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- September 17, 1984MILESTONESTruman Capote
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- DIED. Truman Capote, 59 eternal enfant terrible of American
- letters and author of Breakfast at Tiffany's, In Cold Blood and
- several collections of short stories of unknown causes in Bel
- Air, Calif., where his body was found by police in a mansion
- owned by Johnny Carson's former wife Joanne. Born in New
- Orleans and raised a lonely child there and in New York City and
- New England, he was hired at 17 by The New Yorker as a cartoon
- sorter even before the huge success seven years later of his
- first novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms. He was famous in
- Manhattan literary circles for his lyrical, funny and gothic
- short stories, nearly all on the theme of loneliness. He went
- on to adapt his stories for the stage, produce screenplays and
- write nonfiction works. Of In Cold Blood, his horrific 1965
- account of the murder of a Kansas family by two drifters, he
- boasted that he had created a new genre, the nonfiction novel.
- As much a member of the glitterati as the literati, Capote was
- a gossipy, party-loving sybarite with a gift for self-promotion
- and TV talk-show repartee. In recent years, however, his
- productivity faltered and he struggled as frequent news reports
- about his hospitalizations and drunken-driving arrests gave
- witness with an addiction to drugs and alcohol.
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