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UNDERSTANDING
TRUMAN CAPOTE
UNDERSTANDING CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN LITERATURE
Matthew J. Bruccoli, Founding Editor
Linda Wagner-Martin, Series Editor
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Edward Albee | Sherman Alexie | Nelson Algren | Paul Auster
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Thomas Berger | The Black Mountain Poets | Robert Bly | T. C. Boyle
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UNDERSTANDING
TRUMAN CAPOTE
Thomas Fahy
2014 University of South Carolina
Published by the University of South Carolina Press Columbia, South Carolina 29208
www.sc.edu/uscpress
23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Fahy, Thomas Richard.
Understanding Truman Capote / Thomas Fahy.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-61117-341-3 (hardbound : alk. paper) - ISBN 978-1-61117-342-0 (ebook) 1. Capote, Truman, 1924-1984-Criticism and interpretation. I. Title.
PS3505.A59Z645 2014
813 .54-dc23
2013041090
For my son Nicolai, with love
CONTENTS
Series Editor s Preface
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1 Understanding Truman Capote
Chapter 2 A Tree of Night and Other Stories
Chapter 3 Other Voices, Other Rooms
Chapter 4 The Grass Harp
Chapter 5 The Muses Are Heard
Chapter 6 Breakfast at Tiffany s
Chapter 7 In Cold Blood
Chapter 8 Three Stories, Answered Prayers , and Capote in the Twenty-First Century
Notes
Bibliography
Index
SERIES EDITOR S PREFACE
The Understanding Contemporary American Literature series was founded by the estimable Matthew J. Bruccoli (1931-2008), who envisioned these volumes as guides or companions for students as well as good nonacademic readers, a legacy that will continue as new volumes are developed to fill in gaps among the nearly one hundred series volumes published to date and to embrace a host of new writers only now making their marks on our literature.
As Professor Bruccoli explained in his preface to the volumes he edited, because much influential contemporary literature makes special demands, the word understanding in the titles was chosen deliberately. Many willing readers lack an adequate understanding of how contemporary literature works; that is, of what the author is attempting to express and the means by which it is conveyed. Aimed at fostering this understanding of good literature and good writers, the criticism and analyses in the series provide instruction in how to read certain contemporary writers-explicating their material, language, structures, themes, and perspectives-and facilitate a more profitable experience of the works under discussion.
In the twenty-first century Professor Bruccoli s prescience gives us an avenue to publish expert critiques of significant contemporary American writing. The series continues to map the literary landscape and to provide both instruction and enjoyment. Future volumes will seek to introduce new voices alongside canonized favorites, to chronicle the changing literature of our times, and to remain, as Professor Bruccoli conceived, contemporary in the best sense of the word.
Linda Wagner-Martin, Series Editor
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I want to begin by thanking Linda Wagner-Martin and the University of South Carolina Press for their help with this project. It is a pleasure to be part of this series.
I am grateful for the invaluable feedback and support of John Lutz, Jessica O Hara, and Kirsten Ringelberg. Their generosity and patience have improved this book every step of the way. I also benefited greatly from my conversations about Capote with James MacDonald, Jeanie Attie, and numerous other colleagues and friends. Thank you all for your enthusiasm and encouragement.
I also wish to thank the Archives and Manuscripts division of the New York Public Library, my wonderful colleagues in the English department at Long Island University-Post, and two journals, Mississippi Quarterly and the Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association , for permission to reprint some of the material here.
Last, I am always humbled by the loving support of my family and friends. I especially want to mention Tatyana Tsinberg, who has lived with this project for quite some time. I cannot thank her enough for helping me cross the finish line. Again.
CHAPTER 1
Understanding Truman Capote
Lillie Mae Faulk desperately wanted an abortion. Within a few weeks of her marriage to Archulus ( Arch ) Persons in 1923, she realized she had made a terrible mistake. At first Arch seemed like her ticket out of small-town America. A natural salesman with a charming personality, Arch came from a well-respected Alabama family, and his talk of money-making schemes dazzled the sixteen-year-old girl, who dreamed of going to the big city. She would finally escape Monroeville, a town with no paved streets and a population of just over one thousand people . . . or so she thought. She soon discovered that her new husband was not what he appeared to be. Arch ran out of money on their honeymoon along the Gulf Coast, and after deciding to stay in New Orleans to find work, he scraped together enough cash to buy his wife a return ticket to Alabama. Lillie Mae felt duped. She was right back where she started, living with her three spinster cousins and their bachelor brother in the family house. She was not going to let these circumstances dim her aspirations, though. She enrolled in business school with plans of making it on her own, but a few weeks later she realized she was pregnant. The thought of having a permanent connection with Arch chilled her, but it was difficult to get an abortion in the 1920s-particularly in the South. As a result Truman Streckfus Persons (whose name would later be changed to Truman Capote after his mother s second marriage) was born on September 30, 1924.
Neither Arch nor Lillie Mae had much interest in parenthood. Arch, who possessed P. T. Barnum s hunger for get-rich-quick schemes but lacked the showman s acumen, spent much of his life moving from one fruitless enterprise to another. One of his more curious ventures involved managing the Great Pasha, a sideshow performer who could survive being buried alive for nearly five hours. (Capote would later resurrect this figure in his haunting short story A Tree of Night. ) As Arch s entrepreneurial efforts became less scrupulous (particularly through his habit of writing bad checks), he would find himself in legal trouble and behind bars numerous times throughout his life. Truman s mother was preoccupied with her own affairs-literally. She began seeing other men a few months after Truman s birth, and her young son witnessed a number of these dalliances firsthand. In short, Truman was a neglected child who, not surprisingly, developed a profound fear of abandonment-a fear his parents did little to assuage. When the family traveled together, for instance, Arch and Lillie Mae had no scruples about locking Truman in their hotel room (sometimes in a dark closet) and leaving him for the evening. They simply told the hotel staff to ignore the boy if he started screaming, which was often the case. His parents came back on those nights, but in the summer of 1930, with Arch away to pursue yet another scheme, Lillie Mae left Truman with her relatives in Monroeville indefinitely. She decided to follow her own dreams in New York City.
The three Faulk sisters, Jennie, Callie, and Nanny Rumbly ( Sook ), became Truman s family for the next two years, and they would inspire the central characters in a number of his works, including The Grass Harp and A Christmas Memory. Jennie, the most authoritarian member of the family, owned a successful hat shop that sold a variety of women s goods. Her volatile temper helped fuel a contentious relationship with her youngest sister, the proper and sanctimonious Callie. Though she had been a schoolteacher, Callie eventually managed the finances of Jennie s store. Sook possessed a childlike spirit and rarely left the property. Only twice a year did she walk to the nearby forest to scavenge ingredients for her