Understanding Truman Capote

by Thomas Fahy

Overview

“Does an admirable job of examining Capote as a writer whose work reflects America of the late 1940s and 1950s more deeply than previously thought.” —Ralph F. Voss, author of Truman Capote and the Legacy of “In Cold Blood”
 
Truman Capote—and his most famous works, In Cold Blood and Breakfast at Tiffany’s—continue to have a powerful hold over the American popular imagination, along with his glamorous lifestyle, which included hobnobbing with the rich and famous and frequenting the most elite nightclubs in Manhattan. In Understanding Truman Capote, Thomas Fahy offers a way to reconsider the author’s place in literary criticism, the canon, and the classroom.
 
By reading Capote’s work in its historical context, Fahy reveals the politics shaping his writing and refutes any notion of Capote as disconnected from the political. Instead this study positions him as a writer deeply engaged with the social anxieties of the postwar years. It also applies a highly interdisciplinary framework to the author’s writing that includes discussions of McCarthyism, the Lavender Scare, automobile culture, juvenile delinquency, suburbia, Beat culture, the early civil rights movement, female sexuality as embodied by celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe, and atomic age anxieties. This new approach to studying Capote will be of interest in the fields of literature, history, film, suburban studies, sociology, gender/sexuality studies, African American literary studies, and American and cultural studies.
 
Capote’s writing captures the isolation, marginalization, and persecution of those who deviated from or failed to achieve white middle-class ideals and highlights the artificiality of mainstream idealizations about American culture. His work reveals the deleterious consequences of nostalgia, the insidious impact of suppression, the dangers of Cold War propaganda, and the importance of equal rights. Ultimately, Capote’s writing reflects a critical engagement with American culture that challenges us to rethink our understanding of the 1940s and 1950s.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781611173420
Publisher:	University of South Carolina Press
Publication date:	04/13/2022
Series:	Understanding Contemporary American Literature
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	200
File size:	2 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Thomas Fahy is an associate professor of English and director of the American Studies program at Long Island University–Post. He is the author of numerous books, including Staging Modern American Life: Popular Culture in the Experimental Theatre of Millay, Cummings, and Dos Passos and Freak Shows and the Modern American Imagination: Constructing the Damaged Body from Willa Cather to Truman Capote, and the editor of The Philosophy of Horror.

Table of Contents

Series Editor's Preface ix

Acknowledgments xi

Chapter 1 Understanding Truman Capote 1

Chapter 2 A Tree of Night and Other Stories 16

Chapter 3 Other Voices, Other Rooms 43

Chapter 4 The Grass Harp 61

Chapter 5 The Muses Are Heard 79

Chapter 6 Breakfast at Tiffany's 95

Chapter 7 In Cold Blood 112

Chapter 8 Three Stories, Answered Prayers, and Capote in the Twenty-First Century 149

Notes 157

Bibliography 167

Index 175

What People are Saying About This

Ralph F. Voss

Fahy does an admirable job of examining Capote as a writer whose work reflects America of the late 1940s and 1950s more deeply than previously thought. He argues convincingly that Capote is more than a mere stylist, deserving of a significant place in the canon of American literature.

Editorial Reviews

09/01/2014
This title offers a fresh look at a classic and often polarizing author. Fahy (English, director, American Studies program, Long Island Univ.-Post; Staging Modern American Life; Freak Shows and the Modern American Imagination) perspective on the works of Truman Capote (1924–84) has less of the sexuality slant prevalent in most of the critical studies on the author. Readers should not be wary of scholarly jargon, as Fahy does well in writing for those who may be looking for a nonacademic read. That isn't to say that researchers and students will not find here intelligent and intriguing material, though. Quite the contrary. Each chapter take pieces from the Capote canon, including In Cold Blood and Breakfast at Tiffany's, to make critical reading of this literature streamlined and self-contained. Fahy asks that readers take a look at the author not only through aspects of gender studies but also through the lenses of suburban studies, African American literary studies, sociology, and politics. VERDICT A smart take on a body of work that some seem to only want to read a certain way. Accessible to any reader interested in Capote's writing.—Jennifer Thompson, Richland Lib., Columbia, SC

Library Journal

Fahy's book is beautifully written and will surely be of a great use to readers first engaging Capote's work.

Choice

"Fahy's book is beautifully written and will surely be of a great use to readers first engaging Capote's work."

-- Choice


"Fahy does an admirable job of examining Capote as a writer whose work reflects America of the late 1940s and 1950s more deeply than previously thought. He argues convincingly that Capote is more than a mere stylist, deserving of a significant place in the canon of American literature."--Ralph F. Voss, author of Truman Capote and the Legacy of "In Cold Blood"

From the Publisher