The Southern Haunting of Truman Capote

Like many Southern writers of the 1930s and 1940s, who as a group created the richest, most memorable body of regional literature in the history of American letters. Truman Capote eventually journeyed northward. As the years passed, Capote’s moorings to his Southern past grew weaker and weaker and he deliberately cut himself off from the people and places that provided fodder for much of his early fiction. The Southern Haunting of Truman Capote is a thoughtful reflection on the literary origins of four of Capote’s important early works - A Christmas Memory, The Grass Harp, Children on Their Birthdays and Other Voices, Other Rooms - in light of the boyhood experiences that inspired those four works. Marie Rudisill, a younger sister of Capote’s mother and the only one of her nephew’s companions to have known him well his whole life, was in touch with him for more than seventy years As early as the mid-1940s, Marie Rudisill realised that her nephew was destined for literary greatness. She began hoarding his letters, newspaper clippings, articles, personal mementoes - anything that might prove useful later as a record of his life. During their many telephone conversations, whenever Capote introduced a subject she found interesting, she would record their conversation Because of this close relationship, Rudisill gained a unique perspective on her nephew’s development as one of America’s leading novelists. Begun as an idea that originated with Joe Fox, Capote’s editor for more than twenty years, The Southern Haunting of Truman Capote provides a useful point of view for understanding Capote’s work.