31 John Fury, Dunphy’s first novel, was being reissued by another publisher.
32 Candida Donadio was Dunphy’s literary agent.
33 Capote never made such a movie.
34 François Truffaut’s The Story of Adèle H, starring Isabelle Adjani, told of the romantic obsession Victor Hugo’s daughter had with a French army officer.
35 The Chaplins lived in Switzerland, not far from Verbier.
36 Beaton had suffered a serious stroke in July 1974.
37 “The Seduction of Leslie,” an excerpt from Styron’s novel Sophie’s Choice (1979) in which the narrator, Stingo, pursues the coy Jewish American princess Leslie Lapidus, appeared in the September 1976 issue of Esquire.
38 Styron turned fifty-one on June 11, 1976.
39 Gerald Clarke, Capote’s biographer, had asked Brinnin for an interview. Clarke’s biography, Capote, was published in 1988.
40 Antabuse is an abstinence-maintaining drug for alcoholics. If a person taking it drinks even a small amount of alcohol, the results, including vomiting, are extremely unpleasant.
41 Music for Chameleons: New Writing by Truman Capote was published by Random House in 1980. It included the title story and five others, a nonfiction piece called “Handcarved Coffins,” and seven “conversational portraits”—Capote’s description.
42 See frontispiece.
43 Capote was being treated at Hazelden, an addiction-rehabilitation clinic fifty miles north of Minneapolis.
44 The envelope was surrounded with one-cent stamps containing a drawing of an inkwell and a quill pen, above which were the words THE ABILITY TO WRITE. A ROOT OF DEMOCRACY.
45 Dunphy was in Verbier. Camille was presumably a Swiss or French friend.
46 He is referring to the maintenance on their Verbier condominium.
47 Alan Ross was the editor of The London Magazine.
48 Rader’s article “The Private Letters of Tennessee Williams” had appeared in the July 1978 London Magazine. Rader wrote: “Professionally, Donald Windham is known, if known at all, as a writer of effetely precious prose. He is a person of … petty resentments and embittered false pride rubbed sore by too little achievement in too long a career.” On August 26, 1978, Capote told Windham he’d written a “strong” letter to London Magazine in Windham’s defense. That letter apparently went astray, so Windham urged him to send another, which Capote finally did after an angry phone call from Sandy Campbell on March 21, 1979. The long friendship ended at this point, and Capote never again saw either Windham or Campbell. Subsequent to these unhappy events, Capote and Tennessee Williams had a belated reconciliation, and Capote dedicated Music for Chameleons to him.
49 Capote and Windham’s attorney.
50 Anne Taylor Fleming had quoted Windham and Campbell’s story of Capote’s once giving a journalist the impression, in their presence, that the Willow Street house in Brooklyn was entirely his, when in fact he only rented the basement apartment.
51 Published as “A Letter from Capote” in the April 1980 issue of Interview.
52 He stayed with Joanne Carson, ex-wife of television talk-show host Johnny Carson. Her house was in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles, on a hill just above Sunset Boulevard.
53 This piece did not appear; Capote’s letter in the May 1980 issue was his last contribution to Interview that year.
54 “A Day’s Work” appeared in the June 1979 issue of Interview.
55 Neither “Handcarved Coffins” nor “A Day’s Work” was ever made into a movie.
56 Published as “A Letter from Capote” in the May 1980 issue of Interview.
57 Beaton died on January 18, 1980, at the age of seventy-six.
58 Jane Bowles died in 1973. “A Stick of Green Candy” is a story in her collection Plain Pleasures (1966). The Collected Works of Jane Bowles (1966) brings together the novel, the play and the stories in a single volume, with an introduction by Capote.
A Capote Chronology
1924
Born in New Orleans (Sept. 30) to Arch Persons and Lillie Mae Faulk Persons; he is christened Truman Streckfus Persons.
1930
Is left with elderly Faulk cousins in Monroeville, Alabama.
1931
Mother goes to New York for the first time; changes her first name from Lillie Mae to Nina and divorces Arch (Nov. 9).
1932
Mother marries Joseph Capote (March 24). Several months later she brings Truman to her new home in New York City.
1933–36
Attends the Trinity School, a private Episcopal boys’ school on the West Side of Manhattan, for the fourth, fifth and sixth grades.
1935
Adopted by Joe Capote (Feb. 14), and his last name is changed from Persons to Capote.
1936
Is enrolled in St. John’s Military Academy, an Episcopal school in Ossining, New York, thirty miles from Manhattan.
1937
Returns to the Trinity School.
1939
The Capotes move to Greenwich, Connecticut, a wealthy suburb of New York City, and Truman enters Greenwich High School.
