Comprehensive information and links about Truman Capote

(September 30, 1924 – August 25, 1984) was an American writer.

He is best known for his "nonfiction novel" (a phrase he himself coined to describe journalism with a literary voice) i that he adapted for television and narrated. His works have become classics in the literary world.

table in New Orleans, Louisiana on September 30, 1924, and was sent to Monroeville, Alabama to be raised by his mother's relatives. His experiences from that time are captured in the 1966 story "A Christmas Memory." In 1933, he moved to New York City to live with his mother and her second husband, Joseph Capote, who adopted him and renamed him b in 1935. Capote attended the Trinity School where he was given an IQ test as an entrance exam, and he scored 215, the highest in the school's history. He later attended St. John's Academy in New York and Greenwich High School in Greenwich, Connecticut (where he wrote for the school paper, i), although he ended his formal education when he was seventeen.

Capote was a lifelong friend of Monroeville neighbor Harper Lee and was the inspiration for the character of Dill in her best-seller i Capote frequently implied that he himself had written a considerable portion of her novel; some even say he ghosted the entire novel. At least one person — Pearl Kazin Bell, an editor at i — has gone on record as believing his assertions were true.

Lee lent Capote considerable assistance during his research for i in November 1959, describing the unexplained murder of a family of four in rural Kansas. Fascinated by the brief story, Capote traveled to Holcomb, Kansas, scene of the Clutter family massacre, with Lee, and over the course of the next few years became acquainted with everyone involved in the investigation and most of the residents of the small town. Rather than taking notes during interviews with those involved in the investigation, Capote and Lee would commit everything to memory and write it down after the interview was over. Prior to the book's publication, Capote was well-known in literary and theatrical circles, but i introduced him to a mass audience worldwide when it became an international best seller. Capote was widely criticized when he admitted his relief that the Clutter killers, Perry Smith and Richard "Dick" Hickock, had been given the death penalty; had they not, i (2005) highlighted the conflict between Capote's self-absorbed obsession with finishing the book and his compassion for his subjects.

Capote, an openly gay man, was as well known for his high-pitched, lisping voice, outrageous manner of dress, and wild fabrications about acquaintances and events as he was for his literary output. He often claimed to know intimately people he had in fact never met — among them, Greta Garbo — and professed to have had numerous liaisons with men who were staunchly heterosexual. He traveled in eclectic circles, hobnobbing with fellow authors, literary critics, business tycoons, philanthropists, Hollywood and theatrical celebrities, and even members of royalty and high society, both in the U.S. and abroad. Part of his public persona was a long-standing rivalry with writer Gore Vidal.

On November 28, 1966, in honor of publisher Katharine Graham, Capote hosted his acclaimed "Black White Ball" in the Grand Ballroom of New York City's Plaza Hotel. It was considered the social event of not only that season, but of many to follow. Its notoriety was such that even the usually austere i (published as an "unfinished novel" after his death), alienated most of his celebrity acquaintances, who in it recognized thinly disguised versions of themselves.

In later life, Capote became fairly reclusive, most likely as a reaction against the rejection of his former friends. On those occasions when he was seen in public, he frequently exhibited wildly eccentric behavior, due to his alcoholism and addiction to various drugs — both preion and nonmedicinal — despite several attempts at drug rehabilitation.

Substance abuse caused him to have hallucinations in his final years, and often required hospitalization. He died from an overdose of pills at the age of 59 on August 23, 1984, in the home of Joanne Carson, ex-wife of late-night TV host Johnny Carson, on whose program Capote was a frequent guest. He was interred in the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles, California, leaving behind his longtime companion, author Jack Dunphy, with whom he shared a non-exclusive relationship from the time of their first meeting in 1948. Dunphy died in 1992, and in 1994 both his and Capote's ashes were scattered at Crooked Pond, between Bridgehampton and Sag Harbor on Long Island, close to where the two had maintained a property with individual houses for many years.

Capote twice won the O. Henry Memorial Short Story Prize and was a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters.

(with Philip Seymour Hoffman cast in the title role) was released on September 30, 2005 to enormous praise. Additionally, in July 2005, Oni Press published comic book artist and writer Ande Parks' iTruman Capote, In Which Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintances, and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career, by George Plimpton (published by Nan A. Talese, an imprint of Doubleday, 1997), is an outstanding collection of first-hand observations about the author.

1988 audio interview with Truman Capote's biographer, Gerald Clarke. Interview by Don Swaim of CBS Radio- RealAudio