people interviewed. He claimed that he was able to memorize more than 90% of the material he heard.
Fateful romance
The Cold Blood Murder was published in 1966 by Random House after being published in parts in The New Yorker. "Non-fiction novel, " as Capote called it, brought him literary recognition and became an international bestseller, but after him the illustrious writer did not publish any more novels.
Severe criticism
But fate was not so kind to Truman Capote - reviews of his best romance were not always favored, especially in the UK. The feud between Capote and British critic Kenneth Tynan erupted on the Observer’s pages following Tynan’s review of The Cold Blood Murder. The critic was sure that Capote always wanted the execution of the murder suspects described in the novel to take place, so that the book had a spectacular ending.
Tynan wrote: "In the end, we are talking about responsibility: the debt that the writer may have before those who provide him with literary material - up to the last autobiographical parentheses - which is the means of subsistence for any author … For the first time, an influential writer The first rank was placed in a privileged relationship with criminals who were ready to die, and, in my opinion, he did nothing to save them.The focus is sharply narrowing down priorities, and what should come first: Peshnoy work or lives of two people trying to help (through the provision of new psychiatric testimony) can easily fail, as in the case of Capote - also evidence that he never tried to save them in fact."
Personal life
Capote did not hide his belonging to sexual minorities. One of his first serious partners was Smith College's professor of literature, Newton Arvin, who won the National Book Award for his biography in 1951, and to whom Kapote dedicated Other Voices, Other Rooms. However, Capote spent most of his life with his co-author Jack Dunphy. In his book, “Dear Genius …: A Memory of My Life with Truman Capote, ” Dunphy tries to describe the Capote that he knew and loved in his relationship, calling him the most successful and complaining that in the end the writer’s addiction and alcoholism destroyed their shared personal life, and his career.
Dunphy gives perhaps the deepest and most intimate look at Capote's life outside of his own work. Although the relationship between Capote and Dunphy lasted most of Capote's life, it sometimes seems that they lived different lives. Their separate housing allowed both to maintain mutual independence in relations and, as Dunphy admitted, "saved him from the painful contemplation of how Capote drinks and takes drugs."
Capote was well known for his very unusual high timbre and strange vocal manners, as well as for his unusual manner of dressing and bizarre fabrications. He often claimed to know people whom he had never actually met, such as Greta Garbo. He claimed that he had numerous connections with men who were considered heterosexual, including, in his words, Errol Flynn. He traveled around the eclectic circle of social circles, communicating with authors, critics, business tycoons, philanthropists, Hollywood and theater celebrities, aristocrats, monarchs and representatives of higher layers of society - both in the United States and abroad.
Part of his public life was a long-standing rivalry with writer Gore Vidal. Their rivalry prompted Tennessee Williams to complain: "It seems that they are fighting with each other for some sort of golden prize." In addition to the authors with whom he had a love affair (Villa Kater, Isak Dinesen and Marcel Proust), Kapote weakly appreciated other writers. Nevertheless, one of the few who received his favorable approval was journalist Lacey Fosburg, author of The Closing Time: The True Story of Gubab's Murder (1977). He also expressed admiration for Andy Warhol's book, Andy Warhol's Philosophy: A to B and Back.
Although Capote never fully participated in the gay rights movement, his own openness to homosexuality and his encouragement for the openness of others makes him an important figure in the fight for the rights of sexual deviation proponents. In his article, Capote and Trillions: Homophobia and Literary Culture in the Middle of the Century, Jeff Solomon talks in detail about the meeting between Capote and Lionel and Diana Trilling, two New York intellectuals and literary critics. Capote then strongly criticized Lionel Trilling, who had recently published a book about E.M. Forst, but ignored the author's homosexuality.
The death of a writer
Capote died in 1984 from health problems caused by drug and alcohol abuse. Since the time of the "Cold-blooded Murder", he never finished a single novel, became very fat, bald and addicted to prohibited substances. It was the bitter price that Truman Capote paid for his popularity. In Monroville, Alabama, the Capote House Museum is still operating, which stores his personal letters and various items from the writer's childhood.
