Truman Capote , of her true name Truman Streckfus Persons , born the September 30th 1924 with La Nouvelle-Orléans, dead the August 25th 1984 with Los Angeles, is a American writer author of novels, news, reports, portraits, accounts of voyages, memories of childhood, as well as two theatrical adaptations of former writings and two film scenarios.
Hood or the fall of Icare (a summary of its life)
Years of training
His/her parents separating little from time after their marriage, Truman sees his very young mother entrusting it to these even which had collected it orphan: it is high with Monroeville in Alabama by his three cousins and their brother, all four single people. Its childhood is happy but it will always painfully feel this abandonment by his parents. In Monroeville, it has as a friend of childhood Harper Lee which will describe it in its famous novel To Kill has Mockingbird ( do not shoot at the bird mocker ) like one: " Merlin the enchanter of poche". In 1932, his/her mother who remariée herself with a Cuban, Joseph Capote, takes it along food to New York. Truman takes the family name of his/her father-in-law, and will keep it like pen name.Il makes its studies in Dwight School with New York like with the Greenwich High School in Greenwich in Connecticut where one of its professors, Catherine Wood, encourages it to write. Graduate of a private college of West Side, it definitively leaves at 17 years the school system and works of 1941 with 1944 like " copyboy" with the New Yorker . They will however be two female magazines, the Harper' S Bazaar and Miss which will publish her first news, the New-Yorker finding them too daring. The literary directors of these magazines (Mary Louise Aswell for the Harper' S Bazaar and George Davis for Miss ), of the influential characters of the time, detected before all what had exceptional of the talent of this young man.
However, the family life at the Hood is stormy, the frequent and violent alcoholic fits of his/her mother. In 1946, Truman finds refuge with Yaddo, a residence which accommodates writers, musicians and artists of the State of New York. It meets there, a professor of letters of great value. During the two years that their connection lasts, it spends each weekend near that which will give him the formation that it had not received at the university and of which it will say later: " Arvin was my Harvard".
The first successes
In all its life of writer, Capote will write only one about fifteen news, but they are truths jewels. Their particular charm owes much with the marvellous or fantastic character their stories, with their light irony and, for some of them, with the gift of childhood of their author. Their poetic style abounds with original images (" |… | slipping some sugar refineries into the vinegar of its voice… " , " Sook miss, sensitive like a capillary… " , " Tico Feo |… | a song as merry as under as one sang remue"). Its characters, same those which have a secondary role, are if surprising and typified that they remain in the memory of the reader: " The man who had spoken small, was cut out of barrel, and of a brick dye; he advanced until the threshold of the living room and stopped in titubant." (Oreilly in Mr Maléfique ).It is with this news, and particularly Miriam , that the star of Capote rises. The New Yorkean medium recognizes its talent. It is invited in the literary circles of Mary Louise Aswell and Georges Davis. Bennett Stag, the director of Random House, agrees to publish its Romance first the haunted Fields (1948), which knows from the start a sharp success. The same year, Capote becomes acquainted with, itself writer, who will be the companion of almost all his life. The ten following years see them remaining lengthily in Europe and Africa. Hood written there accounts of voyages, film scenarios, and even a theatrical adaptation and a musical comedy. Drawn from texts previously published, those know careers mitigated on the New Yorkean scenes.
In 1958, Breakfast at Tiffany , short novel of 120 pages full with charm and nostalgia, the sacring great writer.
It is the account of the meeting of a writer beginning, the narrator, with his neighbor of the lower part. Holly Golightly is an odd young woman and nonconformist who, with the edge of the cinema world, saw expédients and those which its beauty dazzles, but without never alienating its freedom to them; a butterfly attracted by the lights of a futile and fashionable New Yorkean life, on bottom of second world war. The narrator falls quickly under his charm. It seems to him a enigma, naive, romantic, absolute, restive with any morals other than his; he discovers it wounded (by a difficult childhood then the death of a brother that she adored) but untameable. When Holly finally believes to have found the love in the person of a young Brazilian diplomat, one of its blunders (it was used for her knowledge of liaison officer to an imprisoned gangster chief with Sing-Sing) compromises the marriage and constrained the young woman to be flown away precipitately for South America. There, she disappears in nature, but not in the memory of the narrator with whom she leaves a feeling of lack, the regret of fled happiness. The history, sometimes poignant in its adventures, is told on a tone soft-land-mark and slightly ironic by a Truman Capote at the top of her Article.