1942
The Capotes return to New York, to an apartment at 1060 Park Avenue. Truman, who failed to graduate with the Greenwich High School class of 1942, enters the Franklin School, a private school on the West Side, from which he finally graduates in 1943. While attending Franklin, he takes a job as a copyboy at The New Yorker.
1943
Publication of his first short story, “The Walls Are Cold,” in Decade of Short Stories.
1944
Two more short stories, “A Mink of One’s Own” and “The Shape of Things,” are published in Decade of Short Stories.
1945
“Miriam” is published in the June issue of Mademoiselle. This is his first appearance in a magazine of large circulation, and it immediately catches the attention of literary New York. Other stories soon follow in Mademoiselle and its rival Harper’s Bazaar. On the strength of “Miriam,” Random House signs him to a contract for his first novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms.
1946
Spends eleven spring and summer weeks at Yaddo, a retreat for artists, writers and musicians in upstate New York. It is here that he meets and begins a long relationship with Newton Arvin, a professor of literature at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. In the fall, his mother’s alcoholic rages prompt him to move from their apartment on Park Avenue to rooms in Brooklyn, an arrangement that lasts only a few months.
1947
Spends the summer on Nantucket. Finishes Other Voices, Other Rooms.
1948
Other Voices, Other Rooms published (Jan. 19).
Goes to Haiti for Harper’s Bazaar. Later writes a short story, “House of Flowers,” set in Port-au-Prince.
Sails to Europe (May 14). Returns in early August.
Meets Jack Dunphy (October).
1949
Sails to Europe with Dunphy (Feb. 26). Returns to New York in December.
1950
Sails for Europe again (April 7), and he and Dunphy settle in Taormina, Sicily. Begins work on The Grass Harp.
1951
He and Dunphy return to New York (August). The Grass Harp is published in September; he begins work on a play version.
1952
The Grass Harp opens on Broadway (March 27) but runs only a month.
He and Dunphy return to Taormina. In September they move to Rome, where David O. Selznick recruits him to help with the script of Stazione Termini, which stars Selznick’s wife, Jennifer Jones, and Montgomery Clift.
1953
In Ravello to write the script, together with director John Huston, of Beat the Devil, an offbeat comedy that stars Jennifer Jones, Humphrey Bogart, Gina Lollobrigida, and Robert Morley.
In June he and Dunphy go to Portofino, where Capote adapts his short story “House of Flowers” as a Broadway musical.
1954
Capote’s mother, Nina, dies after swallowing a bottle of sleeping pills (Jan. 4). Capote rushes home from Paris.
House of Flowers opens on Broadway (Dec. 30).
1955
House of Flowers closes (May 22) after 165 performances.
Travels to the Soviet Union (late December) with a Porgy and Bess troupe.
1956
He and Dunphy rent an apartment in Brooklyn Heights, which is their New York home for nearly a decade.
The Muses Are Heard, his account of his trip to the Soviet Union, is published in The New Yorker (Oct. 20 and 27), and in book form by Random House (November).
Leaves for Asia with Cecil Beaton (Dec. 27) to write a story on the making of the movie Sayonara, starring Marlon Brando.
1957
Returns from Asia (mid-February).
His profile of Brando, “The Duke in His Domain,” appears in The New Yorker (Nov. 9).
1958
Visits Moscow again for a story that he later abandons.
He and Dunphy sail for Europe (May 29); they spend the summer on the Greek island of Páros and return to New York in October.
Breakfast at Tiffany’s is published in Esquire.
1959
Reads story about the Clutter murders in The New York Times (Nov. 16); later leaves for Kansas with Harper Lee.
Dick Hickock and Perry Smith arrested in Las Vegas (Dec. 30) and returned to Kansas to face charges for the Clutter murders.
1960
A jury finds Hickock and Smith guilty of the Clutter murders (March 29).
Rents a house for the spring and summer in Palamós, Spain, where he plans to write the book he will title In Cold Blood. In the fall he and Dunphy move to Verbier, a small village in the Swiss Alps.
1961
Again spends spring and summer in Spain, winter in Switzerland. Adapts Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw for the movies under the title The Innocents.
1962
Returns to the United States to interview Perry Smith’s sister (January). Once again in Spain for the summer and in Verbier for the winter.
1963
Newton Arvin dies of cancer (March).
Capote and Dunphy return to the United States and their apartment in Brooklyn Heights. They spend the summer and fall in Bridgehampton, Long Island.
1964
Finishes all but the last chapter of In Cold Blood, which he cannot write until he knows what will happen to Hickock and Smith.
1965
Attends execution of Hickock and Smith (April 14).
The New Yorker runs In Cold Blood in four installments, beginning Sept. 25.
Moves from Brooklyn to the United Nations Plaza in Manhattan.
1966
In Cold
