Too Brief a Treat: The Letters of Truman Capote

Letter reading is a form of voyeurism, at least when the letters are intended for an audience other than oneself. Yet there are times when the historical interest of the letters may raise them beyond the level of personal intrusion. The reading of another person’s letters may also be a way of bringing the letter writer to life. Such is the case in the letters of Truman Capote, edited by Gerald Clarke under the title Too Brief a Treat: The Letters of Truman Capote (New York: Random House, 2004). As literary documents, his letters are not particularly significant. He doesn’t use letter writing as an opportunity to express his attitudes towards his writing or towards the writing of others (although he does pass much judgment on the work of others). Reading them, you don’t learn much about Truman Capote the writer, the novelist, but you do come directly in contact with Capote the human being, and understanding the human being is means of understanding the writer.

These letters range from the 1940s through 1982. Most of them are from the 1950s and 1960s. The early letters quickly give expression to Capote’s brilliant and eccentric personality. Many of them are written to his close intimate friends whom he addresses flirtatiously and with much tenderness. These are his gay friends, and he had a wide circle of friends in this category, many of them leading names in the arts and letters of the day. Letters written to straight friends and associates are more formal but still often quite friendly and intimate. Capote loved the people he considered his friends, whether they were gay or straight, but he was quick to take offense at personal slights, and he did not hesitate to take up his pen with vengeful motives if the opportunity presented itself. The most notable example is a letter he wrote to the wife of William Goyen.

From a literary standpoint, the most interesting of these letters, written mainly during the 1960s, chronicle his interest in the Clutter murders in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas and his work on the book that became his masterpiece. Many of his letters from this period are written to Alvin and Marie Dewey. Alvin Dewey was a detective whose family Capote became friends with and who provided him with much information about the murders. The film Capote portrays the writer as impatient that the murderers Hickok and Smith are not speedily executed. Capote felt he could not finish the book without being able to write the final chapter, and that chapter covered the executions. These letters bear out the accuracy of the film in that aspect. For Capote, the Clutter murders were important for the chance they gave him to write his greatest book—the human tragedy involved was secondary, though the book itself does confirm his ability to recognize and convey it. A friend of mine has suggested that Capote was a “prime piece of human shit who could write really, really well, and then stopped doing even that.” It is possible to come away from these letters with that opinion.

After In Cold Blood the letters diminish in number and interest. He writes about work on his unfinished novel Answered Prayers and describes what he is doing and who he is seeing. But they lack the excitement of the earlier letters, whether he was writing members of his wide social set or talking about his works in progress. After In Cold Blood, he was expended.

These letters would lead to the conclusion that Capote was more a person of surfaces than of substance. Only by reading his fiction and nonfiction, especially In Cold Blood, do you discover otherwise.