Its chief of work: Of coolness
Its most important work: Of coolness , novel-report published in 1966, brings finally money, glory, society life to him… and is undoubtedly at the origin of its decline and its shipwreck final.Capote discovers in the NewYork Times of November 16th, 1959 a fact various which, immediately, impassions it: a quadruple murder striking a family of farmers of Kansas. It obtains New Yorker to leave to inquire into the spot of the drama, in Holcomb, in this rural America from which it is unaware of almost all. His/her friend of childhood Harper Lee, with which it required to accompany it, facilitates much her relations with the local population of the Midwest and is to him of an invaluable help during its research task. Capote spends long months to question the witnesses, to peel the police reports and, after the arrest of the two assassins, to meet them in prison, to gain their confidence, becoming their bond privileged with the not-prison world. The development of the book takes four years to him. It analyzes the wheels of the business while remaining closest to the facts, described méticuleusement the decoration of the drama, America sure of its statutory values and captive of its religious principles. It inserts the whole within the framework of a black novel of " non-fiction" , of an entirely original experimental creation. It uses finally the enigma which represent these four murders wildly free to approach the mystery of the man gifted of reason and yet so able of worst. Whatever the sincerity of the writer in his compassion for the two murderers, the stopped title of the work ( Of coolness ) is a judgment without call since he affirms premeditation. In April 1965, Smith and Hickock are carried out. The book can appear. It will be sold million specimens of them, but never more Capote will not write a text of this width.
An attractive and ambiguous personality
Celebrate, Capote fascinated as much by its talent and its culture that by its mannerism and its flamboyance which was used to mask its handicaps (its small size: 1m62, and its effeminate side). Its impressive memory gave him the possibility of knowing its interlocutor well and of handling it with wish.Capote lived during more than thirty years with (actor then writer) which it had met in 1948. However, the celebrity seizing him and forty passed, it carried out a fashionable life, increasingly put out of order. It counted among his friends: (great friendship in love with its life, but which breaks in October 1975 irremediably), Harper Lee (the friend of always, author in 1960 of the best-seller: To Kill has Mockingbird ), (its professor in literature), Carson McCullers, Tennessee Williams, Norman Mailer, Marilyn Monroe, Lee Radziwill (sister of Jacqueline Kennedy), Andy Warhol (which was at the origin of the last book that it published of alive sound: Music for chameleons ), etc Its enmities are also famous (for Gore Vidal in particular).
1966 and the publication of Of coolness mark the apogee of the literary reputation and the social life of Capote. But the test which the writing of this masterly novel represented breaks, seems it, something in him. And the years which follow are a slow race towards the abyss. The hatred of oneself and others invades it little by little. Alcohol, excess in all kinds, Capote seems seized of a will of self-destruction. The publication in Esquire , in October 1975, of a chapter of the novel to which he works precipitates the catastrophe: it is brutally ostracized by the New Yorkean high society, all his friends release it. The accused chapter, " The Coast basque" , is one of the three brilliant and outrageous fragments which remain us of exaucées Prières . This novel was to be its chief of work. The scandal, the disease, the decline of its creative forces and death prevented Capote to complete it. Unless it is not dépris of itself at the point any more to want it.
