Truman Capote Born: New Orleans, Louisiana
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Truman Capote
Born: New Orleans, Louisiana
September 30, 1924
Died: Los Angeles, California
August 25, 1984
Capote’s greatest accomplishment was his merging of the dra-
matic narrative techniques of fiction with the objective report-
age of journalism in what he termed “the nonfiction novel.”
riage, the boy was to change his name legally to Ca-
pote and eventually move to New York to live with
his mother and stepfather.
Library of Congress Capote attended private schools in Manhattan
and ultimately graduated from the Franklin School,
Biography although his attendance had been, at best, irregu-
Truman Capote was born Truman Streckfus lar. The boy’s time in an exciting metropolitan New
Persons, the only child of J. Archulus Persons and York environment came at an impressionable age,
Lillie Mae Faulk Persons. During the first six years and Capote, like one of his later heroines, Holly
of his childhood, the boy frequently was handed Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1958), loved the
off to the care of relatives by his carefree and irre- pace, sophistication, and glamour of New York.
sponsible parents. Following his parents’ perma- Capote’s childhood fascination with words con-
nent separation when Truman was six, he was left tinued in his teenage years as he served as a
fully in the care of relatives in Monroeville, Ala- copyboy and file clerk at The New Yorker magazine.
bama. Although none of Capote’s early work in fiction
Being raised by a series of relatives, Capote had a was published by The New Yorker, in 1945, the twenty-
lonely childhood existence; the experience forced one-year-old writer published several short stories
him, as he said in many interviews as an adult, to that gained for him almost instant literary atten-
create his own world, personality, and sense of tion: “Miriam,” which appeared in Mademoiselle
identity. The search for that sense of selfhood was magazine; “A Tree of Night,” in Harper’s Bazaar;
to be a frequent theme in his literary work, both fic- and “My Side of the Matter,” in Story magazine. The
tion and nonfiction. One imaginative influence on appearance of these stories, and the subsequent
the young Capote was his eccentric cousin Sook publication in 1948 at age twenty-three of his first
Faulk, who encouraged the boy’s propensity for novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms, achieved for the
fantasy invention. He was later to recall Sook as young writer overnight international acclaim.
the doting parent surrogate in his short story “A Capote often described the novel as a poetic ver-
Christmas Memory.” sion of his own lonely childhood—sensitive, aban-
Capote’s childhood days can be seen in the doned, and isolated. The book was, he said, an
novel To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), written by his emotional, or spiritual, autobiography, if not an ac-
childhood friend Harper Lee, in which the youth- tual literal one. The novel’s romanticized treat-
ful Capote appears as the character Dill. Following ment of a homosexual theme made it a sensation in
his parents’ divorce in 1931, Capote spent most of the late 1940’s, when only one other contemporary
his time in Monroeville until his mother was remar- novel, Gore Vidal’s The City and the Pillar (1948),
ried in 1932 to Joseph Capote. Following their mar- had dealt with homosexuality. The controversy
397Truman Capote
over Capote’s book was further intensified by the was committed and, upon the capture of the two
now-famous picture of the youthful author on its men charged with the killings, more time investi-
back cover sprawled seductively on a chaise longue gating the lives and motives of the killers right up to
with his blond bangs hanging over his elfin face. the time of their execution. The publication of In
Capote quickly added to his reputation as a master Cold Blood, first in installments in The New Yorker and
of prose style with his 1949 short-story collection A later as a book, made Capote wealthy and gave him
Tree of Night, and Other Stories and the 1951 novella unparalleled celebrity as an author.
The Grass Harp. Following the success of In Cold Blood, Capote
In the 1950’s, Capote began to explore a variety announced that the next literary project he would
of journalistic approaches to writing, including the undertake was to be a roman à clef about New York
travel recollection of Local Color (1950), an ex- and the international jet set with which he person-
tended account of an American opera company’s ally had become so familiar. Its title was to be An-
tour of the Soviet Union in The Muses Are Heard swered Prayers, and when completed, Capote pre-
(1956), and his 1959 volume of commentary ac- dicted, the work would rival the achievement of
companying the photographs of Richard Avedon, French novelist Marcel Proust’s monumental À la
Observations. In 1958, he produced his successful recherche du temps perdu (1913-1927; Remembrance of
novella Breakfast at Tiffany’s, which further en- Things Past, 1922-1931), a claim Capote made re-
hanced his reputation as a fiction writer. An equally peatedly in television talk show appearances.
