[2] Capote wrote "A Diamond Guitar" in April 1950 during a three-week-long transatlantic freighter crossing from New York to Italy.
The story is set in a prison in a rural area near Mobile, Alabama where convicts perform road work and farm turpentine from nearby pine forests.
His character has been compared to the murderer Perry Smith from Capote's famous later novel In Cold Blood who possesses a Gibson guitar.
[9] A modern short story scholar notes that many of Capote's early short stories, including "A Diamond Guitar" place him among a cadre of notable mid-century writers well-versed in the southern gothic genre, including William Faulkner, Carson McCullers, Tennessee Williams and Flannery O'Connor.
Helen Garson, a scholar, notes that this type of love is one that Capote treats very carefully, "find[ing] no room for humor, sexual or otherwise".