A great writer
Regarded as a paragon of the writer New Yorkean of the Years 1950 and 1960, talented, shining, well-read man, society man, homosexual, alcoholic, " accro" with tranquillizing, Capote left a work a little disparate but considered as major for second half of the 20th century. Listen to what of him Norman Mailer says: " Truman Capote is as sour as a sixty year old old maid, but with its way it is a small guy who has testicles… and the most perfect writer of my generation: he writes the best sentences, where each term, each rate/rhythm is carefully weighed. I would not have found two words to be changed with Petit-déjeuner at Tiffany , which is essential already like traditional literature américaine." For William Styron: " It was an uncontested Master of the verb… It had the gift to make sing and even dance the words, to cause the laughter, to give you the shiver, to touch themselves the coeur." To write was for him a permanent suffering, so much it was obsessed by the accuracy of the words, the images and by the limpidity of its style.
Truman Capote with the cinema
A film named Hood (in French: Truman Capote ) and carried out in 2005 by Bennett Miller, recalls the period of writing of Of cold blood and was worth with Philip Seymour Hoffman the Oscar of the best actor. Hardly one year later, another film reconsiders the same subject and treats it on another tone. It is this time about Infamous (in French: Scandaleusement celebrates ) of Doug McGrath, with Toby Jones in the role of the writer. The exit back-to-back of these films shows at which point Capote current remainder and controversé.It should be noted that Truman played itself screen in 1976 in film of Robert Moore: a corpse with the dessert (Murder by death).
The discovery of a new
In 2004, one found, at the time of an auction, one of his old " tapuscrits" , written between 19 and 29 years. This novel of youth which Capote thought of having destroyed, was finally published in October 2005 in the United States and in September 2006 in France. the crossing of the summer , lovesong New Yorkean which finishes badly, carries already the leg of Hood by its smoothness of observation and a pain of living dissimulated under much lightness.
Publication of its correspondence
Gerald Clarke, specialist in the work of Hood, publishes in 2004 his correspondence, translated into French under the title a too short pleasure extracts from a letter of the writer with Robert Linscott (" Which too short pleasure that your letter… " ). In its introduction to the letters of Truman Capote, Gerald Clarke written: " It is devoted to it with naturalness. He, which polished and repolished the least sentence published under its signature, sometimes tracking during hours the word right, wrote its letters with the devil, as if it always feared to miss the last levée."This correspondence covers, of 1936 to 1982, more than forty years of existence, thus constituting true and unhoped-for epistolary autobiography. It starts with a shingling letter written at twelve years with her father, Arch Persons: " As you know it, my name was changed Persons into Hood, and I would be grateful to you more to call me that Truman Capote, because everyone from now on knows me under this name-là". But as a whole, its correspondence is funny and full with the commérages that it affectionnait: " I lived strange adventures these last weeks, with which John Huston and Humphrey Bogart are mixed, who returned to me insane so much they make the spree - with half drunk all the day, and completely drunk the night. You are not obliged to believe me, but I entered one morning at six hours the room of Bogart to find king Farouk dancing there the hula hoop". It is not free from features bastards, for example in connection with a text of Carson Mac Cullers: " I surely read worse, but I do not remember it ". It shows a man consumed by an intense need for love, attentive towards her friends and awaiting them it reciprocity: " Invaluable Marylou, I was so happy to receive your letter. It gave birth to in me a violent one desire from you voir".
Its letters reveal us a writer obsessed by the drafting of the novel which will return it universally celebrates: " I returned in Verbier, crushed by the weight of this book interminable". Among his/her friends of always, new correspondents appear: Alvine Dewey, the inspector in charge of the investigation into the assassination with the Clutter family, her wife and their son. This relation interested in its beginnings by the need to collect information is transformed little by little into a touching friendship: " Dear friends of cœur". Its correspondence shows it to us still concerned publication of the book finally completed, which is suspended on the verdict of the Supreme court: " Receipt your telegram: Rejected call. Thousand mercis". He writes in Cecil Beaton, a long time a close friend: " Perry and Dick were hung last Tuesday. I was there because they had asked it to me. It was an atrocious test. From which I will never go back complètement". These some words were prophetic. Truman Capote never recovered of this book and this diving in the blackest reality.
Works
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1943 : the Crossing of the summer ( Summer Crossing ), novel. A history of love enters very an young girl of the New Yorkean high society and a young guard of carpark, on bottom of Upper East Side and heat wave. Posthumous publication in October 2005 by Random House Inc., New York.
