Truman Capote

Truman Capote’s life was one of dizzying highs and devastating lows. Born in New Orleans to a teenage mother, Capote was sent at a very young age to live with his aunts and cousins in Monroeville, Alabama. There, he was a lonely child who took solace in reading and writing. He became friends with his neighbor Harper Lee (author of To Kill a Mockingbird), and their friendship lasted for the remainder of Capote’s life. As a teenager, Capote moved back to New York City to live with his mother and her second husband, José García Capote. After José was imprisoned for embezzlement, however, Capote and his mother bounced around the New York City area and lived in Connecticut for a time. Here, Capote wrote for Greenwich High School’s newspaper and literary journal. After returning to New York, Capote attended the Franklin School while working as a copyboy for The New Yorker, before quitting and moving to Alabama to live with relatives. Back in the South, he began working on his first novel, Summer Crossing, which went unpublished until 2006. Openly homosexual at a time when few other writers were, and a theatrical person to boot, Capote cut quite a figure with the publication of his first book, Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948). 1966’s In Cold Blood is considered by many to be his crowning achievement. After the towering success of In Cold Blood, Truman spent the rest of his life working on an autobiographical “tell-all” book called Answered Prayers, which was never completed. He also wrote short stories and Hollywood screenplays, and was a correspondent for magazines like Rolling Stone and Esquire. In his later years, Capote struggled with mental health issues and drug and alcohol addiction. He died of liver cancer (a complication of alcoholism) in 1984.