Truman Capote S Southern Years

A biographical look at Truman Capote's childhood in Monroeville, Alabama from tape-recorded reminiscences of his cousin Jennings Faulk Carter.

Although much is known about the mature Truman Capote--his literary genius and flamboyant life-style--details of his childhood years spent in Monroeville, Alabama, have remained a mystery. Truman Capote's Southern Years explores Capote's formative years, the abandonment by his mother, and his early life in the care of elderly relatives. In Monroeville young Capote formed significant bonds and played childhood games with his cousin, Jennings Faulk Carter, and next door neighbor, Nelle Harper Lee. Through the tales told here by Carter, readers discover the lively imagination and the early tragedies of a brilliant child.--Provided by publisher.

This compilation of "tales" of Truman Capote's childhood was related to the author by Jennings Faulk Carter, Capote's first cousin. 16 black-and-white photos.

Like many Southern writers of the 1930s and 1940s, who as a group created the richest, most memorable body of regional literature in the history of American letters. Truman Capote eventually journeyed northward. As the years passed, Capote's moorings to his Southern past grew weaker and weaker and he deliberately cut himself off from the people and places that provided fodder for much of his early fiction. The Southern Haunting of Truman Capote is a thoughtful reflection on the literary origins of four of Capote's important early works - A Christmas Memory, The Grass Harp, Children on Their Birthdays and Other Voices, Other Rooms - in light of the boyhood experiences that inspired those four works. Marie Rudisill, a younger sister of Capote's mother and the only one of her nephew's companions to have known him well his whole life, was in touch with him for more than seventy years As early as the mid-1940s, Marie Rudisill realised that her nephew was destined for literary greatness. She began hoarding his letters, newspaper clippings, articles, personal mementoes - anything that might prove useful later as a record of his life. During their many telephone conversations, whenever Cap

Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best nonfiction books of all time From the Modern Library’s new set of beautifully repackaged hardcover classics by Truman Capote—also available are Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Other Voices, Other Rooms (in one volume), Portraits and Observations, and The Complete Stories Truman Capote’s masterpiece, In Cold Blood, created a sensation when it was first published, serially, in The New Yorker in 1965. The intensively researched, atmospheric narrative of the lives of the Clutter family of Holcomb, Kansas, and of the two men, Richard Eugene Hickock and Perry Edward Smith, who brutally killed them on the night of November 15, 1959, is the seminal work of the “new journalism.” Perry Smith is one of the great dark characters of American literature, full of contradictory emotions. “I thought he was a very nice gentleman,” he says of Herb Clutter. “Soft-spoken. I thought so right up to the moment I cut his throat.” Told in chapters that alternate between the Clutter household and the approach of Smith and Hickock in their black Chevrolet, then between the investigation of the case and the killers’ flight, Capote’s account is so detailed that the reader comes to feel almost like a participant in the events.

Truman Capote’s first novel is a story of almost supernatural intensity and inventiveness, an audacious foray into the mind of a sensitive boy as he seeks out the grown-up enigmas of love and death in the ghostly landscape of the deep South. “Intense, brilliant . . . . Capote has an astonishing command . . . a magic all his own.” —The Atlantic At the age of twelve, 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.

Like many Southern writers of the 1930s and 1940s, who as a group created the richest, most memorable body of regional literature in the history of American letters, Truman Capote eventually journeyed northward. As the years passed, Capote’s moorings to his Southern past grew weaker and weaker, and he deliberately cut himself off from the people and places that provided fodder for much of his early fiction. The Southern Haunting of Truman Capote is a thoughtful reflection on the literary origins of four of Capote’s important early works—A Christmas Memory, The Grass Harp, “Children on Their Birthdays,” and Other Voices, Other Rooms—in light of the boyhood experiences that inspired them. Marie Rudisill, a younger sister of Capote’s mother, was the only one of her nephew’s companions to have known him well his entire life. Because of this close relationship, she gained a unique perspective on her nephew’s development as one of America’s leading novelists. Written at the encouragement of Capote’s longtime editor, Joe Fox, The Southern Haunting of Truman Capote provides a useful point of view for understanding Capote’s work.