popular film version of the novella followed in His personal life and physical well-being, how-
1961. ever, became increasingly chaotic during the
In the 1950’s and 1960’s, Capote applied his tal- 1970’s. He wrote in a personal reminiscence, an in-
ents to other literary forms, adapting two of his terview with himself in his 1980 volume, Music for
works for the theater—his novella, The Grass Harp, Chameleons: “I’m an alcoholic. I’m a drug addict.
and later his short work House of Flowers, which was I’m homosexual. I’m a genius.” The complications
made into a musical. He also wrote two screenplays from all those conditions simultaneously caused
for films, Beat the Devil (1953) and a film version of erratic behavior by the writer in his last decade and
Henry James’s gothic novella The Turn of the Screw greatly diminished his writing volume, which had
(1898), released under the title The Innocents never been great because of his insistence on per-
(1961). During the 1960’s, Capote also published fection of style.
the first two parts of what was to be a trilogy of emo- In 1973, he had published a collection of short
tionally etched stories of his childhood in the pieces, The Dogs Bark: Public People and Private Places.
South: A Christmas Memory appeared in 1966 (it had Music for Chameleons included not only more per-
originally been printed in Mademoiselle in 1956), sonal profiles but also a new short account of an-
followed by The Thanksgiving Visitor in 1967. A year other true crime, “Handcarved Coffins,” a kind of
before his death, a third volume, One Christmas In Cold Blood in miniature. In 1983, the third of his
(1983), was published, dealing with the visit of a childhood recollections appeared, a slender story
boy to see his father, separated from him by di- in book form, One Christmas.
vorce. Only four portions of Answered Prayers ever ap-
Capote’s major achievement in the 1960’s, how- peared. These four parts ran in 1975 and 1976 in
ever, was to be the 1966 nonfiction book In Cold Esquire magazine, and their appearance created a
Blood: A True Account of a Multiple Murder and Its Con- personal disaster for the writer, as many of the
sequences. This work, which describes the murder of thinly disguised portraits of his friends grievously
the Clutter farm family in Kansas, required six offended their models. Many of the writer’s
years of research by the author. Many critics view In wealthy friends simply cut all contact with Capote.
Cold Blood as Capote’s finest work; the author main- In his last years, Capote was subject to frequent
tained that he had created a new art form, the bouts with and recuperations from his many sub-
“nonfiction novel.” This new form combined the stance dependencies. He died in 1984, shortly be-
detached observation of journalistic reportage fore his sixtieth birthday, while on a visit to Los An-
with the dramatic story-telling techniques of fic- geles. Following Capote’s death, an extensive
tion. Capote spent years in Kansas after the crime search was made for the missing portions of An-
398Truman Capote
swered Prayers, those segments the author so often conflict between vulnerable persons similarly out-
said that he had completed. No portions of the side their more conventional environment. This
work—other than those already published in mag- theme can be seen in a number of his works, such
azine installments—were ever found. Some believe as Other Voices, Other Rooms, and even in the real-life
that Capote did write the complete book and de- killer of his masterwork, In Cold Blood. Often this
stroyed the remaining sections. Others think the theme is played out in his work through a confron-
missing portions may exist somewhere, but the ma- tation of an unconventional outsider with the con-
jority opinion holds that Capote never really wrote forming, ordered world.
the rest of what he had promised would be his most In Other Voices, Other Rooms, Cousin Randolph,
revealing, most stylistically controlled work. The the homosexual older relative, states the outsider’s
known segments were published after his death un- lament as he attempts to explain the search for love
der the title Answered Prayers: The Unfinished Novel in to the youthful Joel, explaining that all men are iso-
1986. lated from one another, that everyone, in the end,
is alone:
Analysis
In the preface to the last collection of his work Any love is natural and beautiful that lies within a
published in his lifetime, the 1980 volume Music for person’s nature; only hypocrites would hold a man
Chameleons, Capote discussed in detail his views responsible for what he loves, emotional illiterates
about the ordeal of writing as a creative activity and and those of righteous envy, who, in their agitated
his own lifetime commitment to that pursuit. Writ- concern, mistake so frequently the arrow pointing
ing was an occupation with a great risk to it: One to heaven for the one that leads to hell.
