Capote (83 page)

The downpour put a quick end to the eulogies Jack’s brother, Bob, and I had prepared. It was just as well, for Truman and Jack had written words more appropriate than any we might have uttered. At the water’s edge the Conservancy had planted a memorial stone, engraved with quotations I had chosen. “The brain may take advice, but not the heart,” Truman had written in
Other Voices, Other Rooms
, “and love, having no geography, knows no boundaries.” Jack’s quotation was from
Dear Genius
, the memoir he wrote after Truman’s death. “I was grieving the way the earth seems to grieve for spring in the dead of winter, but I wasn’t afraid, because nothing, I told myself, can take our halcyon days away.”

After their deaths, many writers, even very good ones, even those who had made regular visits to the best-seller lists, enter the twilight realm of the barely remembered. Truman has done the opposite. Interest in him grows every year—thanks to the Internet, I receive messages from people from all parts of the world—and a whole new generation seems drawn to his writing and fascinated by his singular personality. “What was he really like?” I am often asked, a question I have tried to answer in my book. But to those who demand a quicker reply, I say only: the Truman Capote I knew was often in emotional pain, but when he was at his best, he transformed his own life, and the lives of those around him, into a high-speed adventure, an intoxicating journey into lands unknown.

—Gerald Clarke       
Bridgehampton, N.Y.
March 18, 2010       

A writer likes to think that a book is all his own. But that is clearly not the case with a biography, and I am indebted to hundreds of people, not all of whom I have been able to mention in my source notes. Foremost among them, of course, is Truman Capote himself, who for more than nine years allowed me to observe and, indeed, to take part in his life. That is a debt I can never repay, alas, and I confess that I find myself missing his company, good and bad, more than I would have thought possible. Jack Dunphy, Truman’s companion for thirty-eight years, gave me the same high privilege, with no strings or conditions. My book would have been greatly diminished without his help. Rick Brown and John O’Shea, who shared Truman’s life for lesser periods, were equally forthright, and my final chapters would have been incomplete without their cooperation. Alan U. Schwartz, Truman’s executor, very generously permitted me access to Truman’s papers and other invaluable information. Arnold Bernstein, Truman’s accountant, steered me through the mysterious jungle of financial figures. Joe Fox, Truman’s editor at Random House, provided help, as well as wise counsel, in more ways than I can readily enumerate.

At Simon and Schuster I was guided and protected by what I believe to be one of the most talented teams in publishing: my editor Bob Bender, whose steady voice helped me through many trying moments and whose keen eye caught my mistakes; his assistant, Betsy Lerner, whose efficiency and good humor never wavered; my former editors, Diane Cleaver and Joni Evans, whose enthusiasm was constantly invigorating; Vincent Virga, who discovered photographs in the most unlikely spots and, sometimes through charm alone, secured permission rights; Eric Rayman, who gave my manuscript a shrewd but sensitive legal reading; and Richard Snyder, chairman of Simon and Schuster, Charles Hayward, publisher of Simon and Schuster’s trade division, and Michael Korda, Simon and Schuster’s editor-in-chief, who offered encouraging words at the right times. With almost saintly patience, Barbara Shalvey typed transcripts of hundreds of hours of tape-recorded interviews and showed great ingenuity in collecting odd facts in odd places. I have been singularly lucky in the choice of my two agents. Gloria Safier saw me safely through ten years of frustration and occasional heartache; my greatest regret is that she could not have lived to read this book. Taking her place, Helen Brann has offered me comforting words, as well as her own good judgment, and she has seen me to the finish line.

