A Guide to Truman Capote Books
Truman Capote is a seminal figure in American literature celebrated for his captivating prose and pioneering contributions to both fiction and literary journalism. From evocative Southern Gothic narratives that reflect his New Orleans roots to groundbreaking nonfiction that challenged traditional storytelling boundaries, Capote’s work explores themes of isolation, human psychology, and class. Capote’s career spans decades and his life and work turned him into a literary icon, recently featured in the FX anthology series, Feud: Capote vs. The Swans. His exploration of crime and celebrity, often infused with irony and compassion, and his elegant yet piercing prose continue to inspire readers. If you’re new to the work of Truman Capote, enjoy this list that encapsulates Capote’s career.
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Add to BookshelfBreakfast at Tiffany’s
by Truman Capote
Breakfast at Tiffany’s is a captivating novella of New York’s glamor and enigma. The story follows Holly Golightly, a socialite with a mysterious past, as she navigates Manhattan’s elite society. Through her unconventional adventures, themes of love, identity, and the pursuit of dreams are explored. Capote’s prose renders an iconic portrayal of 1960s New York and the eternal quest for belonging. This edition includes three more of Capote’s best-known stories, “House of Flowers,” “A Diamond Guitar,” and “A Christmas Memory.”
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Other Voices, Other Rooms
by Truman Capote
In his debut novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms, Capote dives into the haunting journey of Joel Knox — a sensitive boy confronting love and mortality in an eerie Southern landscape. Summoned to meet his estranged father at a decaying mansion in Skully’s Landing, Joel arrives and sees no sight of his father. Instead, he finds a chilling stepmother who enjoys killing birds, an uncle with the face and heart of a debauched child, and Idabel, a girl who may be his closest encounter with love. Capote explores abandonment, longing, and discovery, and offers a profound exploration of human complexity against the backdrop of the ghostly landscape of the deep South.
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In Cold Blood
by Truman Capote
Considered Truman Capote’s masterpiece, In Cold Blood shocked readers when it was first serialized in The New Yorker in 1965. Meticulously researched, this nonfiction narrative chronicles the lives of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas, and of the two men, Richard Eugene Hickock and Perry Edward Smith, who brutally murdered them on November 15, 1959. A seminal work of “New Journalism,” the story is told in chapters that alternate between the Clutter household and the approach of Smith and Hickock in their black Chevrolet; then, between the investigation of the case and the killers’ flight. Capote’s account is so detailed that readers will be immersed and feel like they were participants in the chilling events. This edition is one of Modern Library’s 100 Best Nonfiction Books of all time and is a beautifully repackaged hardcover classic.
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Answered Prayers
by Truman Capote
Capote’s unfinished novel, Answered Prayers, whipped up controversy with its straightforward portrayal of New York’s elite. The book scandalized the public and Capote’s high-society friends who saw through the thinly veiled fictionalization of the revealing, intimate, and often unsavory details about themselves. The book follows destitute writer P.B. Jones as he’s catapulted from his childhood spent in a Missouri orphanage to the opulent playgrounds of Manhattan’s elite. Though Jones struggles to make ends meet, he still finds himself in the company of drunk heiresses and their rolodex of legendary female friends, inspired by the women in Capote’s own life — like Colette, Jackie Kennedy, and the Duchess of Windsor. Originally published as a magazine serial, the story shocked readers and betrayed his friends who banished him from their lives.
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Portraits and Observations
by Truman Capote
Portraits and Observations, a collection of essays and sketches, showcases Capote’s keen talent for observation and graceful insight. This book is the first volume devoted solely to the essays published by one of the 20th century’s most beloved writers. Included are such masterpieces of narrative nonfiction as “The Muses Are Heard” and the short nonfiction novel “Handcarved Coffins,” as well as many long-out-of-print essays, including portraits of Mae West, Humphrey Bogart, and Marilyn Monroe. From his travel sketches of his birthplace in Alabama, as well as, New Orleans, New York, and Hollywood written when he was 22, to the author’s last written words, “Remembering Willa Cather,” composed the day before his death in 1984, Portraits and Observations shows the full range of Capote’s brilliance for blending journalistic precision with literary artistry.
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Summer Crossing
by Truman Capote
Published posthumously, Summer Crossing shines as Capote’s precocious and confident first novel. Seventeen-year-old socialite Grady McNeil has been left alone by her parents for the summer in their Fifth Avenue penthouse. Left to her own devices, she descends into a whirlwind romance with a Brooklyn-born Jewish war veteran working as a parking attendant. As the summer sizzles on, the romance takes serious and morally ambiguous turns and Grady must eventually make decisions that will forever change her life and affect the lives of everyone around her.
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Too Brief a Treat
by Truman Capote
Too Brief a Treat: The Letters of Truman Capote is the closest thing we have to a Capote autobiography. Spanning from 1943 to 1980, this collection of Capote’s correspondences shows us the arc of Capote’s life from his youth jumping confidently into the New York literary scene; the mature Capote of the ’50s; the journalistic Capote of the ’60s immersed in the research and writing of In Cold Blood; and Capote’s late life, as it begins to unravel. These letters reveal Capote’s wit, insights, and intimate relationships with the glamorous elite of the 20th century.
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The Early Stories of Truman Capote
by Truman Capote
Rediscovered in the New York Public Library archives, these early short stories by Capote offer a rare glimpse into his development as a writer in his teenage and early adult years. This collection showcases his emerging voice and empathy and provides early examples of his keen observations and distinct prose style. With a foreword by the celebrated New Yorker critic Hilton Als, this volume of early stories is essential for understanding how a boy from Monroeville, Alabama, became a legend in American literature.
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The Grass Harp
by Truman Capote
A poignant novel set on the outskirts of a small Southern town, The Grass Harp is a tale of three misfit women who move into a tree house. As time passes in the tree, The Grass Harp expresses all the pleasures and responsibilities of freedom while also teaching us about the sacredness of love. Told in Capote’s lyrical and whimsical prose, this book captures Capote’s ability to capture deep emotional insight. This volume also includes Capote’s “A Tree of Night and Other Stories.”
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10
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Music for Chameleons
by Truman Capote
A mix of Capote’s fiction and nonfiction work, this book features tales of Creole aristocrats sipping absinthe in their Martinique salon, an enigmatic killer who sends his victims announcements of their forthcoming death, and a Connecticut householder with an obsession for a twelve-year-old he has never met. Capote also shines in his nonfiction offerings with stories of smoking cigarettes with his cleaning lady and trading salacious sexual gossip with Marilyn Monroe.
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