had to take chances or fail. Indeed, Capote com-
pared writing to professional pool playing and to a A similar idea occurs in The Grass Harp when Judge
professional card dealer’s abilities. He also ex- Cool, having joined a rebellious group hiding in a
plained that he began writing as a child of eight tree house, speaks of those who are pagans or spir-
and was, by his view, an accomplished writer at sev- its and defines them as accepters of life, because
enteen. Thus, when Other Voices, Other Rooms ap- they are those who grant life’s differences.
peared in 1948, he viewed it as the end result of Some of the more flamboyant examples of the
fourteen years of writing experience. free, nonconforming spirit are seen in Capote’s fe-
The substance of writing—and its accompany- male characters, specifically Idabel, the tomboy
ing pain of creation—Capote explained with a twin of Other Voices, Other Rooms, who outwrestles
phrase he borrowed from Henry James; it was the young Joel in one scene and whose lack of feminin-
“madness of art.” All imaginative writing was, he ex- ity is an obvious counterpoint to Joel’s boyhood ho-
plained, the artist employing his creative powers of mosexual longings. Another such unconventional
observation, of description, of telling detail; it was personality is Holly Golightly of Breakfast at Tif-
that act that led Capote in his later writing to see fany’s, who has run away from her background of
the possibilities of journalism (which is factual, de- poverty and also from a childhood marriage to
tailed observation of truth) as an art form that seek glamor and to indulge her New York encoun-
could be as powerful as fictional writing. So it was ters with a series of wealthy men. Holly’s defiance
that he shifted from fiction to nonfiction in mid- of convention is as meaningful as Joel’s and
career with works such as The Muses Are Heard and Idabel’s or, for that matter, the runaways in The
his most famous work, In Cold Blood. Grass Harp, whose tree house retreat is Capote’s
For Capote, the writer is, by nature, an outsider, symbol for all places of security for those who may
the observer seeing and hearing that which is be yearning for a place for their differences, their
about him but comprehending the witnessed individual spirits, their ideal fantasies to be at
events with an artistic sensitivity unknown to oth- home.
ers. The outsider’s perspective is—simply because Capote frequently said in interviews that he saw
it is detached from the observed society—more in the real-life killers—particularly Perry Smith—
comprehensive. As he was an artist “outside,” it was of In Cold Blood the man he might have become had
natural that Capote’s works often dealt with the his own life taken a different turn. His realization
399Truman Capote
was that the killers were the evil side of the same year-old Joel Knox Sansom, who travels to an old
yearning for love, acceptance, even artistic achieve- mansion, Skully’s Landing, where he hopes to
ment (especially with Smith) that he had known. meet his long-lost father, Edward Sansom. In its
That desire is seen in a key scene in Miami after the emphasis on romantic and ghostly settings and its
murders, as Perry realizes that all his hopes and use of strange, eccentric characters, Other Voices,
ambitions are a dead end: Other Rooms is typical of what has been termed the
southern gothic school of fiction, a style of fiction
Anyway, he couldn’t see that he had “a lot to live marked by its use of the grotesque both in locale
for.” Hot islands and buried gold, diving deep and in characterization.
in fire-blue seas toward sunken treasure—such This category can be seen in the works of other
dreams were gone. Gone, too, was “Perry O’Par- southern-born fiction writers such as William
sons,” the name invented for the singing sensation Faulkner (his short story “A Rose for Emily” and his
of stage and screen that he’d half-seriously hoped
1931 novel Sanctuary both offer elements of south-
some day to be.
ern gothic), Tennessee Williams (his 1958 play
Suddenly Last Summer deals with incest, homosexu-
In Capote’s musical, House of Flowers, one of the ality, insanity, lobotomy, and cannibalism), Carson
characters sings a song of yearning for escape from McCullers (her 1941 novel Reflections in a Golden Eye
the everyday titled “I Never Has Seen Snow,” and and her story “Ballad of the Sad Café” both have
snow is a recurring image in many Capote works grotesque situations and characters), and Flannery
for the elusive dreams of life. One of the young boy- O’Connor (her 1952 novel Wise Blood deals with re-
friends of the Clutter girl recalls becoming lost in a ligious obsession and madness). In Other Voices,
snowstorm in In Cold Blood. The cook, Missouri, Other Rooms, Capote uses this sense of the strange
hopes to run away north to see snow in Other Voices, and the mysterious to convey the loneliness, isola-
Other Rooms. Judge Cool’s distant wife had died in tion, and naïveté of Joel.
