Truman Capote lives in a big yellow house in Brooklyn Heights, which he has recently restored with the taste and elegance that are generally characteristic of his undertakings. As I entered, he was head and shoulders inside a crate containing a wooden lion. “There,” he cried as he tugged it out to a fine birth amid a welter of sawdust and shavings. “Did you ever see anything so splendid? Now come along into the parlour while I get someone to clear away this mess.” The parlour is Victorian in character and contains Capote’s most intimate collection of art objects and personal treasures, which, for all their orderly arrangement on polished tables and bamboo bookcases, somehow remind you of the contents of a very astute little boy’s pockets.
Capote himself fits in very well with this impression at first glance. He is small and blond, with a forelock that persists in falling down into his eyes, and his smile is sudden and sunny. His approach to anyone new is one of open curiosity and friendliness. He might be taken in by anything and, in fact, seems only too ready to be. There is something about him, though, that makes you feel it would be hard to pull any wool over his eyes, and maybe it’s better not to try.
There was a sound of scuffling in the hall and Capote came in, preceded by a large bulldog with a white face.
“This is Bunky,” he said.
Bunky sniffed me over and we sat down.
Interviewer When did you start writing?
Capote When I was about 10 or 11 and lived near Mobile, Alabama. I had to go into town on Saturdays to the dentist, and I joined the Sunshine Club that was organised by the Mobile Press-Register. There was a children’s page with contests for writing and for colouring pictures, and then every Saturday afternoon they had a party with free Nehi and Coca-Cola. The prize for the short-story contest was either a pony or a dog, I’ve forgotten which, but I wanted it badly.
I had been noticing the activ- ities of some neighbours who were up to no good, so I wrote a kind of roman à clef called Old Mr Busybody and entered it. The first instalment appeared under my real name of Truman Streckfus Persons. Only, somebody realised I was serving up a local scandal as fiction, and the second instalment never appeared. Naturally, I didn’t win a thing.
Interviewer Were you sure then that you wanted to be a writer?
Capote I realised I wanted to be a writer. But I wasn’t sure I would be until I was 15 or so. At that time, I had immodestly started sending stories to magazines and literary quarterlies. Of course, no writer ever forgets his first acceptance; but one fine day when I was 17, I had my first, second and third, all in the same morning’s mail. Oh, I’m here to tell you, dizzy with excitement is no mere phrase.
Interviewer Did you have much encouragement in those early days, and if so, from whom?
Capote Good Lord. I’m afraid you’ve let yourself in for quite a saga. The answer is a snake’s nest of nos and a few yeses. You see, by and large, my childhood was spent in parts of the country and among people unprovided with any semblance of a cultural attitude. Which was probably not a bad thing, in the long view.
It toughened me rather too soon to swim against the current — indeed, in some areas I developed the muscles of a veritable barracuda, especially in the art of dealing with one’s enemies, an art no less necessary than knowing how to appreciate one’s friends.
But to go back. Naturally, in the milieu aforesaid, I was thought somewhat eccentric, which was fair enough, and stupid, which I suitably resented. Still, I despised school — or schools, for I was always changing from one to another — and year after year failed the simplest subjects out of loathing and boredom. I played hooky at least twice a week and was always running away from home. Once, I ran away with a friend who lived across the street — a girl much older than me who, in later life, achieved a certain fame. Because she murdered a half-dozen people and was electrocuted at Sing Sing. Someone wrote a book about her. They called her the Lonely Hearts Killer. But there, I’m wandering again.
Well, finally, I guess when I was about 12, the principal at the school I was attending paid a call on my family and told them I was “subnormal”. Whatever they may have privately felt, my family took official umbrage and, in an effort to prove I wasn’t subnormal, pronto packed me off to a psychiatric study clinic at a university in the east, where I had my IQ inspected. I enjoyed it thoroughly and — guess what — came home a genius, so proclaimed by science. I don’t know who was the more appalled: my former teachers, who refused to believe it, or my family, who didn’t want to believe it — they’d just hoped to be told I was a nice, normal boy. Ha-ha. But as for me, I was exceedingly pleased. I went around staring at myself in mirrors, sucking in my cheeks and thinking: “My lad, you and Flaubert.”
I began writing in fearful earnest — and I don’t think I really slept for several years. Not until I discovered that whiskey could relax me. Most of my drinking was done in the late afternoon; then I’d chew a handful of Sen-Sen and go down to dinner, where my glazed silences gradually grew into a source of general consternation. One of my relatives used to say: “Really, if I didn’t know better, I’d swear he was dead drunk.”
Interviewer What are some of your writing habits? Do you use a desk? Do you write on a machine?
Capote I am a completely horizontal author. I can’t think unless I’m lying down, either in bed or stretched on a couch, and with a cigarette and coffee handy. I’ve got to be puffing and sipping. As the afternoon wears on, I shift from coffee to mint tea to sherry to martinis. No, I don’t use a typewriter. Not in the beginning. I write my first version in longhand (pencil). Then I do a complete revision, also in longhand. Essentially, I think of myself as a stylist, and stylists can become notoriously obsessed with the placing of a comma, the weight of a semicolon. Obsessions of this sort, and the time I take over them, irritate me beyond endurance.
Interviewer Can a writer learn style?
Capote No, I don’t think that style is consciously arrived at, any more than one arrives at the colour of one’s eyes.
Interviewer Well, I’m afraid I interrupted you with your short story still in pencilled manuscript. What happens next?
Capote Let’s see ... that was the second draft. Then I type a third draft on yellow paper, a very special kind of yellow paper. No, I don’t get out of bed to do this. I balance the machine on my knees. Sure, it works fine; I can manage 100 words a minute. Well, when the yellow draft is finished, I put the manuscript away for a while: a week, a month, sometimes longer. When I take it out again, I read it as coldly as possible, then read it aloud to a friend or two and decide what changes I want to make, and whether or not I want to publish it.
I’ve thrown away rather a few short stories, an entire novel and half of another. But if all goes well, I type the final version on white paper, and that’s that.
Interviewer Were you ever tempted by any of the other arts?
Capote I don’t know if it’s art, but I was stage-struck for years, and more than anything I wanted to be a tap-dancer. I used to practise my buck and wing until everybody in the house was ready to kill me. Later on, I longed to play the guitar and sing in nightclubs. So I saved up for a guitar and took lessons for one whole winter, but in the end the only tune I could really play was a beginner’s thing called I Wish I Was Single Again. I got so tired of it that one day I just gave the guitar to a stranger in a bus station. I was also interested in painting, and studied for three years, but I’m afraid the fervour, la vraie chose, wasn’t there.
Interviewer What are some of your personal quirks?
Capote I suppose my superstitiousness could be termed a quirk. I have to add up all numbers: there are some people I never telephone because their number adds up to an unlucky figure. Or I won’t accept a hotel room for the same reason. I will not tolerate the presence of yellow roses — which is sad, because they’re my favourite flower.
I can’t allow three cigarette butts in the same ashtray. Won’t travel on a plane with two nuns. Won’t begin or end anything on a Friday. It’s endless, the things I can’t and won’t. But I derive some curious comfort from obeying these primitive concepts.
Interviewer You have been quoted as saying your preferred pastimes are “conversation, reading, travel and writing, in that order”. Do you mean that literally?
Capote I think so. At least, I’m pretty sure conversation will always come first with me. I like to listen, and I like to talk. Heavens, girl, can’t you see I like to talk?
© The Paris Review 2007.
Extracted from The Paris Review Interviews, Vol 1, published by Canongate Books on January 25 at £14.99
