Truman Capote - Early Life

Early Life

Born in New Orleans, Louisiana, he was the son of 17-year-old Lillie Mae Faulk and salesman Archulus Persons. His parents divorced when he was four, and he was sent to Monroeville, Alabama, where, for the following four to five years, he was raised by his mother's relatives. He formed a fast bond with his mother's distant relative, Nanny Rumbley Faulk, whom Truman called "Sook." "Her face is remarkable — not unlike Lincoln's, craggy like that, and tinted by sun and wind," is how Capote described Sook in "A Christmas Memory". In Monroeville, he was a neighbor and friend of author Harper Lee, who wrote the 1960 novel To Kill a Mockingbird, with the character Dill being based on Capote.

As a lonely child, Capote taught himself to read and write before he entered his first year of schooling. Capote was often seen at age five carrying his dictionary and notepad, and he began writing fiction at the age of 11. He was given the nickname Bulldog around this age.

On Saturdays, he made trips from Monroeville to the nearby city of Mobile on the Gulf Coast, and at one point he submitted a short story, "Old Mrs. Busybody," to a children's writing contest sponsored by the Mobile Press Register. Capote received recognition for his early work from The Scholastic Art & Writing Awards in 1936.

In 1933, he moved to New York City to live with his mother and her second husband, Joseph Capote, a Cuban-born textile broker, who adopted him as his stepson and renamed him Truman García Capote. However, Joseph was convicted of embezzlement and shortly afterwards, when his income crashed, the family was forced to leave Park Avenue.

Of his early days, Capote related, "I began writing really sort of seriously when I was about 12. I say seriously in the sense that like other kids go home and practice the violin or the piano or whatever, I used to go home from school every day, and I would write for about three hours. I was obsessed by it." In 1935, he attended the Trinity School in New York City. He then attended St. Joseph Military Academy. In 1939, the Capote family moved to Greenwich, Connecticut, and Truman attended Greenwich High School, where he wrote for both the school's literary journal, The Green Witch, and the school newspaper. When they returned to New York City in 1942 he attended the Franklin School, an Upper West Side private school now known as the Dwight School, graduating in 1943. That was the end of his formal education.

While still attending Franklin in 1943, Capote began working as copyboy in the art department at The New Yorker, a job he held for two years, before being fired for angering poet Robert Frost. Years later, he reminisced, "Not a very grand job, for all it really involved was sorting cartoons and clipping newspapers. Still, I was fortunate to have it, especially since I was determined never to set a studious foot inside a college classroom. I felt that either one was or wasn't a writer, and no combination of professors could influence the outcome. I still think I was correct, at least in my own case." He left his job to live with relatives in Alabama and begin a first novel, Summer Crossing.