the snows of Switzerland in The Grass Harp. Ulti- When Joel arrives at Skully’s Landing, he meets
mately, in a world that fails to understand or make a variety of unusual characters: an ancient black
room for the sensitive, artistic spirits, the “differ- man, Jesus Fever; Jesus Fever’s granddaughter, a
ent,” Capote returns frequently to the idea, stated twenty-one-year-old cook named Missouri (nick-
by Judge Cool, that whatever passions compose named “Zoo”); Joel’s father, the bedridden invalid
them, private worlds are good—that is, unless Edward Sansom (who communicates with the rest
turned to evil ends by the greater uncomprehend- of the household by rolling red tennis balls down
ing world. the stairs); his father’s new wife, Miss Amy; and a
much-talked-about cousin, Randolph. En route to
the Landing, Joel also has met two young girls, the
Other Voices, Other Rooms twins Florabel Thompkins and her tomboy twin sis-
ter, Idabel. (Many interpreters of Capote’s work
First published: 1948 see Idabel as Capote’s fictional version of his own
Type of work: Novel childhood friend, Harper Lee.)
A young boy, seeking his lost father, moves into While the main plot of the book appears to be
a strange household in Mississippi where he dealing with Joel’s attempt to find and, later, to talk
encounters bizarre relatives while trying to find with his father, Capote really is presenting the
love. plight of Joel as a lonely, sensitive youth who is, in
fact, trying to come to terms with his own identity
in an environment where he has no moorings. In
Other Voices, Other Rooms, Capote’s first published one key scene, he tries to pray; he finds it almost im-
long work, is a moody and atmospheric tale charac- possible to ask God for someone to love him, yet
terized both by its strange setting—a decaying that is really what the boy is seeking.
mansion in rural Mississippi—and by the host of It is the search for love that defines the lives of
peculiar characters it presents to the reader. many of the characters in Other Voices, Other Rooms:
The book details the encounters of thirteen- Cousin Randolph, Joel’s homosexual older rela-
400Truman Capote
tive, still laments the loss of his great love, a boxer Eleven-year-old Collin Fenwick, from whose
named Pepe Alvarez, and Miss Amy has married point of view the work is told, is sent as a young boy
Joel’s father—even though the man is an invalid— by his grieving father to live with two unmarried
to have someone to care for and love. These aspira- cousins, Verena and Dolly Talbo. The father was
tions to love are reflected in the desperation of distraught over the death of Collin’s mother, so
other characters: At a carnival, Joel is pursued by much so that he took off his clothes and ran naked
the midget woman, Miss Wisteria, who, throughout into the yard the day of her death.
her tragic life, has never found anyone her own size Collin is similar to Joel Knox Sansom of Other
to love. Voices, Other Rooms (and to the real-life youthful Ca-
Similarly, the cook, Zoo, has suffered from her pote) in that he is a lonely boy being raised by odd
first experience with love; at age fourteen, she had relatives. The Talbo household consists of Verena,
married a man named Keg Brown who tried to kill the domineering force, who also has a head for
her. Zoo seeks a place of beauty and purity, which, business activities in the town; Dolly, the somewhat
in her fantasy, she believes she will find in the addled but good-hearted sister; a black woman,
North, where she hopes to go to see snow for the Catherine Creek, a companion to Dolly, who insists
first time. that she really is an Indian; and Collin, the boy who
At the end of the novel, Joel, after recuperating frequently spies on the household residents in dif-
from a severe illness during which he was cared for ferent rooms through peepholes in the attic floor.
