TRUMAN CAPOTE
Photo of Truman Capote by Barbara Niggl Radloff, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Dates: 1924-1984
Nationality: American
Literary Periods:
American Confessional Period, 1960-
Postwar Period, 1945-1999
Twentieth Century, 1900-1999
Literary Movements:
Lesbian/Gay Writing, 1885-
BIOGRAPHY
Truman Capote-Enfant Terrible (2008) by
A close look at the genesis of one of America's great modern writers Robert Emmet Long presents a full account of Truman Capote's early life, making use of Capote's unpublished papers. Topics covered include his strange relationship with his beautiful but immature mother (she was sixteen years old when capote was born) as well as his friendships with a series of rich and talented women. Combining biographical insights with literary criticism, Truman Capote, Enfant Terrible presents a grand overview of a complex and fascinating author: one who remained a child in appearance and behavior; a southerner who strayed from the south; a celebrity while living in the most solitary realm of his vast imagination.
Call Number: Bates PS3505.A59 Z685 2008ISBN: 9780826427632
REFERENCE & BACKGROUND INFORMATION
Scribner Writers Series [Database]
Essays on the life and works of Truman Capote, complete works and suggested reading bibliographies
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RESEARCH & CRITICISM
Books, essays, and journal articles indexed in MLA International Bibliography 
[Database]
MLA International Bibliography is the definitive literary research database, indexing the most authoritative Capote scholarship published in books and academic journals. MLA indexes and links to the entire JSTOR literary research collection as well as linking to many other full-text providers and the Colby College Libraries catalog. If you discover books or articles through MLA that are not available at Colby or through our lending partners, please request these items using your ILLiad Account.
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- Contemporary Literary Criticism Select (now part of Literature Resource Center) This link opens in a new window The CLCS platform has merged with Literature Resource Center, the LRC. CLCS overs 70,000 reviews and essays on contemporary writers, their works, and related topics. Search this and more in the new, user friendly LRC.
The Critical Response to Truman Capote (1999) by
One of the most controversial American authors of the twentieth century, Truman Capote is best known as the author of In Cold Blood (1966), a work of literary journalism that recounts the slaughter of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas, in 1959. But he also wrote numerous short stories, dozens of nonfiction pieces for popular magazines, several other novels, and some works for Hollywood and Broadway. Unlike In Cold Blood, many of his earlier works were criticized for their focus on character at a time when other writers were using fiction to explore historical events and social and political positions. Since his death in 1984, scholarly interest in Capote and his works has grown considerably. Over the last few decades, the reaction to his works has been rich and varied. This volume chronicles the critical reception to Capote's writings. Included are previously published reviews and essays, along with several pieces written especially for this book. The selections are grouped in several broad sections, which examine such topics as overviews and interviews, the genres in which he wrote, and his particular works, his literary documentaries, and his relation to other writers and critics. Each section is organized chronologically and traces not only the development of Capote's talents but also the evolution of critical attitudes toward his works. Both favorable and unfavorable analyses by commentators and scholars such as Ihab Hassan, George Jean Nathan, Leslie Fiedler, Diana Trilling, Kenneth Tynan, and many others provide a balanced view of Capote's writings. A comprehensive introduction covers the materials included in the book along with many other relevant texts, and extensive bibliographic material records the present state of Capote scholarship.
