Review of In Cold Blood: How to Make a Biography an Easy, Enjoyable Read

Truman Capote was born in New Orleans on September 30, 1924 (Encyclopaedia 1). “His original name was Truman Streckfus Persons” (Encyclopaedia 1). His parents were divorced when he was young and his mother remarried Joseph Garcia Capote, the author’s surname (Encyclopaedia 1).

Capote “spent his childhood with various elderly relatives in small towns in Louisiana and Alabama” after his parents divorced (Encyclopaedia 1). “He attended private schools and eventually joined his mother and stepfather at Millbrook, Conn., where he completed his secondary education at GreenwichHigh School” (Encyclopaedia 1). He “abandoned further schooling and achieved early literature recognition in 1945 when his haunting short story “Miriam” was published in Mademoiselle magazine; it won the O. Henry Memorial Award the following year, the first of four such awards Capote was to receive” (Encyclopaedia 1).

Capote’s “first novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948), was acclaimed as the work of a young writer of great promise” (Encyclopaedia 1). Some of Capote’s other works include the short story “Shut a Final Door” (O. Henry Award, 1946), The Grass Harp (1951) and Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1958), one of his most popular works (Encyclopaedia 1).

“Capote’s increasing preoccupation with journalism was reflected in In Cold Blood” (Encyclopaedia 1). He “spent six years interviewing the principals in the case, and the critical and popular success of his novel about them was the high point of his dual careers as a writer and a celebrity socialite” (Encyclopaedia 1).