“Oh my, it’s fruitcake weather!”
It’s not the first line many people associate with Truman Capote, born September 30, 1924 in New Orleans. But it is in one of my favorites, A Christmas Memory, a 1956 short story originally published in Mademoiselle.
This Depression-era story of a young boy and his favorite aunt making holiday fruitcakes is far removed from the author’s most famous work– the book that made “true crime” a literary genre.
“Nonfiction novel”—it may sound like an oxymoron, but that’s what Truman Capote called In Cold Blood (1966).
This book about a pair of killers and a grisly quadruple murder in Kansas. Applying the techniques of good fiction writing to a story that he claimed was “immaculately factual,” Capote (1924-1984) changed the face of journalism. In addition, the fame-loving author became one of the first literary celebrities of the television era. With his high-pitched, Southern-accented speech and his delight in scandal, Capote was like no writer American viewers had seen before.
He died in August 1984. Here Is Capote’s 1984 New York Times obituary.
http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0930.html
See if you can ice this quiz about the author of In Cold Blood, which is adapted from Don’t Know Much About Literature
1. Which writer, having just completed a novel of her own, traveled with Capote to Kansas to help research In Cold Blood?
2. Over the course of In Cold Blood, does Capote ever use a first-person narrative voice?
3. Which catty story, published in a 1975 issue of Esquire Magazine, sabotaged Capote’s relationships with the “ladies who lunch” set?
Answers
1. Harper Lee. According to Capote, Lee was useful not only for her note-taking but because “She became friendly with all the churchgoers.”
2. No—not even once. Capote felt that a writer should not intrude in his story.
3. “La Côte Basque.” The story—actually a chapter from an unfinished novel called Answered Prayers—shared the scandals of Capote’s high-society friends, in some cases naming names.