Call Number: Miller PS3505.A59 Z635 1999ISBN: 0313306664
How Beautiful It Is and How Easily It Can Be Broken (2008) by Call Number: Bowdoin PN1995 .M432 2008ISBN: 9780061456435See Chapter "The Truman Show (the Stories and Letters of Truman Capote)"
The Journalistic Imagination (2007) by Call Number: Bates PR1285 .J66 2007ISBN: 9780415417235See Chapter "Cold-Blooded Journalism: Truman Capote and the Non-Fiction Novel"
Just below South (2007) by Call Number: Miller PS261 .J87 2007ISBN: 9780813925998See Chapter "Making a Real Phony: Truman Capote's Queerly Southern Regionalism in Breakfast at Tiffany's: A Short Novel and Three Stories"
Freak Shows and the Modern American Imagination (2006) by Call Number: Miller PS374.B64 F34 2006ISBN: 9781403974037See Chapter "'Some Unheard-of Thing': Freaks, Families, and Coming of Age in Carson McCullers and Truman Capote"
Lovers and Beloveds (2005) by Call Number: Miller PS374.H63 R53 2005ISBN: 0807130516See Chapter "Truman Capote, William Goyen, and the Gendering of Male Homosexuality"
From Text to Literature (2005) by Call Number: Bates PN49 .T4435 2005ISBN: 9781403993328"Components of Literariness: Readings of Capote's In Cold Blood"
Literary Feuds: A Century of Celebrated Quarrels--From Mark Twain to Tom Wolfe (2002) by Call Number: Bates Bowdoin PS138 .F36 2002ISBN: 9780312272098See Chapter "Les Enfants Terribles: Truman Capote and Gore Vidal"
Uncontained : urban fiction in postwar America(2001) by Call Number: Milller PS374.C5 W48 2001ISBN: 0813529727See Chapter "Sidestepping Assault: Ann Bannon and Truman Capote"
Tiny terror : why Truman Capote (almost) wrote Answered prayers (2011) by
Truman Capote was one of the most gifted and flamboyant writers of his generation, renowned for such books as Other Voices, Other Rooms, Breakfast at Tiffany's, and his masterpiece, the nonfiction novel In Cold Blood. What has received comparatively little attention, however, is Capote's last, unfinished book, Answered Prayers, a merciless skewering of cafe society and the high-class women Capote called his "swans." When excerpts appeared he was immediately blacklisted, ruined socially, labeled a pariah. Capote recoiled--disgraced, depressed, and all but friendless. In Tiny Terror, a new volume in Oxford's Inner Lives series, William Todd Schultz sheds light on the life and works of Capote and answers the perplexing mystery--why did Capote write a book that would destroy him? Drawing on an arsenal of psychological techniques, Schultz illuminates Capote's early years in the South--a time that Capote himself described as a "snake's nest of No's"--no parents to speak of, no friends but books, no hope, no future. Out of this dark childhood emerged Capote's prominent dual life-scripts: neurotic Capote, anxious, vulnerable, hypersensitive, expecting to be hurt; and Capote the disagreeable destroyer, emotionally bulletproof, nasty, and bent on revenge. Schultz shows how Capote would strike out when he felt hurt or taken for granted, engaging in caustic feuds with Gore Vidal, Tennessee Williams, and many other writers. And Schultz reveals how this tendency fed into Answered Prayers, an exceedingly corrosive and thinly disguised roman a clef that trashed his high-society friends. What emerges by the end of this book is a cogent, immensely insightful portrait of an artist on the edge, brilliantly but self-destructively biting the jet-set hands that fed him. Anyone interested in the inner life of one of America's most fascinating literary personalities will find this book a revelation.
Call Number: Miller PS3505.A59 Z875 2011ISBN: 9780199752041
PRIMARY SOURCES: TEXTS
Portraits and observations : the essays of Truman Capote (2007) by
Perhaps no twentieth century writer was so observant and elegant a chronicler of his times as Truman Capote. Whether he was profiling the rich and famous or creating indelible word-pictures of events and places near and far, Capote’s eye for detail and dazzling style made his reportage and commentary undeniable triumphs of the form. Portraits and Observations is the first volume devoted solely to all the essays ever published by this most beloved of writers. From his travel sketches of Brooklyn, New Orleans, and Hollywood, written when he was twenty-two, to meditations about fame, fortune, and the writer’s art at the peak of his career, to the brief works penned during the isolated denouement of his life, these essays provide an essential window into mid-twentieth-century America as offered by one of its canniest observers. Included are such celebrated masterpieces of narrative nonfiction as “The Muses Are Heard” and the short nonfiction novel “Handcarved Coffins,” as well as many long-out-of-print essays, including portraits of Isak Dinesen, Mae West, Marcel Duchamp, Humphrey Bogart, and Marilyn Monroe. Among the highlights are “Ghosts in Sunlight: The Filming of In Cold Blood, “Preface to Music for Chameleons, in which Capote candidly recounts the highs and lows of his long career, and a playful self-portrait in the form of an imaginary self-interview. The book concludes with the author’s last written words, composed the day before his death in 1984, the recently discovered “Remembering Willa Cather,” Capote’s touching recollection of his encounter with the author when he was a young man at the dawn of his career. Portraits and Observations puts on display the full spectrum of Truman Capote’s brilliance. Certainly, Capote was, as Somerset Maugham famously called him, “a stylist of the first quality.” But as the pieces gathered here remind us, he was also an artist of remarkable substance.
