Truman Capote’s bedroom at his Hamptons beach house. (Source)

Literary Birthday - 30 September

Happy Birthday, Truman Capote, born 30 September 1924, died 25 August 1984

10 Intriguing Truman Capote Quotes On Writing

1. To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it’s about, but the inner music that words make.
2. A conversation is a dialogue, not a monologue. That’s why there are so few good conversations: due to scarcity, two intelligent talkers seldom meet.
3. You can’t blame a writer for what the characters say. 
4. Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the back yard and shot it. 
5. All literature is gossip
6. Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.
7. Since each story presents its own technical problems, obviously one can’t generalize about them on a two-times-two-equals-four basis. Finding the right form for your story is simply to realize the most natural way of telling the story. 
8. All writing, all art, is an act of faith. 
9. My preferred pastimes are conversation, reading, travel and writing, in that order.
10. It’s a very excruciating life facing that blank piece of paper every day and having to reach up somewhere into the clouds and bring something down out of them.

Truman Capote was an American author, whose short stories, novels, plays, and non-fiction are recognized literary classics, including the novella Breakfast at Tiffany’s and the true crime novel In Cold Blood.
At least 20 films and television dramas have been produced from Capote novels, stories and screenplays.

Source for Image

by Amanda Patterson for Writers Write

What William Burroughs said to Truman Capote 

The great William Burroughs wrote the following fascinating and damning letter to Capote in 1970. 

In 1966, a few months after first being serialised in The New Yorker, Truman Capote’s genre-defining non-fiction novel, In Cold Blood — the true story of a quadruple murder in 1959 that Capote investigated, and the subsequent trial he attended — was published to much acclaim. The praise wasn’t universal, however.  

July 23, 1970

My Dear Mr. Truman Capote

This is not a fan letter in the usual sense — unless you refer to ceiling fans in Panama. Rather call this a letter from “the reader” — vital statistics are not in capital letters — a selection from marginal notes on material submitted as all “writing” is submitted to this department. 

I have followed your literary development from its inception, conducting on behalf of the department I represent a series of inquiries as exhaustive as your own recent investigations in the sun flower state. I have interviewed all your characters beginning with Miriam — in her case withholding sugar over a period of several days proved sufficient inducement to render her quite communicative — I prefer to have all the facts at my disposal before taking action. Needless to say, I have read the recent exchange of genialities between Mr Kenneth Tynan and yourself. I feel that he was much too lenient.  

Your recent appearance before a senatorial committee on which occasion you spoke in favor of continuing the present police practice of extracting confessions by denying the accused the right of consulting consul prior to making a statement also came to my attention. In effect you were speaking in approval of standard police procedure: obtaining statements through brutality and duress, whereas an intelligent police force would rely on evidence rather than enforced confessions. 

You further cheapened yourself by reiterating the banal argument that echoes through letters to the editor whenever the issue of capital punishment is raised: “Why all this sympathy for the murderer and none for his innocent victims?” I have in line of duty read all your published work. The early work was in some respects promising — I refer particularly to the short stories. You were granted an area for psychic development. It seemed for a while as if you would make good use of this grant. You choose instead to sell out a talent that is not yours to sell. 

You have written a dull unreadable book which could have been written by any staff writer on the New Yorker — (an undercover reactionary periodical dedicated to the interests of vested American wealth). You have placed your services at the disposal of interests who are turning America into a police state by the simple device of deliberately fostering the conditions that give rise to criminality and then demanding increased police powers and the retention of capital punishment to deal with the situation they have created.

Truman Capote & his cat

Capote’s ‘In Cold Blood’ Typewriter Sells for $8,281

Capote liked to write a draft of his books and then a revision longhand, before ever using a typewriter.