- 1943 : an Indian summer ( I remember my Grandpa ), news. A young boy collects " the secret" of his/her grandfather…
- 1945: Miriam , news. An old woman makes the meeting of a little girl who becomes quickly terribly invading.
- 1948 : haunted Fields ( Other Voices, Other Rooms ), novel. A pre-teenager leaves to find his father and finally will be him.
- 1949 : a tree of night ( has Tree Night off), news.
- 1950 : Local Color , sketch of voyages.
- 1951 : the grass Toothing-stone ( Fatty The Harp ), novel. An orphan and two old women elect residence in a tree and do not want to go down some any more. Adapted to the theater in 1952.
- 1954 : more extremely than the devil ( Happy the Devil ), scenario (film of John Huston).
- 1956 : the Muses spoke ( The Muses are heard ), report on its voyage in Russia (then Soviet) with the American theatrical group giving representation of the opera Porgy and Bess to Saint-Petersbourg and Moscow.
- 1956 : a memory of Christmas ( has Christmas memory ). Buddy is seven years old, the old cousin whom he adores sixty and more, and by a cold morning of November: " Oh my God! " exclaim it, " But it is the moment to make the cakes with the fruits! "
- 1958 : Breakfast at Tiffany ( Breakfast At Tiffany' S ), novel whose touching and irresponsible heroin was incarnated in an unforgettable way by Audrey Hepburn in a film adaptation carried out by Blake Edwards in 1961. Titrate French film: Diamonds on settee .
- 1960 : Innocent the ( The Innocent ), scenario according to the Turn of nut of Henry James (film of Clayton Jack)
- 1966: Of coolness ( In Cold Blood ), a novel of “non-fiction” where it follows the way of two assassins and which inspired several films of which Of coolness (1967) of Richard Brooks with Robert Blake.
- 1968 : the one day old Guest ( The Thanksgiving Visitor ), memories. A young boy exorcizes the fear which a classmate inspires to him…
- 1980: Music for chameleons ( Music for Chameleons ), news and accounts of which dazzling it Coffins to measure ( Handcarved Whetstone sheaths ).
- 1983 : Christmas ( One Christmas ), memories. A little boy comes from there to wonder whether the Father Christmas really exists.
- 1987 : exaucées Prayers ( Answered Prayers: The Unfinished Novell ), unfinished novel whose two chapters are the best Capote: Of the monsters in a pure state ( Unspoiled monsters ) and the Coast Basque .
- 1987 : has Hood Reader (an anthology of Hood). This collection includes, inter alia, its twelve most famous news, namely: Miriam , My side off the Matter , has off Tree Night , Jug off Silver , The Headless Hawk , Shut has Final Door , Master Misery , Children one Their Birthdays , has Diamond Guitar , House off Flowers , Among the Paths to Eden and Mojave .
- 2004 : The Supplements Stories Truman Capote off. At the time of what would have been the 80e birthday of Hood, Random House gathered in a volume all the news or short accounts of memories written by Capote. These stories are twenty. To the twelve enumerated above, are added: The Walls Are Cold , has off Mink One' S Own , The Shape off Things , Preacher' S Legend , The Bargain , has Christmas Memory , The Thanksgiving Visitor and One Christmas . Also the same year at Random House Too Brief appears has Treat (published in France in 2007 pennies the title a too short pleasure ).
In connection with Hood
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the biography of Truman Capote who makes authority is that of Gerald Clarke ( HOOD: has Biography , 1988, at Simon & Schuster). The French translation, published at Gallimard in 1990, is simply titrated: HOOD .
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There is in Truman Capote an extremely rare quality of language. It was a designer except par. It engraved its texts (each word, each sentence) like jewels. With so much of love of the perfection, as well of “snobbery”, as the effort was not distinguished there more. One with the impression by reading his news or what it called its “tests”, which they spontaneously flowered at the end of his feather like poppies in a corn field.
Simple: Truman Capote
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