Truman Capote's Southern Years, 25th Anniversary Edition: Stories from a Monroeville Cousin

Foreword

Better than thirty years since his death at fifty-nine years old in 1984,and nearly fifty years since the publication of his final and greatest book,In Cold Blood,Truman Capote remains one of America’s foremost celebrity-writers, his popularity rivaling that of earlier twentieth-century celebrity writers such as Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Interest in Capote in recent years has grown, augmented by at least two biographical feature films (Capote in 2006 and Infamous in 2007), a television serialization of In Cold Blood, and graphic and conventional novels based on Capote’s life during the time he was researching and writing In Cold Blood—a fact-based account of the murders of four members of the Clutter farm family in Western Kansas, and the pursuit, capture, trial, conviction , and execution of their killers. Well-established as a successful writer of southern gothic short stories and novels prior to In Cold Blood’s publication in 1966,Capote thereafter FOREWORD ix ascended to the first tier of American fiction writers through sheer talent and shrewd self-promotion that left him, in his own words,“famous for being famous.” His flamboyant mannerisms , high-pitched voice, and penchant for gossip made him a popular guest on late-night television talk shows,where his brilliant wit and acid tongue were elements of his persona (even though he was not formally educated, having never attended college). He was as colorful as any of his characters, apparently having decided at an early age to accept his homosexuality and be comfortable in his own skin. No small part of Capote’s fame extends from his association with relatives, neighbors, and friends from his youthful years in Monroeville, Alabama, where—largely abandoned by his parents, Lillie Mae Faulk and Arch Persons—he spent most of the first ten years of his life being raised by Lillie Mae’s family. Among his childhood friends in Monroeville were Nelle Harper Lee,who immortalized Capote as Charles Baker “Dill” Harris in her all-time best-selling novel To Kill a Mockingbird, set in the fictional Maycomb, Alabama, obviously modeled upon Monroeville.Monroeville is also the setting for many of Capote’s short stories, such as “Children on Their Birthdays” and “My Side of the Matter,” as well as his first two novels, OtherVoices, Other Rooms and The Grass Harp. This rich heritage gives heft to Monroeville’s claim to be the literary capital of Alabama, and the town is justifiably proud of its Capote and Lee connections, as well as with such other writers as Cynthia Tucker and Mark Childress. Monroeville is the annual home of the Alabama Writers’ Symposium, and its courthouse museum—site of the trial scenes in both the novel and film versions of To Kill a Mockingbird—is its focal point of interest. Capote’s lengthy and highly successful career carried him well beyond Monroeville, but there can be little doubt that x Monroeville, his relatives, and his friends there, provided a richly imaginative environment that stood him in good creative stead long after his returns to visit waned.That is why the present volume, a 25th anniversary edition of Marianne M. Moates’s Truman Capote’s SouthernYears: Stories from a Monroeville Cousin, adds so much to understanding just how significantly the Monroeville matrix of experience contributed to the fictional worlds of Capote and Lee. Moates reports the memories of Capote’s first cousin,Jennings Faulk Carter,who was a near-constant companion of the young Capote and Lee during those formative years of the late 1920s and early 1930s in Monroeville.These memories reflect the world of the Finch children, Jem and Scout, in Lee’s novel, as well as the youthful experiences of Capote’s Joel Knox in Other Voices, Other Rooms, Collin Fenwick in The Grass Harp, and the narrator of “A Christmas Memory.” Carter taped his boyhood memories for Moates, researched family photos and records, and patiently critiqued Moates’s manuscript to bring authenticity to her account.The reminiscences of Jennings Faulk Carter convey Capote’s Monroeville youth as seen through Capote’s creative lens. Diminutive, precious, precocious, starved for attention , Capote was always “different” (a word Carter seems to prefer to “gay” or “homosexual”), and there are abundant stories here of the young Capote as instigator, inventor of schemes, and chief mischief-maker in the children’s play.The streets, sidewalks, houses, schools, countryside, and above...