Salem Press

Magill's Survey of American Literature offers profiles of major U.S. and Canadian writers accompanied by analyses of their significant works in fiction, drama, poetry, and nonfiction. Below is an excerpt from the Survey's essay on Truman Capote.

Truman Capote
Truman Capote was born Truman Streckfus Persons, the only child of J. Archulus Persons and Lillie Mae Faulk Persons. During the first six years of his childhood, the boy frequently was handed off to the care of relatives by his carefree and irresponsible parents. Following his parents' permanent separation when Truman was six, he was left fully in the care of relatives in Monroeville, Alabama.

Being raised by a series of relatives, Capote had a lonely childhood existence; the experience forced him, as he said in many interviews as an adult, to create his own world, personality, and sense of identity. The search for that sense of selfhood was to be a frequent theme in his literary work, both fiction and nonfiction. One imaginative influence on the young Capote was his eccentric cousin Sook Faulk, who encouraged the boy's propensity for fantasy invention. He was later to recall Sook as the doting parent surrogate in his short story "A Christmas Memory."

Capote's childhood days can be seen in the novel To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), written by his childhood friend Harper Lee, in which the youthful Capote appears as the character Dill. Following his parents' divorce in 1931, Capote spent most of his time in Monroeville until his mother was remarried in 1932 to Joseph Capote. Following their marriage, the boy was to change his name legally to Capote and eventually move to New York to live with his mother and stepfather.

- Jere Real