Truman Capote-Enfant Terrible

"This is a critical biography of Truman Capote's career from his early beginnings in rural Alabama to his death in Beverly Hills. Coverage includes the writing and staging of The Grass Harp, and its later adaptation as a Hollywood film, and the story behind "House of Flowers," from a travel sketch to a Broadway musical. But the thrust of the book, and its greatest strength, is its depiction of Capote as a virtuoso, able to command a large popular audience and also to impress connoisseurs of literature. As Robert Emmet Long shows, Capote abounded in the seeming contradictions and multiple personalities within himself that ultimately led to his destruction. His career incorporated both a beguiling comic sense and a dark sense of the failure of love and aspiration."--BOOK JACKET.

Robert Emmet Long taught in the English department at Queens College, CUNY.