Reviews on some works
Miriam is noted as a “fabulous, psychological work” and an excellent study guide for dual personality disorder.
Reynolds Price notes that Capote’s two early short works, Miriam and Silver Pitcher, reflect his acquaintance with other young writers, especially Carson McCaller.
Readers noted symbolism in history, in particular the use of colors in clothes. Mrs. Miller's blue, the favorite color, is seen as a symbol of sadness. Violet is seen as a symbol of wealth, and white as a symbol of purity, goodness and health. It is noteworthy that Miriam often wears white, and many times during the story it snows, and the snow is also white. The Jewish origin of the name Miriam can be translated as “wishful for a child, ” which could explain a lot of what Mrs. Miller wants and what she sees in her young visitor. Miriam can be seen as a symbol of the angel of death.
Capote also comments on the themes of identity that underlie the story: "… The only thing she lost for Miriam was her identity, but now she knew that she again found the person who lived in this room."
Critics praised "The Voices of Grass." The New York Herald Tribune praised the novel as "wonderful … fused with a gentle laugh, charming human warmth and a sense of positive quality of life." Atlantic Monthly commented that “Voices of Grass” captivates you with the fact that you share the author’s feeling that there is a special poetry - spontaneity, surprise and delight - in a life that is spotless in accordance with common sense. "Sales of this book reached 13, 500, which is more than twice that of Kapote’s two previous works.
Grass Voices was Truman Capote's favorite personal work, even though it was criticized as too sentimental.
In her article, Breakfast at Sally Bowles, Ingrid Norton from Open Letters pointed out the debt of Capote to Christopher Isherwood, one of his mentors, in creating the character of Holly Golightly: Breakfast at Tiffany's is largely due to the personal crystallization of Capote Sally from Isherwood Bowles."
Aunt Truman Capote, Marie Rudisill, notes that Holly is the prototype of Miss Lily Jane Bobbit, the main character in his short story Children at Their Birthdays. She observes that both characters are "free, eccentric wanderers, dreamers striving for their own ideal of happiness." Capote himself admitted that Golightly was the favorite of his characters.
Poetry in the style of the novel prompted Norman Mailer to call Capote "the most perfect writer of my generation, " adding that he "would not have changed the two words in" Tiffany's Breakfast.
Having written an article in The New York Times, Conrad Knickerbocker praised Capote for his ability to describe details in detail throughout the novel and declared the book “a masterpiece, agonizing, terrible, obsessed proof that times so successful in describing disasters are still able to give a genuine tragedy for the world."
In a critical review of the novel, published in 1966 by The New Republic, Stanley Kaufman, criticizing Capote's writing style throughout the novel, argues that he "shows on almost every page that he is the most outrageously overrated stylist of our time, " and then claims that "the depth in this book is no deeper than the mine of its actual details, its height is rarely higher than that of good journalism, and often falls even lower than it."
Tom Wolfe wrote in his essay “Violence”: “The book is neither one nor the other, since the answers to both questions are known from the very beginning … Instead, the expectation of the book is based mainly on a completely new idea in detective stories: the promise of details and keeping them to end".
Reviewer Kate Kolkhun claims that the book The Cold Blood Murder, for which Kapote made 8, 000 pages of research notes, is built and structured with a strained writing talent. Careful prose connects the reader with his unfolding story. Simply put, the book was conceived as a journalistic investigation and was born a novel.
Answered Prayers: An Unfinished Novel
The title of the book refers to a quotation of St. Theresa from Avila, which Capote chose as an epigraph: "Even more tears are shed on the answer prayers than those that remain unanswered."
According to an editorial note by Joseph M. Fox for the 1987 edition, Capote signed an initial contract for the novel, purported to be a modern American counterpart to Marcel Proust’s book, Looking for Lost Time, January 5, 1966 with Random House. This agreement provided for an advance of $ 25, 000 with a fixed delivery date of January 1, 1968.