Call Number: Bowdoin PS3505.A59 Z473 2007ISBN: 9781400066612
The Complete Stories of Truman Capote (2005) by
A landmark collection that brings together Truman Capote's life's work in the form he called his "great love," The Complete Stories confirms Capote's status as a master of the short story. Ranging from the gothic South to the chic East Coast, from rural children to aging urban sophisticates, all the unforgettable places and people of Capote's oeuvre are here, in stories as elegant as they are heartfelt, as haunting as they are compassionate. Reading them reminds us of the miraculous gifts of a beloved American original.
Call Number: Miller PS3505.A59 A6 2004ISBN: 9781400096916
In cold blood; a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences (1965) by Call Number: Miller PS3505.A59 I3
PRIMARY SOURCES: DOCUMENTS
The Paris Review Interviews (2006) by Call Number: Bates PS225 .P26 2006 v.1 - v.4ISBN: 0312361750See Chapter "1957 Paris Review Interview with Truman Capote"
Too Brief a Treat (2004) by
Truman Capote was hailed as one the most meticulous writers in American letters-a part of the Capote mystique is that his precise writing seemed to exist apart from his chaotic life. While the measure of Capote as a writer is best taken through his work, Capote the person is best understood in his personal correspondence with friends, colleagues, lovers, and rivals. In Too Brief a Treat, the acclaimed biographer Gerald Clarke brings together for the first time the private letters of Truman Capote. Encompassing more than four decades, these letters reveal the inner life of one of the twentieth century's most intriguing personalities. As Clarke notes in his Introduction, Capote was an inveterate letter writer who both loved and craved love without inhibition. He wrote letters as he spoke: emphatically, spontaneously, and without reservation. He also wrote them at a breakneck pace, unconcerned with posterity. Thus, in this volume we have perhaps the closest thing possible to an elusive treasure: a Capote autobiography. Through his letters to the likes of William Styron, Gloria Vanderbilt, his publishers and editors, his longtime companion and lover Jack Dunphy, and others, we see Capote in all his life's phases-the uncannily self-possessed na*f who jumped headlong into the dynamic post--World War Two New York literary scene and the more mature, established Capote of the 1950s. Then there is the Capote of the early 1960s, immersed in the research and writing of his masterpiece, In Cold Blood. Capote's correspondence with Kansas detective Alvin Dewey, and with Perry Smith, one of the killers profiled in that work, demonstrates Capote's intense devotion to his craft, while his letters to friends like Cecil Beaton show Capote giddy with his emergence as a flamboyant mass media celebrity after that book's publication. Finally, we see Capote later in his life, as things seemed to be unraveling: when he is disillusioned, isolated by his substance abuse and by personal rivalries. (Ever effusive with praise and affection, Capote could nevertheless carry a grudge like few others). Too Brief a Treat is that uncommon book that gives us a literary titan's unvarnished thoughts. It is both Gerald Clarke's labor of love and a surpassing work of literary history.
Call Number: Bowdoin PS3505.A59 Z495 2004ISBN: 0375501339