by Cousin Randolph, makes a decision about his As a study of human loneliness, The Grass Harp
life. He realizes that Randolph is, in many ways, a echoes the themes of Other Voices, Other Rooms: the
child like himself who has simply sought love in his isolated, unloved, and unwanted child as well as
life. Joel decides that he must abandon his child- the quiet desperation of many adults in small com-
hood and accept his own sexual nature; at the end munities who suffer their own private terrors and
of the novel, the mature Joel ascends from the despair. Dolly, Catherine, and Collin spend time
haunted garden at Skully’s Landing to Randolph’s regularly on picnics held in the hidden tree house
room to embrace Randolph, leaving behind both of two lofty China trees outside the town. The tree
his youth and his own sexual longing. house becomes a vehicle for their transport away
from their real lives in the constricting town and
into worlds of their imaginings. Verena, too—
though not in their group—has suffered rejection;
The Grass Harp her intense friendship with another woman,
First published: 1951 Maudie Laurie Murphy, was lost when Maudie mar-
Type of work: Novella ried a liquor salesman from St. Louis, left on a wed-
ding trip (paid for by Verena), and never returned.
In a rigid, small-town, southern setting, an While The Grass Harp covers Collin’s life from
odd assortment of local people attempt to assert age eleven to age sixteen, the primary conflict of
control over their lives by their defiance of the work develops when sisters Dolly and Verena
convention. quarrel over a dropsy medicine formula known
only by Dolly but which Verena hopes to develop
commercially with a new man friend, Dr. Morris
The Grass Harp, Capote’s sadly humorous tale about Ritz, a confidence man she met in Chicago. Dolly,
a curious collection of small-town southern eccen- viewing her formula as her own, decides to leave
trics, continued the romantic and occasionally bi- the house, taking both Collin and Catherine Creek
zarre mood of his earlier Other Voices, Other Rooms, with her. With no real destination or other home,
but his emphasis in this work more often is on the the group moves into the tree shelter, while Verena
possibilities for humor in such strange behavior arouses the town in a search for the runaways.
rather than on shock value. Capote captured the There are several comical encounters as a posse,
same tone of southern small-town hilarity that one including the local sheriff and a stuffy minister, at-
also finds in many of the short stories of Eudora tempts to get the group out of the tree. The group’s
Welty. rebellious independence is attractive to others,
401Truman Capote
however, including a teenage loner, Riley Hender-
son, and the elderly Judge Charlie Cool, and both Breakfast at Tiffany’s
soon join the tree-dwellers in their defiance of the First published: 1958
town’s authority figures. At one point, the Judge Type of work: Novella
summarizes the shared plight of the tree’s inhabi-
tants, telling them that there may not be a place in A romantic, nonconformist runaway seeks
society for characters such as they are; he thinks glamour, self-identity, and freedom in
there may be a place for them somewhere, how- Manhattan during World War II.
ever, and that the tree just might be the spot.
The search for that true, spiritual, home—for a
place of real belonging—haunts each of the sym- Breakfast at Tiffany’s is a first-person narrative with a
pathetic characters in The Grass Harp. The Judge young male writer as its single point of view. The
further defines for the group their role in life, as narrator relates what he observes of the life and ex-
“spirits,” or persons willing to grant differences in periences of Holly Golightly, a young Texas woman
human behavior. He recalls, too, how he once al- who has come to New York in the early 1940’s seek-
most had to imprison a man because that man de- ing new life, excitement, and glamour, which she
fied custom and wanted to marry a black woman feels is in keeping with her freewheeling, some-
he loved. He reveals that his family views him as times irresponsible, approach to life.
scandalous because he once maintained a long, Like Other Voices, Other Rooms, which preceded it,
friendly correspondence with a lonely thirteen- Breakfast at Tiffany’s presents a free-spirited person
year-old girl in Alaska. trying to escape from the tawdry aspects of a past
Capote sketches a variety of townspeople— life by finding a lifestyle more compatible with her
some curious types, others mean and petty. There dreams and fantasies. Capote’s story of Holly devel-
are the owners of the Katydid Bakery, Mr. and Mrs. ops as a remembrance triggered in the writer-
C. C. County, and there is the traveling evangelist narrator’s memory by an encounter with a Lexing-
Sister Ida, the mother of fifteen children, one of ton Avenue bar proprietor, Bell, who had known
whom is a star in her religious show and regularly Holly as a frequent and colorful patron of his bar.
