For a writer of such incredible fame (he had the highest Q factor (a term for public recognition that’s hard to google since it’s one letter of any celebrity of the 1970s- everybody recognized him instantly) he had a very small output. His Complete Stories are only 320 pages, of which only a few were written in the last 20 years of his life. Those, along with the three novellas, In Cold Blood, and unfinished Answered Prayers comprises the bulk of his legacy.
I’d start with the short stories, particularly Christmas Memory and Thanksgiving Visitor, because in addition to being two of his best works they’re autobiographical and explain his pillar-to-post misfit childhood. Also read To Kill a Mockingbird and remember that the character Dill is based very closely on him.
There are two great biographies of Capote-
CAPOTE by Gerald Clarke (which irritatingly enough has a picture of Philip Seymour Hoffman as Capote on the cover- somewhere Tru, who was obsessed with his fame, is spinning flip-flops while somewhere else Gore Vidal is chuckling into his Geritol and vodka) is the definitive nuts and bolts bio of the man.
Truman Capote: In Which Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintences and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career by George Plimpton is a connection of edited interviews by people who knew him that, while not a “connect the dots” bio like Clarke’s, gives incredible insight into his career, character, genius, self-destructiveness, hideousness and greatness.
Ironically, the two together are thicker than all of Capote’s work if you take out In Cold Blood, which was as brilliant as Tru thought it was.
The very important things to remember about Capote biographically are that
-he was rejected by both parents and later forcibly pulled away from the one person (Sook) who loved him unreservedly, and he spent his life trying to find a family and somebody to love him that way (he came closest with his long-time non-exclusive lover Jack Dunphy and with his friend Joanne Carson [Johnny’s second wife, in whose home he died])
-though he has the effeminate bulldog image in later years, he was a beautiful sexy twink as a young man who could snag almost any gay or bi man into bed, and he never got over the fact that this phase ended
-he was a pathological liar, but at the same point many of his most outlandish stories were true (as Plimpton demonstrates)
At some point I hope that somebody writes a dual biography of Gore Vidal and Truman Capote. They have some similarities (both were children of glamorous alcoholics [both named Nina] who abandoned them, both were wunderkind gay writers of the 1940s, they moved in the same circles, etc.) and were good friends for a few years, though later hated each other with intensity. (I think they snogged each other, but I could be wrong.) Each went ballistic over the other’s success even when they were still friendly (I can’t remember which one is credited with the line “Boy Wonder! He’s twenty three if he’s a day!” when reading a review that called the other that), each was obsessed with fame and television, but their writing style couldn’t be more different. Vidal’s complete works (essays, novels, screenplays) would fill a good sized bookcase while Truman’s would leave empty room on a shelf, and Vidal’s books are masterpieces of research and speculation on the high and mighty while Truman’s were all focused on the man-in-the-street until he got to Answered Prayers, but what I think even bitchy old Gore knows on some level is that Capote was by far the better fiction writer, and his works will be read 100 years after Gore has joined Frank Yerby and Frances Parkinson Keyes in the retired stacks of libraries everywhere.