I regret that I can offer no more than a mention to many of those who follow, some of whom have given me hours and hours of their time: Daniel Aaron; Edward Albee; Robert O. Anderson; Harold Arlen; Mary Louise Aswell; Richard Avedon; Julian Bach; Don Bachardy; Pierre Barillet; Peter Beard; Sybille Bedford; Lucia Jaeger Behling; Pearl Kazin Bell; Andrew Bella; Brigid Berlin; Paul Bigelow; Janice Biggers; Karl Bissinger; Naomi Bliven; Paul Bowles; Jenny Bradley; Susan Braudy; Wilva Breen; Gerald Brenan; Nancy Ryan Brien; John Malcolm Brinnin; John Broderick (chief of Manuscript Division, Library of Congress); Richard Brooks; Stella Brooks; Andreas Brown; Joy Brown; Michael Brown; Rick Brown; C. Bruner-Smith; Patricia Burstein; Paul Cadmus; Maria Theresa Caen; Robin Caldwell; Robbie Campbell; Sandy Campbell; Joe Capote; Marjorie Capote; William F. Carroll; Joanne Carson; Marco Carson; Jennings Carter; John Byron Carter; Mary Ida Carter; Bill Caskey; Lord (David) Cecil; Vincent Cerow; Herbert Chaice; George Christy; Ina Claire; Patsy Streckfus Clark; Jack Clayton; Myron Clement; Walter Clemons; Bob Colacello; Meghan Robbins Collins; Mary Ellen Connolly; Wyatt Cooper; Donald Cullivan; Charlotte Curtis; Joe Curtis; Mina Curtiss; Thomas Quinn Curtiss; Olive Daley; Jimmy Daniels; Matthew Dann; Buster Davis; Susan Davis, curator of manuscripts, New York Public Library; Agnes de Mille; Alice Denham; Harold Deutsch, M.D.; Alvin Dewey; Marie Dewey; William Diefenbach, M.D.; William E. Dorion; Frances Doughty; Irving Drutman; Dominick Dunne; Gloria Dunphy; Robert Ellsworth; Lin Emery; Don Erickson; Joe Faulk; Seabon Faulk; Dorothy Finnie; M. F. K. Fisher; Thomas Flanagan; Ruth Ford; Frederick Fouts; Eleanor Friede; Otto Friedrich, John Galliher; Mrs. Ira Gershwin; John Gielgud; Brendan Gill; Milton Goldman; John B. L. Goodwin; William Goyen; Katharine Graham; Mary Garrison Grand; Judith Green; Graham Greene; Frank Grisaitis; C. Z. Guest; Alec Guinness; Loel Guinness; Brion Gysin; James Hagerman; Ronald Hallett; Waldemar Hansen; Curtis Harnack (executive director, Yaddo); Mrs. Lester Harp; Kate Harrington; Bill Harris; Mercia Harrison; Rex Harrison; Crawford Hart, Jr.; Lillian Hellman; Audrey Hepburn; Shirley Herz; Themistocles Hoetis; Kinmont Hoitsma; Geoffrey Holder; Dolores Hope; Robert Horan; Leonora Hornblow; Eileen Hose; Albert Hubbell; John Huston; Christopher Isherwood; Carl Jaeger; Jo James; Marion Javits; April Johnson; Jennifer Jones; Judith Jones; Ebba Jonsson; Pauline Kael; E. J. Kahn, Jr.; Father Kieran Kavanaugh, O.C.D.; Donald Keene; Robert Keene; Lady (Nancy) Keith; William Kessler; Wilma Kidwell; Eugene Kinkeid; Carol Knauss (secretary, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference); John Knowles; Ronald Kornblum, M.D.; Louis Kronenberger; Eleanor Lambert; John Lasher; Rupert Latture; Barbara Lawrence; Alice Lee; Harper Lee; John Lehmann; Leo Lerman; Lyle Leverich; Doris Lilly; Elizabeth Linscott; Gordon Lish; Carl Little, M.D.; Andy Logan; Kennth A. Lohf (librarian for Rare Books and Manuscripts, Columbia); Andrew Lyndon; Robert MacBride; Jordan Massee; Carol Matthau; George H. McCormack, M.D.; Frances McFadden; Landis McMillon; Kay Meehan; Gian-Carlo Menotti; Oliver Messell; Joel Michael; Thomas Moore; Truman Moore; Robert Morley; Alice Morris; Ruth Mortimer (curator, Smith College Rare Book Room); Howard Moss; John Moxey; John Bernard Myers; Bertram J. Newman, M.D.; John Nicholson; Scott Nixon; Louis Nizer; Marion Jaeger O’Niel; Brian O’Shea; Chris O’Shea; John O’Shea; Margaret O’Shea; Bernard Perlin; Eleanor Perry; Frank Perry; Lester Persky; Arch Persons; John Knox Persons; Joseph Petrocik; Robert Phelps; Edward Pierce; Arthur Pinkham; Ron Portante; Katherine Anne Porter; Frank Price; Marilyn Putnam; Dotson Rader; Lee Radziwill; Marcus Reidenberg, M.D.; John Richardson; Nathan Rogers; Ned Rorem; Katherine Rowley; Marie Rudisill; D. D. Ryan; John Barry Ryan; William Shawn; Neil Simon; Jeannie Sims; Harrison Smith; Liz Smith; Oliver Smith; Steve Sondheim; M. C. Spahn; Francis Steegmuller; Jean Stein; Verne Streckfus; Saint Subber; Georges Tardy; Mrs. Roland Tate; Virgil Thomson; Diana Trilling; Hugo Vickers; Lucia Victor; Gore Vidal; Robin von Joachim; Diana Vreeland; Phoebe Pierce Vreeland; Phyllis Cerf Wagner; Theodore Walworth, Jr.; Howard Weber, Jr.; Kay Wells; Jann Wenner; Glenway Wescott; Lyn White; Tennessee Williams; Donald Windham; Catherine Wood; Lynn Wyatt; Marguerite Young; Hortense Zera (librarian, American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters).

Much of this book is based on interviews, chiefly with Truman Capote himself, but also with several hundred others who either knew him or provided information on him or on other subjects I discuss. In the notes below I have indicated my sources for key facts and quotations. I have cited all the important quotations from Truman that I obtained from published stories and interviews. The reader can assume that almost all other quotations from Truman and from his companion, Jack Dunphy, come from my interviews with them. Because I interviewed them so frequently, over so long a period of time, I have not attempted to date each quotation. With only a few exceptions, all other interviews are dated. For reasons that are obvious in the text, a very few people requested anonymity, which I granted.

