Where To Start With Truman Capote
Truman Capote, 1963.
NYPL Digital Collections, Image ID: ps_mss_421
Truman Capote was one of the 20th century’s most well-known personalities, remembered for his literary prowess as much as his social celebrity. Born in New Orleans in 1924 and raised primarily by relatives in Alabama (where he befriended future author Harper Lee) before moving to New York City in his teens, Capote’s loneliness and alienation fueled his desire to write. He never finished high school, but landed a menial job at The New Yorker at the age of 17 and focused on trying to get his short stories published. He sold his first, “Miriam,” to Mademoiselle in 1945 and his first novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms—a critical and commercial success—was published in 1948 when he was just 23.
Capote’s literary output—novels, novellas, short stories, essays, plays, and screenplays—was more modest than other writers of his stature, yet he was a major literary influence, contributing the beloved character of Holly Golightly of Breakfast at Tiffany’s and, his tour de force, In Cold Blood, which gave gravitas to the concept of the nonfiction novel. He wrote very little after this novel but kept an active public profile through talk shows, public appearances, and a pursuit of celebrity and socialite friendships (most of which went up in flames after he wrote a lengthy tea-spilling story about them for Esquire in 1975).
Readers just starting out with Capote should consider In Cold Blood or Other Voices, Other Rooms. For those already familiar with his full-length works, we recommend venturing into a collection of his short stories or essays. Researchers may be interested in exploring the Truman Capote papers, the largest repository dedicated to his life and work, held by the Manuscripts and Archives Division of The New York Public Library.
Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948)
At the age of 12, Joel Knox is summoned to meet the father who abandoned him at birth. But when Joel arrives at the decaying mansion in Skully’s Landing, his father is nowhere in sight. What he finds instead is a sullen stepmother who delights in killing birds; an uncle with the face—and heart—of a debauched child; and a fearsome little girl named Idabel who may offer him the closest thing he has ever known to love.
In Cold Blood (1966)
First published serially in The New Yorker, In Cold Blood is an intensively researched and powerful account of the brutal slaying of a Kansas family by two young ex-convicts.
Summer Crossing (2005)
Begun in 1943 and eventually put aside, Summer Crossing came to light nearly 20 years after Capote's death. In it, 17-year-old Manhattan society girl Grady McNeil pursues and illicit romance with Clyde Manzer, a Jewish parking lot attendant from Brooklyn, when her parents decide to leave her alone for the summer.
Answered Prayers (1986)
The three completed chapters of Capote's unfinished novel, focusing on P.B. Jones, an amoral bisexual who has tumbled from the jet-set heights, are accompanied by an introduction by the editor.
The Grass Harp: Including a Tree of Night and Other Stories
Set on the outskirts of a small Southern town, The Grass Harp (1951) tells the story of three endearing misfits—an orphaned boy and two whimsical old ladies—who one day take up residence in a tree house. This volume also includes Capote’s A Tree of Night and Other Stories (1949)—nine short stories in which the protagonists learn to accept the harsh loneliness of life.
Stories and Novellas
The Early Stories of Truman Capote (2015)
A collection of never-before-published stories written in Capote's teens and early twenties and rediscovered in the archives of The New York Public Library featuring tales set in the American South of the author's childhood and the cosmopolitan New York of the 1940s.
Music for Chameleons (1980)
Stories based on real life individuals and situations deal with a Creole aristocrat, a mysterious killer who notifies his targeted victims, a man's obsession for a twelve-year-old girl he has never met, and a young writer encountering his subjects.
A Christmas Memory (1956)
Inspired by the author's memories of his boyhood in rural Alabama, a trio of holiday stories—"A Christmas Memory," "The Thanksgiving Visitor," and "One Christmas"—describes a boy's relationship with his elderly cousin and alcoholic father and the indelible holiday memories they provided him.
Other
Too Brief a Treat: The Letters of Truman Capote (2004)
edited by Gerald Clarke
Capote was an inveterate letter writer. Spanning more than four decades, his letters are the closest thing we have to a Capote autobiography, showing us the uncannily self-possessed naïf who jumped headlong into the post–World War II New York literary scene; the more mature Capote of the 1950s; the Capote of the early 1960s, immersed in the research and writing of In Cold Blood; and Capote later in life, as things seem to be unraveling.
Brooklyn: A Personal Memoir: With the Lost Photographs of David Attie (2015)
Pairing an autobiographical essay about Capote's life in Brooklyn in the late 1950s (first published in Holiday magazine in 1959) with the original photographs commissioned to illustrate the piece and discovered more than 50 years later, the book is an homage to Brooklyn where Capote lived for a decade and where he penned Breakfast at Tiffany's and In Cold Blood.
Portraits and Observations: The Essays of Truman Capote (2007)
A definitive anthology containing all of the author's published essays. From his travel sketches of Brooklyn, New Orleans, and Hollywood, written when he was twenty-two, to the author’s last written words, “Remembering Willa Cather,” composed the day before his death in 1984, Portraits and Observations puts on display the full spectrum of Truman Capote’s brilliance.
Summaries provided via NYPL’s catalog, which draws from multiple sources. Click through to each book’s title for more.