In the framework of the centenary of the birth of Truman Capote (1924 -1984), Anagrama brought together Leila Guerriero, Juan Villoro, Martín Bianchi and Berna González Harbor to chat about the author of In Cold Blood.
“He had a short life, of incomparable intensity that knew success and applause, as well as contempt and ostracism, known for his unique style. Capote wrote unforgettable works, in addition to numerous stories and journalistic work,” this is how Silvia Sesé, director of Anagrama, began the talk.
Truman Capote was born in New Orleans on September 30, 1924. and died in Los Angeles on August 25, 1984.
The writer Leila Guerriero is the author of The Difficulty of the Ghost (Anagrama) where she follows in the footsteps of Truman Capote along the Costa Brava, the place where he wrote part of his famous In Cold Blood.
“I was in Palamós, in one of the houses that the writer rented in Spain. I didn’t know that he had written one of his great works there and not in the United States, where Capote was a guy who had an impressive social life. “He decided to get away from all that when he went to the Costa Brava once the investigation was finished in the town of Holcomb where the crime of this family had occurred.”
For the renowned author, Capote was a great stylist and completely devoted to writing.
“He was a striking and provocative guy who could be very treacherous in interviews, in dealings, but he had enormous intelligence, he was a great reader and at the same time a predator of his contemporaries, he despised many and from an early age he felt very proud. of what it was.”
in decline
Regarding In Cold Blood, Leila Guerriero commented that He had decided that this book could only be finished when the murderers who had killed the family were executed.
“As a narrator you can make that or any other decision, but putting the long shadow of death on a book for the final point is pointing an arrow in the center of your forehead. In the end, the book was very successful when it was published and was seen as something very commercial, it did not have that much prestige at that time and that was something that Capote resented a lot, seeing that all his generation colleagues were winning big awards and he was a little relegated.”
And he assured that it is a great work, but After the great success, everything went into decline.
“His addiction to amphetamines, alcohol and permanent parties; For me it was very moving to be in the place where someone spent – what we might think – almost their last happy days, because there began a suicide in slow motion for Truman Capote.”
For its part, Juan Villoro commented that Capote’s career was based precisely on the construction of a unique style.
“He built a deeply striking personality in American celebrity culture. Capote was self-made, and that long journey was based on what he considered to be his strength and his main instrument: literary style. Truman Capote said that the talent he had was a whip that God had given him to punish himself and be able to get the best lines.”
Villoro pointed out that Capote had a split personalityon the one hand, he reached out “to the dispossessed people with all kinds of anomalies that he met in the southern United States in his childhood and successfully entered society.”
“These two worlds were always in him. Capote once said that his epitaph should be ‘I aspire’, because he was a continuous aspirationist, but we can also see him as a great careerist, someone who used the wonderful tool of language, both the oral one he had and a gossiper who encouraged everyone. the gatherings, like the written language, so refined and so successful and that could lead to journalism.”
The Mexican writer translated The Night Tree, by Capote, 35 years ago but He said he was dissatisfied and asked Anagrama to make a new edition with those stories that are extraordinary.
“Truman Capote’s success, so sought after by him, was also his ordeal; The overwhelming success of In Cold Blood made him be seen by many more as a commercial and popular author than as the supreme stylist that he always was then and I believe that all these contradictions make him an unavoidable figure of the 20th century,” added Juan Villoro.
The need for acceptance and affection
The journalist Martín Bianchi Tasso said that There were things that marked Capote’s life; The author was always eager for acceptance, success and being part of a sector of society.
“I think it stems a little bit from a traumatic childhood in a broken marriage, he was unwanted and went to live with relatives in Alabama. He was a child aware of his homosexuality and proud of it. From a very young age he was a transgressor and grew up in a society in which it was customary to tell oral stories. I think that is where his love for telling stories was born, but he always sought the love of his parents; I think that the driving force behind his work was precisely that need for acceptance and affection.”
The writer Berna González Harbor commented that Capote took on very brave challenges when writing In Cold Blood, he decided to leave his comfort zone to go to a place where he, with all his clothes, is nobody.
“But it also addresses the most difficult crime to understand: the unplanned. Two men break into a farmer’s house, steal $50 from him, and murder the family. They were brave challenges for the writer, they turned out well, although they also possibly cost him his life.”
For the Spanish authorwhat Truman Capote does is turn the horrendous into beauty.
“Capote turned a crime into a novel, into beauty; There is a third phase which is to turn all that into the horrendous end and it is where the legend of a writer is fueled by all the parties, by his failed book Prayers Attended. From there, he self-destructs and the horrible thing comes back to him.”
Longing for heaven or hell
The participants agreed on the author’s overwhelming personality, in his way of “disguising himself” with his scarves and hats, where he represented himself in all possible circumstances.
Writers and journalists talked about one of his most controversial novels Answered Prayers that appeared in 1987 in a posthumous and unfinished edition, which Capote published in pieces in magazines, which caused scandals, a suicide and he was expelled from parties and his friends. Dear “swans”, rich women did not speak to him again, because Capote did not keep any secrets.
What current voices can be compared to Truman Capote?
Juan Villoro was categorical in his response: “Great authors like Truman Capote are absolutely unrepeatable; Many of us can benefit from different aspects of his work, the relationship between fiction and non-fiction or his interviews… they are resources that are there for those who can take advantage of them and I consider that the literature after him owes him a lot in very important aspects. varied.”
Leila Guerriero agreed: “It seems to me that any author who today has that ability to tell and transform a small story into a story like The Iliad or The Odyssey and all those classic works, well, he is on par with a guy like him, there is no so many, but there are not so many Capotes in the world either. The only thing I want to say to all of us who write is that you don’t need to have an ending like Truman Capote’s to write, you don’t need to.”
FACT
Anagrama has the Truman Capote Library that brings together titles such as Breakfast at Tiffany’s, In Cold Blood, Music for Chameleons, Answered Prayers, The Grass Harp and Los Perros Ladran, among others.
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