Where to Start with Truman Capote: A Reading Guide
Where to start with Truman Capote — whether to begin with In Cold Blood, Breakfast at Tiffany's, or Other Voices, Other Rooms. A complete reading guide.
Truman Capote (1924–1984) is one of the most stylistically gifted American writers of the twentieth century — a Southern-born novelist, short story writer, and journalist whose work ranges from the Gothic darkness of Other Voices, Other Rooms to the social comedy of Breakfast at Tiffany’s to the literary journalism of In Cold Blood, which remains the most celebrated work of non-fiction in American literature. His life — brilliant, self-destructive, ultimately tragic — has somewhat overshadowed his work; the work itself is extraordinary.
Where to Start: In Cold Blood (1966)
The essential Capote — and one of the most important works of American non-fiction ever written. In November 1959, the Clutter family of Holcomb, Kansas — a prosperous farmer, his wife, and their two teenage children — were murdered by Perry Smith and Dick Hickock. Capote spent six years on the project: researching the crime, interviewing everyone involved, developing relationships with both killers during their imprisonment, and attending their execution. The result is a book that reads like a novel — with chapters devoted alternately to the investigation and to the killers’ own story — while claiming the authority of journalism.
In Cold Blood defined the ‘nonfiction novel’ genre and remains its greatest achievement; its portrait of Perry Smith in particular — a man of genuine sensitivity destroyed by a childhood of violence and neglect — is one of the most disturbing and most compassionate in American literary non-fiction.
Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1958)
The most immediately loveable Capote — and the work that introduced Holly Golightly to the world. Holly is a young woman from rural Texas who has invented herself as a Manhattan sophisticate: she has wealthy admirers (not quite lovers; she calls the money they give her ‘powder room’ money), a nameless cat, a phone that rings at all hours, and a quality of absolute freedom — from responsibility, from possession, from any fixed identity — that makes her simultaneously enchanting and impossible to hold.
The novella is darker than the Audrey Hepburn film that made it famous — Holly’s past is more specifically troubling, her fate more ambiguous, and the narrator’s feeling for her more complicated — and it is Capote’s most perfectly controlled fiction.
Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948)
Capote’s debut novel — a Southern Gothic coming-of-age story set in a decaying Louisiana mansion, where thirteen-year-old Joel Knox arrives to find his absent father and discovers instead a world of beautiful decay, mysterious adults, and his own emerging identity. The novel is Capote’s most lyrical and his most obviously stylised — every sentence is worked for maximum effect — and it announced one of the most distinctive voices in American fiction at its most concentrated. A Southern Gothic classic; less accessible than the later work but essential for readers who want the full Capote.
Reading Truman Capote
Capote’s range is extraordinary — from Southern Gothic to Manhattan social comedy to literary journalism — but what unites all of it is his prose style: precise, musical, and visually exact. Begin with In Cold Blood for his most sustained and most important achievement; with Breakfast at Tiffany’s for his most immediately appealing fiction; with Other Voices, Other Rooms for his most lyrical early work. The collected short stories and the posthumous Answered Prayers (unfinished but brilliant) complete the portrait of one of the most gifted and most self-destructive writers in American literary history.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where should I start with Truman Capote?
In Cold Blood (1966) is both the most widely read and the best starting point — Capote's account of the 1959 murder of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas, and the investigation, trial, and execution of the two killers. It is the most important work of literary non-fiction in American literature — the book that defined the 'nonfiction novel' genre — and it is also one of the most compelling and disturbing narratives Capote produced. Breakfast at Tiffany's is the best alternative for readers who want Capote's fiction: shorter, lighter, and immediately accessible.
What is In Cold Blood about?
In Cold Blood (1966) is Capote's account of the 1959 murder of the Clutter family — Herbert Clutter, a prosperous Kansas farmer; his wife Bonnie; and their two youngest children Nancy and Kenyon — by Perry Smith and Dick Hickock, two ex-convicts who believed (incorrectly) that the Clutters kept large amounts of cash in a safe. Capote spent six years on the book, interviewing everyone involved including the killers, whose psychology he renders with sympathy and precision. The book is simultaneously a true crime account, a portrait of rural Kansas, and a meditation on the death penalty and the nature of violent crime.
What is Breakfast at Tiffany's about?
Breakfast at Tiffany's (1958) is a novella narrated by a young writer who lives in the same New York apartment building as Holly Golightly — a young woman from rural Texas who has invented herself as a sophisticated Manhattan socialite, keeps 'powder room money' from her wealthy admirers, visits a Mafia boss in prison every week to deliver coded messages, and dreams of a life whose shape she cannot quite articulate. Holly, who never quite settles anywhere and who cannot be fully possessed by anyone, is one of the great characters in American fiction. Audrey Hepburn's portrayal in the 1961 film is famous but substantially different from the novella's Holly.
What is the significance of Truman Capote's style?
Capote is one of the most precise stylists in American literature — a writer whose sentences are controlled with an almost musical exactness, whose imagery is memorable and precise, and whose ear for dialogue is as good as any American writer of his generation. His style is simultaneously Southern Gothic (in its early work) and socially observed (in his New York writing) and journalistically precise (in In Cold Blood). He was among the first American writers to claim that literary journalism — non-fiction written with the techniques of fiction — was a genuine literary form rather than a compromise, and In Cold Blood remains the most celebrated demonstration of that argument.
