Friendship with Harper Lee

Truman Streckfus Persons

Truman Streckfus Persons (September 30, 1924 – August 25, 1984), known as Truman Capote was an American author, many of whose short stories, novels, plays, and nonfiction are recognized literary classics, including the novella Breakfast at Tiffany's (1958) and the true crime novel In Cold Blood (1966), which he labeled a "nonfiction novel." At least 20 films and television dramas have been produced from Capote novels, stories and screenplays.

Capote rose above a childhood troubled by divorce, a long absence from his mother and multiple migrations. He had discovered his calling as a writer by the age of 11, and for the rest of his childhood he honed his writing ability. Capote began his professional career writing short stories. The critical success of one story, "Miriam" (1945), attracted the attention of Random House publisher Bennett Cerf, resulting in a contract to write Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948). Capote earned the most fame with In Cold Blood (1966), a journalistic work about the murder of a Kansas farm family in their home, a book Capote spent four years writing, with much help from Harper Lee, who wrote the famous To Kill a Mockingbird.^[2] A milestone in popular culture, In Cold Blood was the peak of his literary career, it was to be his final fully published book. In the 1970s, he maintained his celebrity status by appearing on television talk shows.

Early life

Born in New Orleans, Louisiana, he was the son of 17-year-old Lillie Mae Faulk and salesman Archulus Persons.^[1] His parents divorced when he was four, and he was sent to Monroeville, Alabama, where, for the following four to five years, he was raised by his mother's relatives. He formed a fast bond with his mother's distant relative, Nanny Rumbley Faulk, whom Truman called "Sook." "Her face is remarkable — not unlike Lincoln's, craggy like that, and tinted by sun and wind," is how Capote described Sook in "A Christmas Memory". In Monroeville, he was a neighbor and friend of author Harper Lee, who wrote the 1960 novel To Kill a Mockingbird, with the character Dill being based on Capote.^[3][4][5]

As a lonely child, Capote taught himself to both read and write before he entered his first year of schooling.^[6] Capote was often seen at age five carrying his dictionary and notepad, and he began writing fiction at the age of 11.^[7] He was given the nickname Bulldog around this age.^[8]

On Saturdays, he made trips from Monroeville to the nearby city of Mobile on the Gulf Coast, and at one point he submitted a short story, "Old Mrs. Busybody," to a children's writing contest sponsored by the Mobile Press Register. Capote received recognition for his early work from The Scholastic Art & Writing Awards in 1936.^[9]

In 1933, he moved to New York City to live with his mother and her second husband, Joseph Capote, a Cuban-born textile broker, who adopted him as his stepson and renamed him Truman García Capote. However, Joseph was convicted of embezzlement and shortly afterwards, when his income crashed, the family was forced to leave Park Avenue.

Of his early days, Capote related, "I began writing really sort of seriously when I was about 12. I say seriously in the sense that like other kids go home and practice the violin or the piano or whatever, I used to go home from school every day, and I would write for about three hours. I was obsessed by it." In 1935, he attended the Trinity School in New York City. He then attended St. Joseph Military Academy. In 1939, the Capote family moved to Greenwich, Connecticut, and Truman attended Greenwich High School, where he wrote for both the school's literary journal, The Green Witch, and the school newspaper. When they returned to New York City in 1942 he attended the Franklin School, an Upper West Side private school now known as the Dwight School, graduating in 1943. That was the end of his formal education.

While still attending Franklin in 1943, Capote began working as copyboy in the art department at The New Yorker, a job he held for two years, before being fired for angering poet Robert Frost.^[11] Years later, he reminisced, "Not a very grand job, for all it really involved was sorting cartoons and clipping newspapers. Still, I was fortunate to have it, especially since I was determined never to set a studious foot inside a college classroom. I felt that either one was or wasn't a writer, and no combination of professors could influence the outcome. I still think I was correct, at least in my own case." He left his job to live with relatives in Alabama and begin a first novel, Summer Crossing.^[12]

Friendship with Harper Lee

Capote based the character of Idabel in Other Voices, Other Rooms on his Monroeville neighbor and best friend, Harper Lee, and was in turn the inspiration for the character Dill Harris in Lee's 1960 bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning novel To Kill a Mockingbird. Capote once acknowledged this: "Mr. and Mrs. Lee, Harper Lee's mother and father, lived very near. Harper Lee was my best friend. Did you ever read her book, To Kill a Mockingbird? I'm a character in that book, which takes place in the same small town in Alabama where we lived. Her father was a lawyer, and she and I used to go to trials all the time as children. We went to the trials instead of going to the movies."^[13] Later, Lee was his crucial research partner for In Cold Blood.

Writing career

Short story phase

Between 1943 and 1946, Capote wrote a continual flow of short fiction, including "Miriam," "My Side of the Matter," and "Shut a Final Door" (for which he won the O. Henry Award at the age of 24). His stories were published in both literary quarterlies and well-known popular magazines, including The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's Bazaar, Harper's Magazine, Mademoiselle, The New Yorker, Prairie Schooner^[14] and Story. In June 1945, "Miriam" was published by Mademoiselle and went on to win a prize, Best First-Published Story, in 1946. In the spring of 1946, Capote was accepted at Yaddo, the artists and writers colony at Saratoga Springs, New York. He later endorsed Patricia Highsmith as a Yaddo candidate, and she wrote Strangers on a Train while there.

During an interview for The Paris Review in 1957, Capote said this of his short story technique:

Since each story presents its own technical problems, obviously one can't generalize about them on a two-times-two-equals-four basis. Finding the right form for your story is simply to realize the most natural way of telling the story. The test of whether or not a writer has defined the natural shape of his story is just this: After reading it, can you imagine it differently, or does it silence your imagination and seem to you absolute and final? As an orange is final. As an orange is something nature has made just right."Paris Review"

Random House, the publisher of his novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms (see below), moved to capitalize on this novel's success with the publication of A Tree of Night and Other Stories in 1949. In addition to "Miriam," this collection also includes "Shut a Final Door." First published in The Atlantic Monthly (August, 1947), "Shut a Final Door" won an O. Henry Award (First Prize) in 1948.

After A Tree of Night Capote published a collection of his travel writings, Local Color (1950), which included nine essays originally published in magazines between 1946 and 1950.

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 938