Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.
–Capote

Throughout his career, Truman Capote remained one of America’s most controversial and colorful authors, combining literary genius with a penchant for the glittering world of high society. Though he wrote only a handful of books, his prose styling was impeccable, and his insight into the psychology of human desire was extraordinary. His flamboyant and well-documented lifestyle has often overshadowed his gifts as a writer, but over time Capote’s work will outlive the celebrity.

Born in New Orleans in 1924, Capote was abandoned by his mother and raised by his elderly aunts and cousins in Monroeville, Alabama. As a child he lived a solitary and lonely existence, turning to writing for solace. Of his early days Capote related, “I began writing really sort of seriously when I was about eleven. I say seriously in the sense that like other kids go home and practice the violin or the piano or whatever, I used to go home from school every day and I would write for about three hours. I was obsessed by it.”

In his mid-teens, Capote was sent to New York to live with his mother and her new husband. Disoriented by life in the city, he dropped out of school, and at age seventeen, got a job with The New Yorker magazine. Within a few years he was writing regularly for an assortment of publications. One of his stories, “Miriam,” attracted the attention of publisher Bennett Cerf, who signed the young writer to a contract with Random House. Capote’s first book, Other Voices, Other Rooms, was published in 1948. Other Voices, Other Rooms received instant notoriety for its fine prose, its frank discussion of homosexual themes, and, perhaps most of all, for its erotically suggestive cover photograph of Capote himself.

With literary success came social celebrity. The young writer was lionized by the high society elite, and was seen at the best parties, clubs, and restaurants. He answered accusations of frivolousness by claiming he was researching a future book. His short novel, Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1958), took much of its inspiration from these experiences. With the publication of Breakfast at Tiffany’s and the subsequent hit film staring Audrey Hepburn, Capote’s popularity and place among the upper crust was assured. His ambition, however, was to be great as well as popular, and so he began work on a new experimental project that he imagined would revolutionize the field of journalism.

In 1959, Capote set about creating a new literary genre — the non-fiction novel. In Cold Blood (1966), the book that most consider his masterpiece, is the story of the 1959 murder of the four members of a Kansas farming family, the Clutters. Capote left his jet-set friends and went to Kansas to delve into the small-town life and record the process by which they coped with this loss. During his stay, the two murderers were caught, and Capote began an involved interview with both. For six years, he became enmeshed in the lives of both the killers and the townspeople, taking thousands of pages of notes. Of In Cold Blood, Capote said, “This book was an important event for me. While writing it, I realized I just might have found a solution to what had always been my greatest creative quandary. I wanted to produce a journalistic novel, something on a large scale that would have the credibility of fact, the immediacy of film, the depth and freedom of prose, and the precision of poetry.” In Cold Blood sold out instantly, and became one of the most talked about books of its time. An instant classic, In Cold Blood brought its author millions of dollars and a fame unparalleled by nearly any other literary author since.

To celebrate the book’s success, Capote threw what many called the “Party of the Century,” the famous “Black and White Ball.” This masked ball, at New York’s elegant Plaza Hotel, was to be the pinnacle of both his literary endeavors and his popularity. Overwhelmed by the lifestyles of the rich and famous, Capote began to work on a project exploring the intimate details of his friends. He received a large advance for a book which was to be called Answered Prayers (after Saint Theresa of Avila’s saying that answered prayers cause more tears than those that remain unanswered). The book was to be a biting and largely factual account of the glittering world in which he moved. The publication of the first few chapters in Esquire magazine in 1975 caused a major scandal. Columnist Liz Smith explained, “He wrote what he knew, which is what people always tell writers to do, but he just didn’t wait till they were dead to do it.”

With these first short publications Capote found that many of his close friends and acquaintances shut him off completely. Though he claimed to be working on Answered Prayers (which many imagined would be his greatest work), the shock of the initial negative reactions sent him into a spiral of drug and alcohol use, during which time he wrote very little of any quality. When Capote died in 1984, at the age of fifty-nine, he left behind no evidence of any continued progress on Answered Prayers. Though many feel that Capote did not live up to the promise of his early work, it is clear from what he did write that he was an artist of exquisite talent and vision. With both his fiction and his non-fiction, he created a body of work that will continue to move readers and inspire writers for years.

Activity 1

Activity 2

Activity One

1. Copy and pass out the following two paragraphs:If I write the following statement: My best friend is wacky, how much do you really know about my friend? My concept of wacky, for all you know, might be someone who doesn’t alphabetize the canned goods in their pantry. On the other hand, if I write the following description, you might have a better idea of my concept of wacky.My best friend is absolutely, without a doubt, the wackiest person I know. She has driven into the McDonalds drive-thru and placed her order into the trashcan instead of the speaker. Another time she discovered that she had washed a loaf of bread and a bottle of Windex with her load of dark clothes. (Actually it was a load of multi colored clothes because she never sorts her laundry.) She has mistakenly thrown her cell phone, diamond earrings, various pieces of her grandmother’s silver, and a bag of newly purchased light bulbs into the trash compactor. I could go on and on, but with the examples that I’ve given you, wouldn’t you agree that she is totally wacked?
2. Discuss how the statement, “My best friend is wacky,” tells you my friend is wacky. The second paragraph shows you how my friend is wacky.
3. Divide the class into small groups.
4. Tell students to think of a feeling (i.e. sad, happy, depressed.).
5. Take a few moments to write a description of someone who is feeling the emotion you have chosen. For example: If you have chosen the word sad, don’t use the word sad; instead describe how you think a sad person would act and appear.
6. Take turns reading the descriptions to the members in the group and have them guess the emotion you wrote about.