lassoes souls for Christ. Ultimately, Sister Ida’s Bell reports to the narra-
troupe joins forces with the tree-house group in a tor that Holly in 1956 may
battle with the town’s conformist faction. A recon- have been seen in East
ciliation becomes possible when Dolly realizes that Anglia, in Africa, where a
she truly is needed by her sister, Verena. Verena, by Japanese photographer
this time, has been robbed of her cash and bonds (who also had known
by the smooth-talking Dr. Ritz, whom she had Holly in New York) has
hoped to marry. encountered a wooden
The last sections of the work deal with the ma- replica of Holly’s face in
turing of Riley Henderson, his falling in love, and a remote native village.
his eventual marriage to Maude Riordan. As Collin The writer then recalls his
also matures, he plans to go away to law school and first encounter with Holly
thus leave the town. Dolly, Verena, and Catherine when he had rented an
Creek live together until a stroke kills Dolly, after apartment in the same
which Catherine retires to live in seclusion in her building as she (and the photographer) during the
own cabin. As Collin prepares to leave the town, he early years of World War II.
notes that the town remains—like the stories of the The writer (whom Holly calls “Fred,” after her
people in it—in memory. The Grass Harp reverber- brother, who is in the military service) grows more
ates with themes of alienation, loneliness, and the familiar with the irrepressible Holly after their first
search for a secure and meaningful place in life, meeting. He finds that she views life essentially as a
ideas Capote used in Other Voices, Other Rooms and continuing party; some noisy parties occur in
was later to employ in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Holly’s apartment. Holly first met the writer as she
slid into his apartment from the fire escape one
402Truman Capote
evening. He soon learns that Holly plays host to a know her, Holly Golightly (her name obviously sug-
wide assortment of mostly male friends, ranging gests her attitude toward life) captivates all who
from soldiers to Hollywood agents to an occasional meet her so that, in their minds, she takes on the
gangster. Holly also is a regular visitor to Sing Sing substance of an elusive mythic dream, her appeal
Prison, where she is a paid messenger for a gang- carved in their memories just as it was in the Afri-
ster named Sally Tomato. Holly is a vivacious blond can wooden figure.
who speaks in a kind of butchered French-English,
which is her attempt at city sophistication.
Holly fascinates everyone who meets her: the
young writer, her former agent, the bar owner, a In Cold Blood
rich playboy named Rusty Trawler, and a hand- First published: 1966
some Brazilian, Jose Ybarra-Jaegar, whom she Type of work: Nonfiction novel
hopes to marry. Holly is, in effect, a kind of free-
spirited earth goddess, the kind of myth men tend A Kansas farm family is mysteriously
to worship, a myth suggested by the wooden carv- murdered by two ex-convicts who flee the scene but
ing in the story’s opening. The freedom to love as are eventually captured, tried, and executed.
one desires is one of Holly’s obsessions. She tells
the narrator that she believes people should be al-
lowed to marry as they like, either male or female. In Cold Blood was created as a work of deliberate lit-
In another conversation, she expresses her open- erary experiment. Having written extensive jour-
minded attitude toward lesbians and even consid- nalistic coverage in his account of an opera com-
ers taking in a lesbian roommate. She further re- pany’s tour of the Soviet Union (The Muses Are
veals that she is attracted to older men (such as Heard) and in various travel writing, Capote de-
Wendell Willkie) but that she could as easily be in- sired to combine the reportorial techniques of
terested in, ideally, Greta Garbo. journalism—the gathering of detailed factual ma-
The novella is a slowly unfolding character study terial by observation and interviewing—with the
of Holly through a series of episodic events: her narrative and dramatic scene devices of fiction.
parties; her free lifestyle; her taking in a model, The grisly, senseless murders of a Kansas farm fam-
Mag Wildwood, as a roommate; the visit of her ily (Herbert W. Clutter, his wife, and two children)
older Texas husband, Doe; her aspirations to on November 15, 1959, in Holcomb, Kansas, pro-
marry the rich Brazilian Ybarra-Jaegar; and her ar- vided the opportunity for the writer to try his ex-
rest and scandal because of her associations with periment.
