Truman Capote

Mr. Erk

American Literature

1 May 2009

Truman Capote

    "A wealthy wheat farmer, his wife and their two young children were found shot to death today in their home. They had been killed by shotgun blasts at close

range after being bound and gagged..." This short article written in the November 16th, 1959, The New York Times, about the murder of Herbert, Bonnie, Kenyon

and Nancy Clutter inspired the 1966 novel In Cold Blood  by Truman Capote.

    Truman Capote was born on September 30th, 1924 in New Orleans, Louisiana to a Lillie Mae Faulk and Archelaus Persons. His parents--having a tumultuous

relationship, especially with Lillie Mae Faulk having given birth at only 17 years old--divorced four years later. After the divorce, each member of the family lived in a

different part of the United States; his mother moved to New York, his father remained in New Orleans, and Truman himself was sent to Monroeville, Alabama to

live with relatives. This abandonment of his birth parents led him to consider himself a "spiritual orphan", with the closest family bond being to his distant relative

Nanny Faulk. Truman, a relative prodigy, taught himself how to read and write before he entered the first grade, bringing himself ahead of most children his age. His

literary accomplishments began at the age ten, when he entered his short story Old Mrs. Busybody, to a contest held by the Mobile Press Register. Truman,

eventually leaving New Orleans moved to New York to live with his mother and her new husband. It was then that her new husband, Joseph Capote, adopted

Truman and renamed him Truman Garcia Capote from his birth name of Truman Streckfus Persons. He lived with his new family and attended school until he was

17, when he decided to forgo any further education and got a job at The New Yorker.

   In 1945, several years after leaving his job as a file clerk at The New Yorker, he sold his first story to Mademoiselle. His first story, titled Miriam, allowed him

to...