Activity Two

1. Divide the class into small groups and send them to the following websites to learn about Truman Capote:
   • PBS American Masters website
     http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/capote_t.html
   • EducETH’s English Page
     http://www.educeth.ethz.ch/english/readinglist/capotet/index.html
2. Have groups gather five pieces of factual information and generate a list of five words that they feel describe Truman Capote.
3. Share the results with the class.
4. Save the list of words that describe Capote.

Activities

Activity One

A Christmas Memory

“To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it’s about, but the inner music that words make.”
-Truman Capote.

1. Obtain a copy of Truman Capote’s short story A Christmas Memory from your school or local library.
2. This is a wonderful book to read aloud. The pleasure that Capote found in creating an inner music with his words is very apparent in this story.
3. A Christmas Memory is autobiographical in nature. When Capote was ten years old he moved to a rural town in Alabama to live with his distant, elderly relatives.
   • What is the point of view of the story?
   • Describe Buddy, the main character’ s physical characteristics. (Some students may wish to draw Buddy.)
   • What do you learn about Buddy?
   • What do you think Buddy wants? (Short and long term)
   • What conflicts does Buddy face? (Internal and external)
4. Discuss the story as a class (setting, theme, plot, conflict, complication, suspense, climax, and outcome).
5. Generate a list of words that describe the character Buddy.
6. Ask students to select one of the words and write a paragraph that shows, not tells, why that word describes Buddy.
7. Write a book review of A Christmas Memory for your local newspaper.

Activity Two

Write a short story based on one of Truman Capote’s childhood experiences.

1. Read the following account of Capote’s childhood experience to the class:

Truman Capote was childhood friends with Harper Lee, the author of To Kill a Mockingbird. As the story goes, one day a young Truman got caught in the middle of a “game” called hot grease in the kitchen. The game consisted of older boys cordoning off an area of the playground, and making all of the other boys stay clear. One day Truman, in defiance, entered the area. The older boys pounced on Truman and held him on the ground. They wouldn’t let Truman get up, that is until Harper Lee arrived on the scene. Harper walked into the middle of the scene pushing the older boys out of her way. Daring the older boys to stop her she walked Truman to safety. The boys, knowing Harper’s love for a good fight, let the two of them pass.

2. Create a short story based on this incident.
3. Use the writing process (pre-writing, writing, revising, editing, and publishing).
4. Allow students time to peer conference.
5. Share students’ stories with the class.

Assessment

Activity One

Students will be evaluated on class participation and the quality of their paragraph and book review.

Activity Two

Students will be evaluated on class participation, and the quality of their short story.

Extensions

Have students select a family event, and write a short story about the occurrence. Ask other family members to write about the same incident. Compile the stories and share them together.

At the age of 23, Truman Capote achieved critical acclaim with the publication of his first book Other Voices, Other Rooms. Capote, quoted as saying, “My major regret in life is that my childhood was unnecessarily lonely”, was abandoned by his mother at the age of ten, and raised in rural Alabama by a family of distant, elderly cousins. This American Master’s series lesson uses Capote’s autobiographical short story, “A Christmas Memory”, to teach a lesson on characterization in writing.

Grade Level

7 – 12

Subject Area

Language Arts

Objectives

Students will:

• recognize the difference between “telling” and “showing” the nature of a character.
• describe a person.
• write a short story.

Materials

• Truman Capote’s short story “A Christmas Memory.”
  (In 1989 A Christmas Memory was published with illustrations by Beth Peck.)
• http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/capote_t.html
• http://www.educeth.ethz.ch/english/readinglist/capotet/index.html

Standards

Reading

Uses reading skills and strategies to understand and interpret a variety of literary texts

• Analyzes the simple and complex actions (e.g., internal/external conflicts) between main and subordinate characters in literary works containing complex character structures
• Makes connections between his or her own life and the characters, events, motives, and causes of conflict in texts
• Understands the effects of author’s style and complex literary devices and techniques on the overall quality of a work (e.g., tone; irony; mood; figurative language; allusion; diction; dialogue; symbolism; point of view; voice; understatement and overstatement; time and sequence; narrator; poetic elements, such as sound, imagery, personification)

Writing

Uses the general skills and strategies of the writing process

• Writes fictional, biographical, autobiographical, and observational narrative compositions (e.g., narrates a sequence of events; evaluates the significance of the incident; provides a specific setting for scenes and incidents; provides supporting descriptive detail [specific names for people, objects, and places; visual details of scenes, objects, and places; descriptions of sounds, smells, specific actions, movements, and gestures; the interior monologue or feelings of the characters]; paces the actions to accommodate time or mood changes; creates a unifying theme or tone; uses literary devices to enhance style and tone)

Uses the stylistic and rhetorical aspects of writing

• Uses precise and descriptive language that clarifies and enhances ideas and supports different purposes (e.g., to stimulate the imagination of the reader, to translate concepts into simpler or more easily understood terms, to achieve a specific tone, to explain concepts in literature)

Uses grammatical and mechanical conventions in written compositions

• Uses complex and compound-complex sentences in written compositions