Author Truman Capote, who died in 1984 at age 59, is making headlines again with the new season of “Feud” on FX. “Capote vs. the Swans” draws viewers back into the orbit of the author who, at the height of his fame in the mid-1960s, befriended and eventually betrayed women from the highest echelons of New York society. “Swans” sensationalizes Capote’s literary genius (and its decline), his savage wit and craven need for attention, his status as a gay outsider, his substance abuse, and the inevitable social banishment that ultimately haunted him.
Many lovers of books and films know Capote for his 1958 novel “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” adapted for the 1961 film starring Audrey Hepburn. But from a nonfiction writer’s perspective, Capote’s most substantive literary contribution would be “In Cold Blood.” Published in 1966, the book provided his account of a gruesome Kansas murder, its perpetrators, and its aftermath.
Love it or hate it, this bestseller offered a premonition of our contemporary preoccupation with true crime literature and entertainment. Capote referred to “In Cold Blood” as a “nonfiction novel,” a deliberately provocative genre description at the time, even as the book landed squarely among works of “the new journalism” created by other authors experimenting with form and voice — including Joan Didion, Tom Wolfe, Hunter S. Thompson, and Gay Talese. Each of these writers was publishing material about real events and people while attending closely to storytelling elements often associated with fiction. In the 21st century, we usually call this approach literary journalism, longform journalism, or creative nonfiction.
As a nonfiction author who has spent many years researching and writing about crimes of the most heinous as well as insidious variety, I contended with “In Cold Blood” long ago. The book raises ethical questions that any writer must address, and its commercial success is both a credit to Capote’s skill and a warning to those who write themselves into the abyss.
“Feud” will likely bring many readers back to Capote’s work again, particularly “Answered Prayers,” his last and unfinished novel, muffled by the fallout depicted in “Swans” and the undertow of drug and alcohol abuse he could not escape. I am sure many will come to “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” for the first time perhaps to discover how different it is from the much-beloved film, and I expect to see “In Cold Blood” on paperback tables again soon.
But for me as a writer, it’s one of Capote’s shorter works that made an indelible impact on my understanding of what was possible on the page, and it remains a story to which I often return. “A Christmas Memory” was first published in 1956 not in “The New Yorker” (where installments of “In Cold Blood” first appeared) or in “Esquire” (which published a preview of “Answered Prayers”) but in “Mademoiselle,” a now-defunct magazine then-aimed at young women in college. The story is based on Capote’s early childhood in rural Alabama, where he lived with distant relatives and formed a special bond with an elderly cousin, two outcasts surviving under the same roof.
The story opens with the friends’ annual ritual baking fruitcakes, a holiday dessert I strenuously avoid. I was astonished my first time reading how Capote’s descriptions at every turn — from the harvesting of windfall pecans, to gathering pennies for purchasing forbidden whiskey, to the details of stirring and baking — made a food that repelled me sound not only delicious but magical.
The precision of Capote’s language cannot be separated from his attention to sound and rhythm: The stretched-out sentences, stylistic fragments set like jewels inside the lyrical (sometimes shockingly long) paragraphs I do not want to end, the timing of dialogue alongside first-person admissions and vivid parenthetical asides. Capote is also a virtuoso of image-as-coda, as in his description of Christmas Eve: “The candle burns too short to hold. Out it goes, exposing the starlight, the stars spinning at the window like a visible caroling that slowly, slowly daybreak silences.”
The rich layers of style here, in addition to the poignant characters and simple plot elements, may explain why the story has lent itself readily to adaptations in so many forms: For television, theater, musical, and even opera.
Unlike his longer works, “A Christmas Memory” is so absorbing as to render genre categorization somewhat immaterial. Every time I reread it, I feel the truth in Capote’s vulnerable alter-ego narrator, “Buddy,” a boy who was neglected and loyal, who longed for joy and connection. The story offers a miniature master class in astute narrative observation as well as tenderness — years before audiences craved an invitation to the author’s glamorous and infamous Black and White masquerade party.
It intrigues me when an author’s fame can overshadow the qualities of what might be some of their best, or least hyped, creative output. When you think of writers or other artists who achieve a level of prominence, respect, or even notoriety, are there any works you wish would get more attention?
Jo Scott-Coe’s new book is “Unheard Witness: The Life and Death of Kathy Leissner Whitman,” published in October 2023 by University of Texas Press.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct an error. Jo Scott-Coe’s book, “Unheard Witness: The Life and Death of Kathy Leissner Whitman,” was published in October by University of Texas Press.