The book is also based on written material, most of it unpublished: Truman’s books and articles; his letters, which are scattered over two continents; the letters of his friends, particularly his first lover, Newton Arvin; and the memoirs and diaries of those who knew him. Truman often claimed that he kept extensive diaries of his own. If so—and I doubt that he did—I know of only two. One is in the Library of Congress; the other he gave to me.

The two main repositories of Capote material are the New York Public Library and the Library of Congress. Columbia University’s Random House collection has the letters Truman exchanged with his editors, and the Smith College Library has many of the letters Newton Arvin wrote to him. Truman also gave me some important material, including the aforementioned diary and his letters from Perry Smith and Richard Hickock, the two killers he wrote about in
In Cold Blood.
I was also able to purchase an extraordinarily useful collection of several hundred of Truman’s family letters, which were of immense help in providing background and documenting dates.

In quoting from letters, I have, in a very few places, dropped irrelevant passages without noting the omission with an ellipsis, overuse of which I believe often slows down a narrative. For the most part, Truman and his correspondents were excellent spellers, and I have silently corrected minor misspellings, unless, as in a childhood letter, they make a point. When I have given the exact date of a letter within the text, I have not felt it necessary to repeat the citation in the source notes.

page 3 “‘She like to have knocked me dead…’”: Arch Persons to GC, September 9, 1976.

page 4 “Her widowed mother had died…”: Arch Persons (September 9, 1976), Mary Ida Carter (September 7, 1976) and Seabon Faulk (March 8, 1978) to GC.

page 5 “‘Get out and don’t ever darken…’”: Mary Ida Carter to GC, September 7, 1976.

page 5 “He was obviously not the man he had led…”: Seabon Faulk to GC, March 8, 1978.

page 6 “‘People in Monroeville thought that Arch…’”:
Ibid.

page 8 “At the beginning, anyway, Lillie Mae put aside…”: Mary Ida Carter (September 7, 1976), Seabon Faulk (March 8, 1978) and John Knox Persons (September 9, 1978) to GC.

page 8 “‘If you could be sold, Arch…’”: Captain Verne Streckfus to GC, April 19, 1979.

page 10 “‘Money is the sixth sense, without which…’”: Arch Persons to John Knox Persons, July 30, 1933.

page 11 “‘She thought that she had been hooked…’”: Seabon Faulk to GC, March 8, 1978.

page 11 “‘She’d take a notion to a fellow…’”: Arch Persons to GC, September 9, 1976.

page 11 “In the seven years they were man and wife…”: Arch Persons to Mabel Purcell (his mother), January 5, 1933.

page 12 “‘Invariably,’ he complained in one letter…”: John Knox Persons to Sam Persons, July 12, 1931.

page 12 “The first on the list may have been…”: Arch Persons (September 9, 1976) and Joe Capote (May 7, 1977) to GC.

page 14 “In the winter of 1929 she even took him…”: Nancy H. Carwell, assistant to the registrar, Western Kentucky University, in a letter to GC, July 18, 1978.

page 15 “‘She was the strongest woman…’”: Seabon Faulk to GC, March 8, 1978.

page 16 “‘Oh, Jennie that’s so sinful!’”: Mary Ida Carter to GC, September 7, 1976.

page 18 “In 1930, when Truman went there to live…”: For my description on Monroeville in the thirties, I relied on the centennial edition (1966) of the
Monroe Journal
and Harper Lee’s novel,
To Kill a Mockingbird
, as well as information derived from interviews.

page 21 “All that summer of 1930 he swam…”: Arch Persons to John Knox Persons, July 24, 1930.

page 22 “‘He wore blue linen shorts that…’”: Lee,
To Kill a Mockingbird
, page 13.

page 23 “‘I fear if there is such a thing…’”: Callie Faulk to Mabel Purcell, September 28, 1931.

page 23 “‘We give him every pleasure…’”: Callie Faulk to Mabel Purcell, August 3, 1932.

page 24 “One night at eleven o’clock, long after…”: Mabel Purcell to John Knox Persons, June 22, 1931.

page 27 “‘Seems to me she is always studying something…’”: Sam Persons to John Knox Persons, January 15, 1931.

page 27 “‘Arch is headed for immediate serious trouble’”: John Knox Persons to Lillie Mae Faulk, March 11, 1931.

page 27 “‘Please excuse this paper…’”: Lillie Mae Faulk to John Knox Persons, March, 1931

page 28 “‘When he gets in trouble…’”: John Knox Persons to Lillie Mae Faulk, March 17, 1931.

page 29 “Captivated by her vivacity and beauty…”: Joe Capote to GC, May 7, 1977.

page 29 “‘I never saw a man who was any cleaner…’”: Seabon Faulk to GC, March 8, 1978.

page 30 “‘His mental state concerning her…’”: John Knox Persons to Sam Persons, July 2, 1931.

page 30 “‘The enclosed wire came last night…’”: Sam Persons to John Knox Persons, July 6, 1931.