Sally Tomato. Most important of all these casually In Cold Blood is a documented record of those
related events is the sudden death of Holly’s murders, but it is also a documentation of the back-
brother, Fred, killed in overseas combat. Faced grounds, motives, attitudes, and perspectives of
with scandal and the end of her planned marriage, hundreds of local townspeople as well as those of
Holly, at the end of the story, leaves New York, the two killers, ex-convicts Richard Eugene Hick-
abandoning her only commitment—the pet cat ock and Perry Smith, who are arrested eventually
with no name—and heads to South America to for the crime, tried, and executed. Shortly after the
seek further that glamorous place of safety for crime was committed, Capote went to Kansas to
which she yearns. begin the massive accumulation of material that
The book’s title is a symbol of that search; Holly forms the substance of the book. At the outset, the
likes the environment of Tiffany’s jewelry store in murders were baffling because of the lack of any
New York, because nothing bad (she thinks) could apparent motive for the slayings. There also were
happen to anyone there. A quiet, assured place of few clues.
the security, wealth, and glamour—a place of calm Initially Capote envisioned his work as a short
belonging—that Holly so desperately seeks, she one in which he would explore the background of
sees it as an alternative to the despair that grips the murders and the reaction of the town to them.
her, the depression she calls the “mean reds.” Al- With the discovery, capture, and confession of the
though frivolous and exasperating to those who two killers, however, Capote’s concept changed fo-
403Truman Capote
cus and became not only ing investigation, the reader also follows the travels
a study of the crime and of Dick and Perry as they flee from Kansas—first to
its impact on the local Mexico, later to Florida, and eventually back to
community but also an in- Texas. As the authorities try to find leads to what
vestigation into the lives seems a motiveless act, the reader sees the murder-
and motives of the two ers as they fish, drink, and go to beaches. Capote
killers. While describing also begins to introduce background information
present action—the ar- about the killers. A letter by Perry’s father is in-
rest, incarceration, trial, cluded, as are a letter from Perry’s sister written to
and conviction, then the him in prison and another convict’s lengthy com-
appeals process. and fi- mentary on her letter. These revelations are juxta-
nally the execution by posed against the frustration of investigator Alvin
hanging in Lansing, Kan- Dewey as he tries to find leads in the case.
sas, in 1965—Capote also delves back into the mur- Part 3, “Answer,” brings the break in the case: A
derers’ past—their families, aspirations, and per- convict in prison reveals that Dick Hickock once
sonal defeats. Writing the book took more than six told him of a plan to rob the Clutter household and
years. leave no witnesses. As the net draws slowly about
The organization of the material was inge- the killers after that revelation, the reader is given a
niously handled. Capote once said he had taken sadly humorous episode in which a young boy and
more than six thousand pages of notes. The book his ailing grandfather are given a ride by the mur-
has four sections, all of which offer the reader shifts derers. The meeting of the open, honest, good-
in time and place, rather like the cinematic tech- natured child with the killers is an example of how
nique of parallel editing, thus allowing the reader Capote has skillfully manipulated his material for
to experience simultaneous events with different maximum ironic effect. The killers join with the
persons in different locales. The four sections are boy in a game to find empty soft-drink bottles in the
titled “The Last to See Them Alive,” “Persons Un- barren Texas countryside.
known,” “Answer,” and “The Corner.” In the first Part 4 deals with events after Dick and Perry’s ar-
section, Capote traces the members of the Clutter rest: their trial and conviction, the innumerable
family through their activities on the last day of appeals in the courts as they seek to avoid execu-
their lives, going through their routine in remark- tion, and, finally, their deaths by hanging in the
able detail (even clothing is noted, as is music Kansas State Penitentiary. Of particular interest in
heard on the radio.) this section of the book is Capote’s study of Dick
While following the family, Capote also allows and Perry’s time on death row and his look at the
the readers to follow the ongoing progress of the lives of others who were death-row prisoners at the
two killers, Dick and Perry, as they move inexorably same time.
toward their victims in Kansas. The shifts between Capote’s book does not end with the hanging of
the killers’ activities and those of their intended Dick and Perry; instead, there is a tranquil scene
victims come to seem as fatalistic as Greek tragedy, back in Holcomb, at the cemetery where the Clut-
and they add to the sense of tension and suspense ter family is buried. Detective Alvin Dewey visits the
(even though the reader is aware of the outcome of graves and, while there, meets a young girlfriend
the impending meeting). Capote further height- of the Clutter girl. Their talk is routine—about
ens the reader’s sense of dramatic anticipation by school, college plans, marriages, hopes, aspira-
having section 1 end with the discovery of the bod- tions, ambitions, the stuff of everyday life. These
ies by local people. He carefully withholds the ac- are exactly the details of routine life that have been
tual murder scenes until much later in the work; denied the Clutter family and, indeed, their killers,
once the killers have been captured, the murder by the tragic turns that fate works in people’s lives.
scenes are revealed in their confessions. With the contrast between retribution and inno-
Part 2 catalogs the investigation of the crimes cent hope, the book’s final irony is eloquently
and the town’s reaction to them. Against the ongo- achieved.
404Truman Capote
Summary
Capote frequently depicted isolated, alienated Discussion Topics
personalities engaged in a desperate pursuit of • How do the mysterious details of setting
love, seeking a place of security and belonging. and the various eccentric characters con-
That search is seen in the plights of characters as tribute to the characterization of Joel in
varied as Joel Sansom, Holly Golightly, and Judge Other Voices, Other Rooms?
Cool and the tree dwellers of The Grass Harp; it is
found even in the real-life personalities of the kill- • Discuss the following assertion: Truman
ers in In Cold Blood. Capote’s insistence on the originality of
The sense of personal desolation and anxiety is his “nonfiction novel,” In Cold Blood, en-
depicted with varying styles; Capote’s early work hanced its popular success but misdi-
has a romantically dense and suggestive metaphor- rected criticism of the work.
ical style, whereas later in his career he developed • What did Capote ultimately learn and re-
the stylized but factually based approach that he veal about the motivation of the killers in
called the “nonfiction novel.” All writing, Capote In Cold Blood?
often said, like all art, has at its center a perfectly
wrought core and shape. It is this distilled essence • Are there important mutually exclusive
in his writing, coupled with his theme of the indi- values in journalism and fiction? Has Ca-
vidually bruised soul seeking safety, that gives his pote been a bad influence on the recent
works their almost unbearable tension. journalists who have betrayed journalistic
Jere Real standards by incorporating fictitious mate-
rial in their reports?
• Does Capote’s literary output after In Cold
Blood demonstrate that celebrity—and es-
Bibliography pecially his practice of cultivating his own
By the Author celebrity—damaged his integrity as an
artist?
long fiction:
Other Voices, Other Rooms, 1948 • What work of Capote’s do you think best il-
The Grass Harp, 1951 lustrates his conviction that “all writing has
A Christmas Memory, 1956 (serial) at its center a perfectly wrought core and
The Thanksgiving Visitor, 1967 (serial) shape”? Describe the core of that work.
Answered Prayers: The Unfinished Novel, 1986
short fiction:
A Tree of Night, and Other Stories, 1949
Breakfast at Tiffany’s: A Short Novel and Three Stories, 1958
One Christmas, 1983
I Remember Grandpa: A Story, 1986
The Complete Collected Stories of Truman Capote, 2004
drama:
The Grass Harp: A Play, pr., pb. 1952 (adaptation of his novel)
House of Flowers, pr. 1954 (with Harold Arlen)
screenplays:
Beat the Devil, 1954 (with John Huston)
The Innocents, 1961
nonfiction:
Local Color, 1950
The Muses Are Heard, 1956
405Truman Capote Observations, 1959 (with Richard Avedon) In Cold Blood, 1966 The Dogs Bark: Public People and Private Places, 1973 miscellaneous: Selected Writings, 1963 Trilogy: An Experiment in Multimedia, 1969 (with Eleanor Perry and Frank Perry) Music for Chameleons, 1980 A Capote Reader, 1987 Too Brief a Treat: The Letters of Truman Capote, 2004 (edited by Gerald Clarke) About the Author Bloom, Harold, ed. Truman Capote. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2003. Brinnin, John Malcolm. Truman Capote: Dear Heart, Old Buddy. Rev. ed. New York: Delacorte Press, 1986. Clarke, Gerald. Capote: A Biography. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988. Dunphy, Jack.“Dear Genius”: A Memoir of My Life with Truman Capote. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1989. Garson, Helen S. Truman Capote: A Study of the Short Fiction. New York: Twayne, 1992. Plimpton, George. Truman Capote: In Which Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintances, and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career. New York: Doubleday, 1997. Rudisill, Marie. The Southern Haunting of Truman Capote. Nashville, Tenn.: Cumberland House, 2000. Windham, Donald. Lost Friendships: A Memoir of Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, and Others. New York: Wil- liam Morrow, 1987. 406
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